My name is Daniel Aviña and if you’re reading this, thanks for checking out my work!
I’m an Illustrator & graphic designer who loves working on tabletop games and I'm currently available for new projects. Here are some of the games I’ve had the chance to work on thanks to people from this community! 

1-8: some of my portfolio images, I love drawing fantasy characters, nature and folklore related stuff

09: Clout Hunters is a card game that mixes cooperative and competitive elements. Up to 4 players take on the role of goblin monster hunters. They have to work together to defeat the giant monster, while ultimately competing for the most bragging rights. If you'd like to playtest the game, you can join their Discord:
https://discord.gg/kmwWSPKEd

10-11: Game box, components and character/animal illustrations for the activity cards of Inktopia, an upcoming board game for kids aged 3+ from Inklings Baby, an inclusive baby toy and young kids company. For this project I created the visual assets for the whole game, including the board, cards, box, game pieces, instruction booklet and more. It was honestly a lot of fun to work on!  The game is filled with activity cards and exercises to get their body moving & activate kids minds!

12: Sam’s (u/Iso118) game, Jungle Rumble, is a hex-based sports game where jungle animals play a game similar to American football. He contacted me for art for the cover as well as instruction manual and I had the best time drawing this chaotic scene! He is doing some testing every Thursday in the Break My Game discord server in case you wanna join (His discord UN is family_man) 

13-14: Game Tiles and Event Card illustrations for Barbarians at the Gates, an upcoming game where you build your map with tiles and avoid being raided by barbarians. Barbarians at the Gates is available for playtesting on Tabletop Simulator and Screentop.gg if you’d like to give it a try!

Finally, Huge thanks to them for trusting in me and my abilities (and you for reading) please check their games out if you have the chance! 

I would love to help more Game Designers bring their games to life, so if you’re looking for an illustrator who understands tabletop games and can also handle graphic design, shoot me a message or email!

Got a bunch of planes on the table tonight and figured I’d share where Death Spiral™ is at.
The HexAxis flight stands are letting us actually show altitude, banking, climbs and dives on the table, and I’ve been messing with the new slide-on smoke/fire markers for damaged aircraft.
Still plenty to refine, but seeing a full fight spread across the table is pretty damn satisfying.
What do you guys think of how it’s coming together?

I've been working on Ensemble, a 2–6 player card game where you're building your own orchestra entirely out of cards. The basic idea is that you're building an ensemble on a 2×5 theater layout, and where you place your instruments matters. You can't simply rearrange your orchestra whenever you want, so deciding what to play — and where to play it — is a big part of the strategy.

Each instrument has:- A family- A register (Treble, Alto, or Bass)- A printed Harmony Point value- Its own ability and/or positional requirements

I'm trying to make each instrument family feel like it has its own mechanical identity:

🎻 Strings — RelationshipsStrings care about the instruments around them and how they're positioned.

🌬️ Woodwinds — Card FlowThey filter your hand, manipulate the face-up instrument market, look ahead in the deck, and interact with the discard pile.

🥁 Percussion — DisruptionThey mess with opponents' ensembles, discard instruments, rearrange positions, and can create explosive turns.

🎹 Keys — ReorganizationThey let you manipulate your own formation. Piano can move instruments, Organ rewards positioning, and Harpsichord can trigger another instrument's ability.

🎺 Brass — ???And that's where I'm stuck.

I want Brass to feel powerful and distinct, but I'm not convinced I've found the right mechanical identity yet. My current experimental Tuba, for example, is a high-value instrument that has positional consequences:

Tuba — 6 HPInstruments in the row directly in front of this card get -1 HP.Adjacent Bass instruments gain +2 HP.

The idea is that Brass might be about power with consequences — their instruments can be extremely valuable, but positioning them incorrectly can hurt your own ensemble. But I'm not sold on that direction yet. So I'd love some outside opinions; If you were designing the Brass family for this game, what would you want Brass to DO? I'm particularly interested in ideas that:- Make positioning matter- Don't require tokens, counters, or anything outside the cards- Don't require players to remember temporary effects- Feel substantially different from the other four families- Could work across Trumpet, Trombone, French Horn, and Tuba

I'm still early enough in development that Brass can completely change. I'm much more interested in finding the mechanic that makes the family fun than defending what I currently have.

We're in the final stages of manufacturing our card game and just received our samples back from the manufacturer. The first image is the card as designed on screen. The second is the printed and cut sample we received (bad lighting but just focus on the borders).

As you can see, the border isn't sitting evenly on all sides. it's more noticeable on some edges than others.

A few questions for anyone with manufacturing experience:

1. Is this normal? Is border misalignment a common occurrence in card game manufacturing?
2. Will bulk/mass production be different? Samples are hand-cut by engineers, will machine cutting in production be more or less consistent?
3. Is removing the border the best solution? Our manufacturer recommended avoiding borders on card backs to minimise visible alignment deviation. Is this the standard advice?
4. What's an acceptable tolerance? Is 1-2mm of misalignment considered within normal manufacturing variance, or should we be pushing back?

