Get to know designer Joseph Z. Chen

If we listed the people who’ve had the greatest impact on the history of Flatout Games, there is no doubt that Joseph Z. Chen would be on the list. We met in 2017 when his co-design, Fantastic Factories, had just won the LUCI award at Evergreen Tabletop Expo (ETX). He was encouraging of our early designs and soon joined the regular design meet-ups. Joseph took Fantastic Factories to Kickstarter and his approach, and success, was an inspiration. A few years later he joined the development team on Verdant and has since been involved in Cascadia Junior, Propolis, Point Galaxy, and Forage. His insights and feedback on game design are invaluable. We are thrilled to be publishing his design Honeypot (check out the Kickstarter)! 

What are some of your favorite tabletop games? And why?

This is a tough one. As a game designer I rarely get the chance to linger on the same set of games for too long but I think it gets broken down into two categories: Games like Race for the Galaxy, Quacks, Startups, or Harmonies l that have so many different viable strategies to win. I love exploring them all and playing them back to back to either try something new or optimize based on mistakes I made in the previous game. It's all about analyzing what happened and seeing if I can do better the next time.

The other category of games I like are games like Skull, Push, Deep Sea Adventure, and GoodCritters where they create dramatic moments and you play more so against people instead of game systems. That results in each game feeling fresh and different whenever you play with a different group. It's both familiar and new, and it's cool to see how each group reacts differently to the experience.

What games got you into game design?

In terms of what games got me into game design, I think I had a journey that many people in the hobby have experienced. The gateway game that got me into hobby games was Settlers of Catan. My roommates and I would play frequently. Catan doesn't play 2 players but my roommate and I would sometimes build up the board and spend 30 minutes discussing what optimal settlement placements would look like for all 4 players. After reaching a consensus we would reset and rebuild the board and do it all over again without actually even playing the game. That's how obsessed we were at the time.

We eventually added other games such as 7 Wonders or Alien Frontiers to our rotation. And then some time in roughly 2016 a group of friends and I decided we wanted to make a board game and tried to glue together our favorite mechanics from games we were familiar with. As a concept we put together the tableau engine building from Race for the Galaxy, the dice placement from Alien Frontiers, and the simultaneous play from 7 Wonders. This eventually led to my first co-design and self published game called Fantastic Factories.

My original group of friends have moved on from game design but the vibrant, generous, and welcoming community of board gamers and game designers have kept me involved in the industry.

Do you start with theme or mechanics?

Originally I would have said I'm a mechanics-first designer. Fantastic Factories, Honeypot, and one of my upcoming unannounced games are mechanics-first designs, but these past year I've been expanding my range to also include what I call experience-first or moment-first design. I think about the feeling or the moment I want to capture and then build the entire game in service of achieving that moment. I'll often borrow mechanics from games that produce similar moments but then streamline the rules so they get out of the way of creating that moment.

Do you have a favorite theme?

I don't know that I have a specific theme I'm drawn to. I think I am drawn to more lighthearted themes and art that is bright, colorful, and either evocative or whimsical. If I had to pick a theme, I'd probably say space, but space games often are heavier 4x games that I don't typically go for. I guess if it's a lightweight space game then count me in!

Do you have a favorite mechanic?

My two favorite mechanics right now are push your luck and engine building. Push your luck just creates exciting moments. And even if it's not your turn, you are invested in what is happening. Sometimes you just want to see something amazing happen, and it's fun to goad people to continually go bigger.

And for engine building it's just satisfying to build up that momentum and feel like you're doing more and more each turn.

What is something unusual/cool about you that people might not know?

Usually that something is that I design board games, but if you've gotten this far you already know that. I suppose one thing that people who aren't close friends might not know is that I really like turtles. I'm going to need to find ways to work turtles into my games. Also, in high school I was an extreme introvert but now when it comes to board games, design meetups, and conventions, I'm an extrovert.

If you want to stay up to date on all of Joseph’s news, visit his website.

Support Joseph’s latest game, Honeypot, here!

