Interview
Brandon Rollins
Designer Interview
Highways & Byways is a casual family game — great for board gaming couples and families! Race across the United States in your first used car. You’re on a mission to explore all places beautiful and forgotten before your vacation is over.
What is your name?
My name is Brandon Rollins. A lot of people know me online as Brandon the Game Dev.
Where are you located in the world?
I live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
How long have you been designing tabletop games?
I’ve been making tabletop games for close to three years now, with a little over two years spent on serious attempts to succeed on Kickstarter.
What game(s) are you currently working on?
I am just about to Kickstart my second game, Highways & Byways. It’s about taking the road trip of a lifetime. It’s a casual family board game for 2–4 players.
Have you designed any games that have been published?
I have published one game before. It is War Co., an expandable card game about a corporate sci-fi apocalypse.
What do you do for a living outside of game design?
I work as a Systems Analyst for the HR department of a hospital.
What type of games do you prefer to play?
I have pretty eclectic taste in games, ranging from light ones like Love Letter to gateway games like Pandemic to heavy games like Twilight Struggle. What I end up playing the most is determined by what my brother and girlfriend are interested in playing with me.
What is the name of your favorite game store?
I’m going to get skewered for this answer, but my favorite game store is Amazon. Yes, seriously.
[Don’t worry — Brandon — while we shop at a FLGS….we frequent Amazon also.]
What is (currently) your favorite game? Least favorite?
My favorite game of all time is Twilight Struggle. Despite having a rule book that is well-nigh indecipherable, the smart and unique mechanics make it more than worth it to learn.
My least favorite, cliche as it may be, is Monopoly. That game is right in the awful intersection of being not-particularly-good and really popular. That’s a dangerous combination.
Is your game design different than the type of games you enjoy playing? How?
For the most part, my game designs are at least familiar to people who have played the same games I’ve played. The way I keep them individual and unique is by bringing my ideas to life without using other games as a reference first. For example, War Co. started from ideas I had as a child and Highways & Byways came out of thoughts I had on long road trips.
After the game design process is well underway, I then refine the game to more closely resemble existing best practices in game design.
Do you like to work alone or as a team?
I currently work alone and I have enjoyed that so far. I plan on delegating more in the future. Working alone is good for a while, but it’s not the best way forward in the long run if you’re really serious about succeeding in the board game industry.
What does your playtest process look like?
Before my games are ever seen by another human being, I make sure that they can consistently be completed. I play alone until I’m sure there are no conditions that break the game. Then I ask my brother for help testing a new game until I think it’s becoming fun. Then I reach out to designers on my Discord server and players on Tabletop Simulator. This helps the game become ready for blind play-testing.
For blind play-testing, I release the game on Tabletop Simulator, take out some ads, and leave feedback forms. I check those, read those, and apply the feedback. After I do that, I do the same thing with designers as blind play-testers. Once I get through all of this, I test the game another 100 times so I have a big enough sample size to catch weird problems that come up in uncommon scenarios.
Then and only then am I comfortable releasing my work on Kickstarter.
What do you feel is your biggest challenge as a game designer?
The single hardest thing to do as a game designer has relatively little to do with game design. Game design ultimately circles back to following best practices, the ability to accept and apply critical feedback, and persistence. The real biggest challenge is building an audience. Whether reaching out to a super-busy publisher or getting 300 people to back you online, the ability to get attention, stoke interest, create desire, and inspire action is critical. That requires tons of hard work and experimentation, and there’s no way around that.
What do you wish someone had told you about game design?
“Game design isn’t the hard part, it’s building an audience.” I wish somebody had taught me effective ways to build an audience in late 2015. I learned this slowly over time and with a lot of trial and error.
Do you have any advice you’d like to share with budding designers?
Building off my previous answer, I’d say to do three things. Create a free mailing list on MailChimp. Then create a landing page to collect email addresses. Last, figure out a compelling reason for people to give you their email such as a giveaway contest.
Anything else you’d like to tell our readers?
In game design, audience building, and creative endeavors in general, the ultimate skill is persistence. This is especially true if you pair it with intelligence, passion, and the ability to change what’s not working. You can do a lot wrong and still come out okay in the end if you’re persistent.
