Project Status: In Development

Happy Fun World (working title) is a board game that lets you design the Theme Park of your dreams. The core mechanics are inspired by tile placement games like Carcassonne. Tiles represent theme park rides, paths, landmarks, food stands and gift shops, each belonging to one of the 4 themes of the game. Pirate swings, haunted houses, towering castles, and giant roller coasters abound!

My goal with Happy Fun World is to create a game that's fun for a gaming family to play together, but deep enough to scratch the itch of any board game geek. For this one, I wanted to stay away from the economics of theme parks - computers are better at that anyway. Instead, player choices focus on balancing the design, layout, and people flow of the park.

Players race to complete objectives as they fight over a shared pool of park patrons, and have to deal with other players' attempts to frustrate their efforts with ride breakdowns, chicken pox outbreaks and all kinds of crazy twists. If you overextend yourself, you'll end up with guests in the complaint line, which can drag down your score fast.

The game is really about balance, design and a bit of luck. Since it's about building though, even if you lose, you can feel good about having created something cool! Random objective cards and different theme packs keep the game fresh every time you play it.

A digital component is being explored to allow you to capture your best park designs, share them with others, and possibly even see them come to life through augmented reality. The digital companion can also create special seasonal "house rules" that mix up the game even more and bring some of the more interesting "living" elements of digital games into the realm of meat-space gaming.