Author: Jay Cormier – Owner of Off the Page Games and Fail Faster
I’m one of the designers (and the publisher) of Design Your Destiny, a new book/game/tutorial that will hit retail in May this year! Design Your Destiny represents a revolutionary approach to teaching game design through interactive storytelling.
What Makes Design Your Destiny Unique?
First, let me explain what it is! You start by reading a story about two kids who get thrust through time and are asked to destroy the very time machine that sent them there. After two chapters, you are presented with a game that you play ON the book’s pages, using components included in the box! You take the roles of Natalie and Charlie, our protagonists, as they try to evade being captured by a guard. You’re thrown into the story, and you play out what happens.
BUT – the game you play is … well… it’s broken. The next few pages after that ask you questions and then guide you on ways that you can fix the game. As you tweak the rules, you are asked to play it again, and in doing so, you earn stickers that you affix to the back cover. Once you get enough stickers, that means you’ve completely fixed the time machine, and it unlocks the last chapter of the story.
The Design Your Destiny Experience
You continue reading the story, playing a game, then fixing that game for four different types of games, each revolves around different ways you can move in board games. For the fifth game, the training wheels are off, and you’re pretty much on your own to come up with the game by yourself. That said, there are still tons of resources and ideas presented to you so you never feel like you’re struggling.
Basically, Design Your Destiny is probably one of the best ways to introduce yourself (or your kids) to game design. It’s like an on-rails game design kit that guides you through different aspects of design, making Design Your Destiny perfect for beginners and experienced designers alike. The structured approach provides clear pathways to learning game design fundamentals, helping you build skills progressively.
Resources for Teachers and Design Teams
Another great feature for this product is that it comes with downloadable resources for teachers or group leaders who want to use this with a group of kids:
- A slide deck for classroom presentations
- A facilitator guide with teaching tips
- Downloadable workbooks so you don’t have to keep buying dozens of these kits
These resources make Design Your Destiny perfect for collaborative learning environments, creating an ideal toolkit for classroom settings, after-school programs, or homeschool groups.
Creating Design Your Destiny
This project came to life when Blaise Sewell reached out to me as he wanted to write a story that had games throughout the story. I thought about it and said that I’d be interested in doing it if it were also a game design course baked into it. He loved the idea, and so we started working on it.
The Design Process
We decided pretty soon that we wanted to focus on movement as the core mechanic in each game. We wanted to have a super-easy entry for the first game in the book, and so we knew it was going to be a game where you roll a die and move. Game designers reading this are already rolling their eyes, “a roll and move?!” – and that’s the point. It’s such a great opportunity to demonstrate the value that meaningful decisions have in a board game. In a roll and move game like Snakes and Ladders, when you think back on it, you realize you made zero decisions in that game!
This is where the game design course from the book kicks in and guides you through all the different ways you could tweak this game to add some meaningful decisions! Design Your Destiny provides hands-on experience with game modifications, allowing you to experiment with different mechanics and see their impact immediately.
Developing the Story
Once we knew we wanted movement, then we had to figure out a story. We spent a lot of time here because we not only wanted a fun and interesting story, but one that could grow with more books in the future if this became successful. I asked Blaise if he was interested in time travel because that’s my favourite genre of stories, and he was all in.
We had to craft the story around the games we wanted to include. So we thought having 2 chapters was a sufficient amount of time to get into the story and then culminate in an interactive game. It was quite the puzzle to craft a story around these constraints, but just like game design, that’s often when you get to be the most creative! Coming up with a unique time travel story was also a challenge. Time travel is always very twisty, and it’s hard to come up with the rules for your time travel and perfectly adhere to them as the story evolves. It took us about a year to break the story, and then we split up, and Blaise wrote the story entirely from what we came up with, and I wrote the game design tutorial section and came up with the games.
Testing Design Your Destiny
We had a good bit of fortune that I was asked to teach some home-schooled kids a class about game design, and so I thought it would be a perfect time to test out Design Your Destiny! This real-world testing was crucial to refining how Design Your Destiny teaches game design principles. We went through each game, and I learned that we actually made the games in the book too good! I learned that it would be much better to present a broken game and then ask the reader to figure out a way to fix it.
Fortunately, I got to teach the same course again to a different group of home-schooled kids and tried with the new games that were now broken, and it worked perfectly! This iterative testing process demonstrates the power of structured feedback and playtesting in game development – a core lesson that Design Your Destiny teaches to aspiring designers.
The Future of Design Your Destiny
We then took it to Kickstarter, and I learned another lesson. I approached it like a board game. I had a retailer level and a deluxe level, and in hindsight, that wasn’t the best way forward. In the end, I should have just made only the retail level. Plus, I mostly communicated with board game reviewers, and I should have connected more with teachers, librarians, and parents. While Design Your Destiny can be used by any age group, the target audience is 8 to 18 years old.
So we cancelled the Kickstarter, and then I printed the games and added them to the same shipment when we shipped our latest game, Corps of Discovery. All the games are now being fulfilled and will be in retail in late May! You can learn more about Design Your Destiny and begin your own game design journey at www.failfaster.ca. Design Your Destiny is more than just a game; it’s your first step toward becoming a game designer.
Want to learn more about game design or introduce someone to this creative field? Design Your Destiny offers a unique educational experience that makes learning fun and interactive. Check out www.failfaster.ca for more information.
