How to Design a Race Game with Kathleen Mercury

April 6, 2022·1 hr 10 min·5 clips

Kathleen Mercury reveals why race games are the perfect starting point for new game designers.

A race needs a reason. Kathleen talks about race game design as an experience first and a system second. Players should feel the race, not just move through it. Autopilot is the danger. Once the best move is obvious, people stop choosing and start waiting for the game to end. Audience comes up early, too. The host puts it plainly: a kids' racing game and a heavier gamer racing game are probably not solving the same problem. The catch-up discussion gets nicely specific. Kathleen describes a design where players could fall so far behind that they were mathematically out. The fix came from someone else, on the way to English class, and repeated playtests showed it worked. She cared enough about that contribution to put his name in the rule book credits. That detail gives the episode some warmth without turning it sentimental. The conversation stays in the shop: why are players racing, which choices are fun, and where should the risk sit? Push-your-luck choices become the spark, the kind where someone can go for broke, overshoot, or suddenly land in first. Formula D comes up as a useful reference point. The point is not counting spaces. The point is making the table feel a race. By the end, playtesting is doing the heavy lifting, and Kathleen's wish is simple: help adults play better games, keep designing, and keep testing.

As heard by us

A practical race-game discussion about tension, audience, and choices that matter.

Kathleen Mercury and the host treat race games as a simple but useful problem: how to keep competition feeling open instead of predictable. The episode stays close to the player side of design, which gives it a clean line.

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Why you'd press play

Build a race game that feels risky instead of scripted.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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