Get to know Dylan Mangini: game designer, artist, illustrator, and graphic designer

There is a good chance you know Dylan Mangini’s work, even if you don’t recognize the name. We met Dylan in the Seattle- area game design scene, but we’ve been working together since AEG published our first design, Point Salad. He is responsible for almost all of the graphic design in Flatout Games’ games and a lot of the art, particularly in the small box games (Point Salad, Point City, Deep Dive, Point Galaxy, and Propolis). Dylan is also the artist behind Teebletop Board Gaming Apparel, and if you’ve spotted an omnigamer apparel, or the tie-dyed Calico hoodie, those are his. Check out the Teebletop booth this year at PAX Unplugged! As you’ll learn below, Dylan is an all-rounder in the tabletop world, with credits in game design, illustration, and professional championships. 

What are some of your favorite tabletop games? And why?

I'm more of an omnigamer so I enjoy a lot of different genres but I think Castles of Burgundy is an all timer for me. I don't think I'd play it with more than 2 players but it does a really good job at integrating a lot of classic mechanisms (dice placement, set collection, tile laying) without being overly complex. Nowadays I'm playing TCGs like Flesh and Blood. It's nice to not have to learn new rules all the time like you would when you buy a new board game. The other part that's unique about TCGs compared to board games is that you get to solve the 'puzzle' of the metagame whenever a new set is released. I could be walking my dogs and theorycrafting new decks and strategies to try next time I play - and that makes it pretty engaging over time.

We have worked with you primarily as an illustrator and graphic designer, but you have also designed games, like Mephisto and Penny Black. What got you into game design?

My route into game design is a little random. In one of my college sculpture classes we were given free reign to pursue any kind of sculpture we wanted, independent of media or thematic restrictions. For mine, I decided to make a board game out of ceramic (I called it "Crypticus"). All of the pieces were hand made out of clay, featuring a lot of occult and lunar symbology. The gameplay was pretty bad, admittedly, but afterwards I spent more time refining the mechanics and iterating on the rules, which sparked an interest in game design that has yet to subside.

You are on the team for our current roleplaying game project, Whisperstone. As a player, what are the big differences between board games and role playing games?

I think the biggest difference is that you aren't playing to WIN in a tabletop roleplaying game. Board games are great at defining the boundaries and goals that create a fun experience with a limited set of moves. At the start of a board game, you know the end goal and then you spend your turns trying to reach that goal as quickly as possible. When you play a TTRPG, on the other hand, it's more about the journey, not the destination. A lot of RPGs don't even have an end point - they just go on until the players feel satisfied or move on to other games (sometimes lasting years). TTRPGs are more about the narrative experience and the memories you make while creating a story at the table than about 'winning the game'.

I often argue that TTRPGs have more in common with games like Monikers than they do with Gloomhaven. The real meat of the game is the improvisation and creative problem solving that goes down in your campaign, not the tactical, goal-oriented systems like combat or character skill progression. You can get amazing dungeon crawling experiences in a variety of board game boxes, but what makes the TTRPG genre unique is that extra social layer of pretending to be someone else and having the other players react to you in real time. It's much more of a party game in that sense.

In what ways does your knowledge and familiarity with games inform or support your graphic design decisions on a board game project?

I think being an avid gamer myself is huge in my ability to make appropriate graphic design decisions. When you boil down what a board game is - it's a collection of rules and symbols that get manipulated by a person. As a graphic designer, I'm responsible for how those symbols look and how the players physically interact with them. If I didn't understand how the games were played out, I would be missing a huge piece to that puzzle. And it's really the job of a UI/UX designer combined with a graphic designer. You have to do more than just create icons or choose the right font - you need to understand how they are used by the player, and which icons have priority so you can guide them down the path of least resistance. Luckily for me, the Flatout team's prototypes are quite robust and already have a keen eye for design, so it's more about refinement and iterating on what's already there.

Please tell me a bit about your tabletop game apparel business, Teebletop! How did this come about? What inspires your designs?

Teebletop came about as I was wandering the halls of one of our many big board game conventions and wondered "where's all the cool swag?". It felt like there weren't a lot of apparel designs that were directly related to the board gaming hobby and I wanted to fix that. I've also been designing t-shirt graphics since I was a teenager so it's another way to combine some of my passions.

What is something unusual/cool about you that people might not know?

Hmm, maybe that I'm also a pro Flesh and Blood player.

