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Have you ever flipped over the Hold piece and noticed a funny little piece of art? Today, Ignacy shares with us the story of how this came to be.   Today, let me share with you a super light story of a small animal that made it into Rattle, Battle,

I talk a lot about trashing ideas that don’t work. I write over and over about me having no mercy for ideas that don’t help the game.  About the fact that a designer should not be attached to any of his ideas and be ready to change them on the fly.

Reports were coming in every few hours. The Moloch was on the move, hitting every major settlement on their way. Every stop in their path lay in ruins. The surviving humans would have many years of rebuilding ahead of them. It was only a matter of time before the machines made

We were in Vegas and we had free Friday. So we spent it visiting Pinball Hall of Fame and talking about games. I was pretty lucky – our merry company was joined by Eric M. Lang. That meant a lot of interesting discussions about game design. ‘Don’t give players too

Today I watched a very interesting video in which Gil Hova and Geoff Engelstein talked about writing rulebooks. They presented a thesis that each rulebook has two purposes: it has to be tutorial to teach us how to play the game and it has to be also reference book to

Rattle, Battle, Grab the Loot is a scenario driven game. Of course it is! It’s a Portal Games game after all! From the very beginning I knew that players would be drawing cards that describe particular adventure or sea battle. This would tell the story of the game. Soon after,

2009, Stronghold. The Invader builds Catapults, Ballistas, Ladders, Bridges… all kinds of different machines… and items to create a deadly mechanism to destroy this damn castle. Defender does exactly the same. He puts Cannons in towers, he builds Platforms next to walls, he brings Pots and Poles, and makes Traps…

You may wonder why everybody is raving about this Tides of Time game. A set collection, drafting game for two players. I collect Castles, you collect Gardens, I get 3 points per Castle, and you get 7 points for majority in Gardens. We draft cards, collect sets, then we score

Neuroshima: Convoy, 2nd Edition rolls into your hands at Essen Spiel 2015. We are extremely excited to bring this new edition to gamers world-wide. We cleaned up a few spots, streamlined a few others, and tweaked the art and graphic design… and, I must say, the game looks simply amazing.

“A note of caution: there is a bit of strong language in this article.” It’s all super simple. One player commands Moloch robots and has to win couple of battles and in the end to destroy New York. The other player gets deck of The Outpost and has to stop

I didn’t need to do this. I mean, rights for the game came back to Portal Games. The base game was out of stock for some time. It was obvious we will do a reprint. Stronghold was always one of the designs I was most proud of. I wanted it

It was Essen 2013. I was approached by a young guy with prototype in hand. He told me in a few words about his game and it sounded interesting enough that I agreed to take prototype with me and play it when I am back at office. I came back

This is a designer post by Michał Walczak. Translation into English by trzewik It’s just another average day at Portal Games. I work on new version of our next strategy game. I update rules, I print new cards for prototype, that kind of stuff. I love this job. At some point