How to Design Asymmetrical Games with Stephen Schwartz and Floyd Lu

March 30, 2022·58 min·5 clips

Floyd explains how asymmetrical games make players feel like they're playing entirely different worlds.

The advice lands early. The host says asymmetrical design can turn into a mess when a designer tries to build every power and variation at the same time. Floyd is firmly on that side. His first move is bare bones: build the shared structure that every later difference has to sit on. Chess gives them an easy way to talk about it. The core rules are the skeleton. Asymmetry is the stuff that bends that system once it already works. That line matters because small additions can make testing muddy fast. Floyd wants the foundation protected until the basic game proves itself. Change the core after everything else is built, and the whole design may have to come apart. The host turns that into the house analogy: bad foundation, bad walls, bad roof. So the craft lesson is pretty direct. Start with a basic game. Make sure the central mechanisms hold. Then let the asymmetric parts get heavier. A complex prototype will probably fail at first, and worse, it may not tell you why. Simple tests give cleaner signals. After that, designers can add variety without losing track of what each new rule is doing. The episode closes on the appeal of the finished thing: cool characters, beautiful art, land, lore, and plenty of player variety.

As heard by us

A practical reminder to get the core right before asymmetry gets fancy.

Board Game Design Lab treats asymmetrical game design as a lesson in patience and basic structure. Stephen Schwartz and Floyd Lu keep coming back to the same point: build the core system first, make sure it holds together, then layer in the differences that make the game feel…

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Why you'd press play

When you need a cleaner way to start with a simple core and layer asymmetry without breaking the game.

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