A short thread about player aids and why it’s helpful to think about them even early on in your board game design process:

https://bsky.app/profile/drayerink.bsky.social/post/3lk6vqg3sek2g

How to make a digital prototype of a simple card game using Dextrous and Tabletopia (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkOVEPUrw9Y

Free silhouette images of animals, plants, and other life forms, available for use in prototypes:

https://www.phylopic.org/

The Public Domain Image Archive is a collection of more than 10,000 out-of-copyright works that are free to use:

https://pdimagearchive.org/

How to create a custom card deck in playingcards.io (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9hXJRHpGns

Our annual Cardboard Edison Best Practices booklet, filled with board game design tips and resources for every step of the process, is back!

• evaluating playtesters’ feedback

• improving your rulebook

• making your prototype more usable with graphic design

• setting design goals for yourself

• and lots more!

  https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EPqJLYnwt0LXDEmZaZ8ebbA6M2MS_quN/view

Circles of playtesting: how a game evolves through various stages of testing in terms of the idea, the prototype, and how the designer feels about it

Recommended printers for board game prototyping—a Bluesky game designers discussion:

https://bsky.app/profile/marcelineleiman.bsky.social/post/3la5ehbo54z24

Lots of tips for better board game prototyping: material hacks, software, workflows, and more:

https://www.whatifgames.co.uk/boost-your-board-game-prototyping-with-these-expert-tips/

Recommendations for software programs to help make cards for a board game (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8bklp-NJ4Q

How to move from the idea phase to playtesting—a Reddit board game forum discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BoardgameDesign/comments/1ewam6p/how_do_you_move_from_ideation_to_playtesting/

This tabletop game design guidebook helps designers understand the full journey of making a game:

https://breakmygame.com/guidebook

Two reasons why board game designers shouldn’t pay for art for their prototype:

https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/162554/why-not-pay-for-art-in-a-prototype

Various ways of adding “color” to your board game’s presentation—card art, flavor text, minis, custom dice, etc.—and the tradeoffs that come with each (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctrx1-etVcU

Sources of public-domain art for tabletop games—and some tips for using them:

https://www.skeletoncodemachine.com/p/public-domain-art-resources

https://www.skeletoncodemachine.com/p/more-public-domain-art-resources

This new online tool lets you easily create printable sheets of cards from basic templates:

https://forgeofcards.com/

This Google Docs add-on lets you easily add icons to your rulebook (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=licJeO_oH3k

This online tool lets you easily lay out cards for printing in different configurations:

http://www.pnpbuddy.com/layout/

Three principles of card graphic design: visibility, hierarchy, brevity:

https://danielsolisblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/three-principles-of-card-design.html

Prototyping methods that allow for rapid iteration—a BoardGameGeek designers forum discussion:

https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3245733/whats-best-way-iterate-prototypes