Board Game Tycoon

Start your own board game publishing company!

In Board Game Tycoon, your idea becomes a box with your company's name on it. Combine themes and mechanics, name your games and customize their covers. Simulated playtest groups try your prototypes. Work out the rough edges at the game table until your design is ready to publish. Game by game, you build your own catalogue. An approachable management sim for anyone who would love to tinker with board games.

Family game night or a challenge for seasoned players?

Will your game be easy to get to the table, or full of tricky decisions? Choose a theme, player count and audience, then combine the right mechanics.

Your game, your cover

Give your game a name and customize its cover. When your title joins the catalogue, you can see your own idea in it. Each release adds another box with your company's name on it.

The playtest tells the story

The game ends and everyone is talking about a rematch. Or the group spent more time leafing through the rulebook than playing. Watch their reactions and work through the findings. Another playtest group might see your design very differently. Revise what needs work and test your prototype again. Every change takes time and money. You decide when it is ready for print.

Off to the printer

Send your first print run to the printer and publish your game. Your prototype becomes a title in your catalogue. Now you find out how many boxes will sell and how much of your budget is left for the next idea.

Give your game an audience

Invite fictional content creators to a stream night with your prototype, or commission videos about games you have already published. Players rate and discuss your titles on BoardGameFreak, the fictional community site, while fictional magazines review them from their own perspectives. You put your game in the spotlight. Their videos, reviews and community reactions show you how it lands.

Keep an eye on sales and stock too: unsold boxes tie up money on your shelves. As the last copies sell, it is time to arrange a reprint.

The next playtest at the table, sales figures on the computer, another idea on the whiteboard: your isometric office brings it all together. Your catalogue tells the story of the games you have made.

What's inside

• Game concepts for different audiences, shaped by themes and mechanics.

• Individual names and covers for your games.

• Simulated playtest groups, visible reactions and focused revisions.

• Publishing, sales, stock management and reprints.

• Fictional content creators, magazines and the BoardGameFreak community site.

• Conventions as another way to showcase your games.

• Single-player management in English and German.

Planned for the full release

Your games on other players' shelves. If you opt in, the games you publish can appear on the BoardGameFreak charts of other players in the same season, next to the simulated competition, complete with their names and covers. I review every name by hand before it shows up. This feature is not part of the demo.

Privacy

The game sends anonymous play statistics only with your consent, and the feature is off by default. The full notice is linked from this page.