I am wildly fascinated with board games. Conceptually, games are products with rules, mechanics, loops, and flows, all slapped together with good design: surprisingly similar to software.
Both require careful architecture. You're not just throwing systems together and hoping they work; you're thinking about edge cases, balancing feedback loops, and testing whether your core engine actually does what you intend. You iterate, refine, playtest. You consider the user experience at every touchpoint. You debug when something feels off, even if you can't articulate why yet.
And of course, there's the design aspect. It's gotta look nice for people to want to play it. Think Parks or Wingspan.
The problem-solving mindset is identical.
These are engineering questions dressed in cardboard and dice.
This brings me to my current project: Bait and Tackle, a mid-weight dice game about fishing. Players roll colorful dice to cast lines, trade gear, and reel in fish of varying rarity. Luck plays its part, but smart preparation and clever timing matter just as much.
Each turn, players take up to three actions: Cast, Prepare, and Scout. Roll for catches, upgrade equipment, or scout new opportunities in the shared fish pool. The dice aren't just randomizers; they represent your growing experience. Catching a fish permanently adds a die of its color to your collection, building an engine of probability over time.
There’s more complexity to this - I’ll probably add another page that goes deeper into the concept.
Bait and Tackle - Rule Book V1
Turning a game concept into an actual product is where the rubber meets the road. You can have the most elegant mechanics in the world, but if players can't parse your rulebook, can't afford your components, or get confused halfway through setup, you've failed. This is where I'm learning to think like a product manager: What's the minimum viable version? What can be prototyped cheaply? What needs to be polished before anyone else touches it?
Right now, Bait and Tackle exists as a spreadsheet, some scribbled diagrams, and about 40 fish cards I've playtested with standard d6s. The next step is figuring out manufacturing costs, component sourcing, and whether this thing lives as a print-and-play PDF, a Kickstarter campaign, or just a passion project I gift to friends. It's the same calculus as shipping software: scope creep is real, perfection is the enemy of done, and sometimes you just need to get v1.0 out the door and iterate from there.
I’ll be putting a product log in here sometime!