Remembering Brooklyn OR An Ode to David Gordon OR Designing Games Around a Strong Core
I miss this guy!
About 3000 miles ago I had the pleasure of spending 5 days with David Gordon, a game designer from Brooklyn, NY. If you don’t know who David is yet, trust me, you will. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever met. Despite only recently getting into game design, he understands the power of iteration and is constantly churning out new ideas.
I met David the same way I met a lot of people over the last year - by playtesting games on discord. From just some online interactions, David opened up his home to me and let me crash at his house for almost a week, feeding me amazing steak, tacos, and pizza in the process.
Part of “Happy Hour” at the Gordon Household. It was really nice to be able to relax and unwind after the darkness of 2020.
David’s games impressed me by always having some kind of “wow” factor: from spinning or moving boards, to elaborate toy sculptures, to engaging and fun mechanics, I can genuinely say that I look forward to playing all of David’s designs!
Anyway, if it sounds like I’m gushing, it’s because I am! David is a great guy and I miss the time I spent in Brooklyn, time that I’m craving now that I’m out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s been a rough few weeks and it’s helping me to look back on this journey and remember all the fun parts of it.
From a design perspective, I think David does something really well: he finds what will be the “core” of the game, and he leans into it.
In his game Evacuate!, you represent a society trying to get all of your people off of Earth. Two rings spin around Earth, simulating objects moving in low and high orbit. This is an obviously cool visual component, but the main thrust of the game is being able to work out the puzzle of when you are going to be able to launch your people into space in the most optimal way, taking advantage of this unique component.
David’s dog, Gordon, helping out with a quick brainstorm session on Evacuate!
Finding Utopia, a worker placement game where the board (and therefore worker spots) moves and changes, is another really cool integration of what might at first be perceived as a gimmick with some cool mechanics. The game simulates a group of people fleeing from some catastrophe towards a utopian paradise. It does this by essentially side-scrolling the land tiles with the worker placement slots on them, giving a feeling of movement, and creating tension around what worker spots you can take advantage of.
Some tiles from Finding Utopia - I appreciate the work David puts into his protoypes.
In CIVS (a collaboration with Tam Myaing, also a great guy), a 1-v-1 card battler, each player is manipulating a central event row which will allow them to score influence for their side. You can build up your civilization all you want, but if you fail to master the central mechanic of the game, you’re going to lose (like I did. Badly).
Tam pitching an idea.
These games all stick to their central conceit. Each leans into it and feels unique and interesting because of it. They all also feel very different from one another, which is another reason why I expect to always want to play one of David’s designs.
