Blog

BLOG: The one about waves of play-testers

I have this provocative statement that designer should never listen to playtesters and that playtesters have no idea what they are talkin’ about. Every designer panel I run, I always say: ‘Ignore them. Just don’t listen. They have no clue.’ It’s provocation statement of course, but there is a seed

BLOG: Living board game

I planned to write about First Martians being a living board game later this year, when we are closer to the actual release of the game, closer to the street date. Well, I had to change my plans. We’ll talk about living board game today. What happened? This Tuesday Rodney

BLOG: Would your father ebay your bike?

I shouldn’t have done this, but well, I was tired and bored after a 10-hour-long flight from The Dice Tower con, stuck at the airport and waiting for connection flight to Poland. I opened my phone and took a look at a Facebook group about board games. In most cases

BLOG: I play-tested it more than 100 times

‘I play-tested it more than 100 times’. No, you probably didn’t. You played it 100 times, but playing is not play-testing. Shall we begin? *** I receive many emails from young designers and see the same phrase everywhere. ‘I play-tested it more than 100 times.’ This is a sentence I

New Portal Games Informant

Another Portal Games Informant is here! This week we present few cool moments from the office including receiving First Martians sample from China, intense testing of Alien Artifacts (surprise! 😉 and a ton of random stuff! Have a great watch!

ARTICLE: Death Breath in the Neuroshima setting

The plague which cast Detroit into flames transforms humans into mindless monstrosities which lust for killing; hideous slaughtering machines which make the mutes from the Death zone look like docile pets. The disease entirely burns off the brain, leaving just enough cunning to trace one’s victims. The memories are lost,

BLOG: Zombies and Neuroshima world

There were no zombies in the Neuroshima Role Playing Games. To be precise, there were no zombies, no mechs, and no dead children. We put into this game literally everything; it was 500 pages book that looked like witch’s cauldron. We put every single idea we had, and man, we

BLOG: I created a monster

(article was previously posted at Board Games That Tell Stories in 2011) A long time ago in a far away galaxy, My Wife didn’t play board games. Then I showed her Cash & Guns and Citadels and she began to play games. My mates were jealous. My Wife played board

BLOG: It’s never done

It was a couple of days ago. I was driving home and thinking about Crazy Karts. No idea why. Just the random stuff that comes to your mind when you are tired and drive a car. The idea of introducing a change in the rules came naturally. Instead of two

BLOG: 4 seasons

The weather has been pissing me off lately. For the past few years there had been no real winter in Poland and although I felt like I missed real winter, well, it turned out, I didn’t. I am not a big fan of low temperatures and all that crap that

Welcome to PORTAL GAMES

We are bookworms. Movie maniacs. Story addicts. We grew up reading Tolkien, Howard, Herbert, Dick, Lem… We were watching Willow, Blade Runner, Never Ending Story, Robin Hood…

And yet, we don’t write books… we don’t make movies. We don’t make those things, because we make games. We make games that tell stories.