Get to know designer Fertessa Allyse

You may know of Fertessa Allyse as a contributor on the Girls Game Shelf or as the designer of Wicked and Wise (Weird Giraffe Games) and Book of Villainy (Gold Seal Games), or because of her encyclopedic knowledge of all things Star Trek! When we found out that Fertessa was moving to the Pacific Northwest, we hoped we'd have the opportunity to work together. It took a few years, but in 2023 she joined the Nocturne and Cascadia: Rolling development teams. More recently, however, she co-designed Cascadia Junior (Flatout Games, AEG, KOSMOS), which is now available from your friendly local game stores! 

What are some of your favorite games? And why?

I'm a fan of Dune Imperium, Cockroach Poker, and No Thanks. The first because I love deck building and worker placement and that's as elegant a game you can get with that combination. The latter two because they're always fun games to bring out whether it's with casual/lighter gamers or with hobby gamers. They both support a good player count and they're quick to teach.

What games got you into game design?

I got into game design before I got into the hobby, so I suppose you could say my own, Book of Villainy. I had knowledge of very few games when I started designing so my first prototype resembled Monopoly and it evolved from there.

Do you start with theme or mechanics?

I usually start with a question I want to answer. Half the time it has been theme based and half the time it has been mechanic based.

Do you have a favorite theme?

Star Trek, otherwise nope I just wanna be entertained.

Do you have a favorite mechanic?

Worker placement is my favorite followed by deck building.

What is something unusual/cool about you that people might not know?

I've been trying to learn Korean for a ridiculously long time and I have over a four year streak on Duolingo. (You can't be fluent from Duolingo alone btw).

Get to know designer Emily Vincent

Did you know that Knitting Circle is Emily Vincent’s first published game? She started designing games in 2022, working on multiple designs at once. In March 2023, she took three prototypes to Unpub, one of which was Knitting Circle. Randy Flynn (Cascadia) played Knitting Circle and suggested to us that we should check it out. We enjoyed it a lot and decided to sign it to expand the Calico universe! Since then, Emily has formed her own publishing company, Pink Hawk Games, been a GAMA Horizons Fellow publisher, and is getting ready to publish some of her other designs starting with Pirates of the High Teas. We asked Emily a few questions about her process and her interest in board games.

What are some of your favorite games? And why?

I’m a huge fan of Pandemic, specifically the original game and the legacy games. I love cooperative games and for me this is just a classic that I can play over and over again. I always get to feel clever playing Pandemic. I also really love Sagrada, both because of the puzzle and just the beauty when you see it on the table. And I love the game Aftermath, which is a cooperative storytelling game. It’s got a lot of the awesome moments of playing an RPG but you don’t need a DM and the sessions are pretty consistent in timing. It opened my eyes to how you can inject story into a board game experience. Also, you get to play as adorable rodents in a post-apocalyptic world where you break into vending machines and use household items as weapons, which is just a ton of fun.

What games got you into game design?

It’s probably a combination of Pandemic, Aftermath, and D&D. The goal of my first game design (that I’m still working on) was to create a cooperative board game experience with the memorable story moments of an RPG. It’s a game of house cats trying to take over the world when their humans are asleep each night. As I was working on that game, I knew I wanted to hone my game design skills so I started working on all sorts of other designs. Which is how I eventually got to puzzley tile placement!

Do you start with theme or mechanics?

I always start with theme. I either start with a story I want to tell or a specific table presence I want to create. I’m personally drawn to games with beautiful table presence - I like lots of colors, things that are glittery or translucent, and components that feel great to hold and manipulate. So I tend to start from brainstorming themes that will lend themselves to the kind of table presence or story that I want to play. 

Do you have a favorite theme?

I’ve been really interested in games about crafting and creating. I’ve prototyped games based on knitting, cross stitch, and weaving, and I’ve got a notebook full of game ideas about other crafts. I just find the idea of creating something beautiful to be a really satisfying concept for a game. I’ve also tried my hand at games around cooking and baking. Again, I’m just intrigued by creating a game in which your goal is to be creative and build something that you want to share with others.

Do you have a favorite mechanic?

I don’t think I do! For me, mechanics are just the tools in my toolbox to achieve the game’s thematic goals. I usually start with a vision for the story that’s going to unfold in the game and then dig around for mechanics that achieve that goal. When I’m early on in a game design, I often put some sort of simple draft into the game in order to be a placeholder for “this is how you’ll get your cards or tiles.” That usually gets changed later in the process when I’ve got an inspiration from the theme.

