Becoming a game designer…

Well… in the last blog post, I released my new Micro Game, Nexus: GridCrush aaaand I hinted there that it was part of a bigger project. This week it’s time at last, to talk all about it.

Ser Trys, a knight with his sword raised above his head.

Pretty miniature right? And for me, making pretty miniatures has been a dream for a long time… the problem was, never really having an excuse to get started. Like most things in life, desire alone wasn’t enough of a motivator to get in to the industry that I love oh so much as a consumer. I needed a catalyst.

Over the years, I’ve been pretty hard on Games Workshop, it’s no secret… they do a lot of things that don’t align with how I believe the wargaming industry should look, and as a lifelong customer of theirs, I’ve always felt that I earned the right to have my say, by putting a LOT of money their way.

But eventually, there comes a time in everyone’s life where they have to stop whining and DO something about their grievances, and I reached mine in December of 2023.

A discord screenshot…

So I put my rules writing cap on and just a month later, I had the start of what I thought was a great ruleset. Oh me. Oh sweet summer child.

I was wrong.

Being a game designer is HARD. When you set out to design a game, you (or at least I) tend to start out with a fairly small and specific idea of what you want it to do… but as the creative process unfolds, it can very easily snowball in to so many ideas that what you end up with is a bit of an incoherent and cumbersome mess.

Now this is EXACTLY my biggest issue with Games Workshop games. Necromunda was always my favourite and V1 ‘Munda was a pretty crunchy and detailed game… but the scope creep we’ve experienced between then and the latest version is honestly kinda terrifying to me. We see this scope creep permeating through all of their games these days though and so if they were my example of how I DON’T want to write a game, my first lesson was teaching myself restraint.

The Nexus Banner

I had some core ideas I didn’t want to let go of. The game had to be diceless (partially for accessibility reasons, partially because I think dice are a fairly inherently bad randomisation method in tactical games). The game had to play on a small board, with small teams of minis. Outside of that, I realised there was actually very little that I wasn’t willing to let go of… and so the iteration process began.

I trimmed the movement system down completely. I trimmed the resource management system down. I even trimmed down the Line of Sight rules to just be “If you can see it, and it’s within range, you can shoot it.”

I honestly look at what Nexus is now and sometimes I trick myself in to thinking it’s too barebones, but I can’t let that devil on my shoulder get through to me. The whole point of the game is simplicity and agency. I want the players to feel in control of their pieces and connected to them… and to do so, you can’t weigh your players down with pages of situational stratagems or convoluted, multi-step combat mechanics. I had to be true to my intent.

What I’ve created is a game where you pick your pet pieces, learn them inside out and get good with that specific configuration. When a new piece comes out for your faction, you not only have to weigh up it’s power level, but also decide if that is offset by your experience with your current lineup and their synergies. This, to me, is what it feels like to be connected to your pieces. Infinity does a great job of this, and it’s something I really took to heart from my experiences with that game.

Ex17 a Cyborg Ninja

The ninja you see above was the first character I designed… he was the first concept art we commissioned and the first sculpt that the amazing Tynah made for us. His initial stats were like a baby to me, which I coddled and despite over a year of revisions, his gameplay still closely resembles what he started out with. I feel like any game I play, where he’s on my team, we know and respect each other and I understand intimately the role he should play in my strategic and tactical decision making.

I LOVE THIS. I cannot, with all my command of the English language, adequately express to you how much this is the exact feeling I wanted from Nexus. For people to be able to connect with these fictional characters and learn their quirks and how to utilise them on the table, is to me, such a powerful component of game design.

Now all I need is you! The game rules are free. It’s miniatures agnostic (which is a good thing because we only have two of the initial 8 minis available at the moment). It plays on a 2x2.

You can download everything you need to play Nexus: Multiverse Wars from the TMS Games page. You can also go to our MMF Page if you want to print our first two minis and use them.

I want… no NEED your feedback. My dream isn’t to become a millionaire off the wargames industry, it’s just to make a game that people love, and so I present Nexus to you, as a love-letter to wargaming, for you to enjoy, engage with, and with any luck to love. I love it. It’s been really bloody fun (and exhausting) to make.

There’s still two whole factions to write and an infinite pool of ideas for new characters to add to the game… we’ve got a long and happy road ahead, and I hope you’ll walk it with us.

Thanks folks <3

Stu