Meet with a pro, then do the work yourself.
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Work with a pro to make your game amazing.
Maybe you’ve been working on your game for a while, but you’re not sure if it’s any good… or worse, you’re not sure what will work best for you and your game.
I can help you take your idea and turn it into something amazing. I’ll work with you to make your game the best it can be.
You could read blog posts and watch videos, but it’s hard to know how much of it is relevant to your specific idea or situation.
Instead, we work together, one-on-one, to take your ideas and develop what you have into a game that you can pitch, test, iterate on, and get it done.
I help board game designers with any and all of the following:
- 1 on 1 Playtesting at any stage of development
- Brainstorming ideas to make your game better
- Developing your game to the finish line
- Discovering the feelings and emotions during your game
- Finding the hook for your game
- Finding the right publishers to pitch
- Finding the right questions to ask
- Game design – theory and application
- Math, probability, balance, and building a spreadsheet for your game
- Pitching and practicing
- Sanity-checking the game – putting your game through the ringer to see if it survives
- Tabletop Simulator – uploading, understanding, optimizing, and other best practices
- Teaching a game so playtesters will understand
- UI / UX – make everything easy to understand
- Understanding the publisher-designer relationship
- Writing the rules to your game
The goal is to have each session end with a clearer understanding of what you want from your game, along with a few next steps to take.
Previous clients and testimonials
“We just hired Chris Backe to consult with us before we start pitching our game to publishers and it was a big help. Chris gave us a lot of helpful advice on focusing our materials more toward what publishers actually want to see. I just wanted to give him a shout out. Highly recommended!”
Brett Trout, game designer
“…your meeting was extremely insightful and proved to give me tons of helpful pointers making my journey as a developer much more clear. I feel like I dodged bullets and got refined direction from you!”
Ryan K., game designer
“Chris has a wide breadth of game knowledge and an excellent eye for quality game mechanics. He was very comprehensive with me on the feedback he gave. He’s extremely easy to work with and I was glad I got a chance to have help me on my game.”
Taylor Hayward, designer of ‘Dawn’
“I think direction was the real value. Actions I can take, are always more helpful than ideas. “Define the high level look of the game-play, and focus on creating a polishing introduction scenario experience.” In my situation, with where my head was at before, that advice was incredibly helpful.”
Jason Terry, game designer
Chris Backe helped us develop our game Mⱥhr during the past year and it is fair to say that without his expertise we would not have brought the game to the state it is in: fully developed, playtested and ready for production. Would we recommend Chris to other game designers? Hell yeah! And we will hire him again for our next project.
Benjamin Effer, designer of Mⱥhr