What is something unusual/cool about you that people might not know?

I’m an amateur circus performer and dancer! I performed regularly on my aerial hoop before the pandemic and I’ve been working on getting to performance level on the cyr wheel. I also recently co-founded a contemporary dance company called Pluto Return. We’re working on our first show, currently scheduled for May of 2025.

Get to know designer David Iezzi!

Did you know that Nocturne designer, David Iezzi, was on the development team for Calico? It’s true. In 2018, Emma Larkins and Flatout Games’ Shawn Stankewich decided that Seattle area game designers needed more opportunities to meet and playtest. The weekly Wednesday nights at Via6 brought the community together. David got involved in the CoLab with Calico and was also part of the Cascadia team. His original Nocturne design, then called Cabinet of Curiosities, won the LUCI award in 2019 and we signed it almost immediately. Since then David has been working at Wizards of the Coast, Funko Games, and the Uzzle. 

What are some of your favorite games? And why?

Some of my favorite games are: Imhotep, Santorini, 7 Wonders Duel, Skull, and Capital Lux. I like games that are simple to learn and have a short playtime, but the decisions are still rich and interesting.

Do you have a favorite mechanic?

I don't know if I have a favorite mechanic. Maybe drafting. But a thing I've noticed is that I love grids in games.

What games got you into game design?

I learned about modern boardgaming because of my interest in game design (sparked by video games). So, I kind of got into the hobby backwards. But I definitely gravitate to games with novel mechanics or systems.

Do you start with theme or mechanics?

My natural inclination is to start with an unique mechanic. I really only start with theme first when that is the prompt or constraint I am given to work with.

What is something unusual/cool about you that people might not know?

A lot of people might not know that I was a singer and guitar player in a pop punk band for most of my youth.

Nocturne designer, David Iezzi, showing off Nocturne at PAX Unplugged in 2023.

Gen Con and Origins! - what's new?!

Howdy, folks!
Shawn from Flatout here!
I thought I would take this opportunity to talk a little bit about what has been going on with Flatout Games over the past couple of months since we launched the site!

We have a lot of really exciting things going on at the moment, and that means that everyone at Flatout has been pretty busy! I will attempt to keep this relatively brief to hit all of the topics of ‘what’s new’!

Point Salad
Our first game design to get published got released at Gen Con! It’s been super exciting! Robb, Molly, and I all got to attend the show and celebrate the release, together with tonnes of gamers at AEG’s Big Game Night! It was a really special evening where we got to see hundreds of copies of our game go home with folks who attended the event. We also got to share it with some of the game’s biggest fans, Jan and Chad Martinell! They made us special t-shirts and everything - pretty awesome! Overall, the reception for the game has been overwhelming! The Game Boy Geek pitted it up against Sushi Go for the title of go-to drafting game, and to our surprise, Point Salad came out on top! (Cult of the new, amiright!?) The Dice Tower also gave the game an 8.5 rating and a Seal of Excellence, which was pretty remarkable! There have also been countless other great reviews. It’s been really special to see people out in the world enjoying something that we made with so much care and love. Point Salad is about simplicity and taking some fun mechanisms and boiling them down so that you can take a game home to family and non-gaming friends and have a fun time introducing them to drafting and set collection. The official launch date isn’t until September 6th, but retailers who participated in AEG’s Big Game Night satellite events were able to order their copies, so there should be some floating around. Pretty excited to see if the game can maintain the buzz and continue to be something people are interested in playing! Also, a huge thank you to everyone who has made this possible! We have had nothing but massively supportive folks helping us push things forward and we are really excited to share the fun with everyone!

Calico
We have been hard at work on the first game we are publishing ourselves! It’s not one of our games, but our good friend Kevin Russ’s! In order to take on the role of publishers, we knew we had to enlist the help of our friends, so in early 2019 we formed an extension of Flatout Games called the CoLab. The CoLab for Calico was formed as a working group where the 6 members have come together in order to split the work and profits of successfully crowdfunding a game. It’s a way for ourselves and Kevin to get a game made by enlisting the help of colleagues who have a range of skills. I will likely do another blog post about the CoLab and some of the aims and terms of it later, but for now it’s basically an experimental way of doing publishing where we get everyone on board and have a very democratic approach to design, development, marketing, and publishing. It’s been a lot of work, but also a lot of fun! We have been showing off Calico for the past several months and the reception has been awesome. Running tiny demo tables at Origins and Gen Con was a lot of fun and we got to meet hundreds of folks and show them the game. We are really excited about the design - it’s super simple, but so deep - and the development work that has gone into it. Working with Beth Sobel on the artwork is another bucket list dream come true! She is a lovely human and an amazingly talented artist! We couldn’t be happier with how things have turned out so far and we’re really excited to share this game with the world and help get Kevin’s name out there! It has been unbelievably great working with Kevin, David, Dylan, Molly, and Robb on this project. It’s pretty special when you get to make something really cool with people you love and respect - it’s been an absolute blast so far and we are excited to keep pushing forward! Thanks to everyone who has shown interest, said kind words about the game, and/or taken the time to playtest it and help us make it better. Calico is a labor of love for so many people and we thank you all for joining us on this crazy journey! If you haven’t heard about it yet, you can find out more about Calico on our game page. Make sure you sign up for our newsletter so that you can be notified when the project goes on Kickstarter in the next few months!

Public Market
We have another puzzly tile-laying game coming soon, and this time it is one that we designed! Public Market is a spatial puzzle bidding game that is being published by Talon Strikes Studios. We have been actively working through development on the game and are having a blast working with Eric Elvarado and Jason Washburn - they are extremely knowledgeable and they love their craft! We are really excited for the game to come out. It’s got some fun and different mechanisms that we think folks will enjoy, and it’s based on fish mongers in large, open-air markets, like the Pike Place Market here in Seattle.which is a pretty unique theme that we are excited to bring to life!

Other Game Designs
While working as part of the CoLab to bring Calico to life, we have not stalled out on the design front! We have a number of designs that we have been developing throughout 2019. We had the opportunity to pitch games at Origins and Gen Con and will hopefully find great homes for a number of our games! We are currently working on:
Deep Dive - a simple push-your-luck game with penguins!
Galapagos - a spatial tile-flipping game about creating habitats of native species on the Galapagos Islands
Realms - a streamlined worker placement engine building race game
Cropped - a spatial deck builder
Satchel Quest - a bag-building dungeon-crawl puzzle game
Mosaic - a simple spatial engine-building game

We also have probably a dozen others.
I am also co-designing a game called Skeleton Keys with Rob Newton from Coin Flip Games. It’s a unique 3D puzzle game with some of the craziest components we have ever made! I’m also working with Chad Martinell on a pinball card game (really excited about this one, just need to carve out some time to get it together!)

We continue to do design and development work. We are really focused on creating really elegant games and unique experiences. I’m really excited about a lot of the things we are working on and we feel pretty proud of our production in 2019! We have such a great community in Seattle that help us push ideas forward. We are really lucky to have a tight-knit group of super-dedicated designers who contribute so much to the games that we are all making. We can’t thank these folks enough - community makes all the difference!

___

Well, that’s a little bit of a window into what’s new with Flatout Games! Thanks for stopping by!

Shawn

It starts!

Hello, world.

This is the inaugural post to the Flatout Games blog.
We don’t really have a particularly good sense of how this is all going to go, but we decided that writing was good and so we should do it.

Although there is no concrete plan for the blog, one of the primary goals of this space is to talk a little bit more at length about different topics. Twitter is a platform we are really engaged with, but it isn’t always the best place to get longer ideas out in written form. I have a lot of respect for folks who can do this, but I often find myself making lengthy threads and saying too much, even though it is the equivalent of a paragraph. It also has that awkward bit about each tweet being so many characters (remember when it was fewer!? Hard to believe….). Anyways, this is an opportunity to discuss any topics that come up that any of us, our CoLab collaborators, or other guests feel compelled to explore.

We are looking forward to it, and we hope you will join us for the ride!
We would love to engage with the comments here, or have a conversation on Twitter afterwards (complete with not-enough-characters, etc… but if we take the discussion outside, then there is a chance more people will engage and we will have more fruitful discussions.

Thanks for the fun, and enjoy your remaining games!

Shawn