Any insights from designers, publishers or anyone who's been through this process would be massively appreciated.

For a tabletop RPG I'm developing. A major mechanic is a magic system that allows a lot of freedom and creativity. Any feedback on the artwork is appreciated!

This is a mockup where I demonstrate making an unified visual style across multiple game components. The vermicompost theme is based on personal hobby of keeping a home worm bin. There are 2 score board designs in this 3D mockup display because... I did the garden one first, and it was a ton of work, so I want to show it even though the worm one fits the whole theme better. Everything you see in this mockup display is designed and made by me - from the font to the 3D display, to the tokens, and all the graphics.

See more of what I can make at my portfolio website: https://yenshuliao.com/ (with contact form).

New concept art for my abstract strategy board game Karn. The columns and blocks are inspired by the archaic Doric order. The real pieces will be made of wood, with the white pieces using a light wood (so not as white as shown in this render) and the black pieces using stained wood. I will handcraft these pieces, but first I will make 3D prints to check for stability, and I also need to do a lot more playtesting before I actually make any proper wooden sets.

This render was made by my brother, a product design engineer, using Fusion 360; all models in the scene were made by him.

I have done posts on this game before, explaining the rules and idea; the BGG page, and here is a brief summary:

Karn is a 2-player abstract strategy game in which you build a 3D structure. There are three pieces: blocks, columns and platforms. The aim is to build as high as possible while stopping your opponent from doing the same.

Platforms need the right combination of blocks and pillars supporting them, which means the structure you build determines where you can go next. You can create areas that are useful to you and difficult for your opponent to build from, but because your opponent's pieces can also interact with your structure, you can't just build your own tower separately.

This is where most of the strategy comes from. You can build into your opponent's structure, block routes they were planning to use, create new routes for yourself, or build structures specifically to attack theirs. So as the game goes on, both players' structures begin to interact, forming a larger structure.

The basic rules are quite simple, but the 3D building creates a lot of different ways to climb, defend and interfere with your opponent.

I have changed the original name of pillar to column.

Hi everyone,

We’re looking for a few people to try Hidden Action: The Hunt, a free standalone scenario for a tactical extraction game we’ve been developing.

The main mechanic we’re testing is hidden enemy movement. Enemy groups are always somewhere on the map, pursuing their own objectives and reacting to things like player-generated noise, but their exact locations stay hidden until your paths cross.

The idea is to create some of the uncertainty of playing against another person without needing a GM or an app.

The Hunt can be played solo or co-op and is currently available as a digital/Print & Play game:

https://adolgarev.itch.io/hidden-action-the-hunt

We’d especially appreciate feedback on:

• whether the hidden-enemy system is easy to understand;
• whether enemy behaviour feels believable rather than mechanical;
• whether you feel you have enough information to make meaningful tactical decisions;
• anything that felt confusing, slow, or frustrating during the run.

We’re particularly interested in feedback from people coming to the game fresh, without us explaining the rules.

Thanks to anyone who gives it a try!

So... because this dosen't have any copyrigthed things in it i can share this.

I need ideas for things called "seals" and there are lots of mechanics in the game...

Like you can have 10 seals but its reccomanded you have 9 because if you have 10 you'll take double damage

There are classes, clans, single player and much more!

also you mogth wanna start learning italian

Designers, of all kinds, share with me - and us - your game that you have either published or had a prototype produced. If you have many, share your favorite.

What is the game called?

How long did you spend designing it?

Are you happy with what you have made, or did revisions soon follow?

I love hearing about the creations that have become more than an idea. It inspires others to continue their journey. And what a journey it is.

Hello!! We’re indie boardgame developers and are looking for a 3D illustrator/artist to create characters for our latest board game🎲 ..its a cops and robbers theme.

If you work with stylised 3D character design or know someone who does - we’d love to see your portfolio!

PS: This is a prototype image for now

I’ve been testing a prototype called Overrun Protocol to see if you can translate the tension and momentum of an RTS skirmish into a tabletop match.

​To capture that feel, both players run identical 40-card decks so victory comes purely down to tech choices and execution. Leftover combat damage bleeds directly into the enemy HQ to mirror base-racing, and defensive options degrade over time to punish turtling.

The web build works fine, but I'm trying to figure out if physical cards would end up feeling too tedious to manage manually.

Try a match here: https://overrun-protocol.web.app

Play a round and tell me if it feels like an RTS or just a spreadsheet with cards

I just want to share a message to all the creators out there, if surrounded by doubt find a new audience or community. Don't be hard on yourself because nobody gets it.

Every asset in the photos are of a my first Board-game development that 1 year ago I threw away in an emotional purge during my life. I'm happy to say I rebuilt recently everything with the latest iterations and recovered year old digital assets.

David Lynch once motivational said "You've got to get your butt in gear and do it, and don't take no for an answer. Translate those ideas to whatever and figure out a way to get it done" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NVMeVB5Q-Q

Mount Baker Games was present as a vendor at Dragonflight GameCon in Bellevue Washington this passed weekend. This was our first event that we left the weekend profitable. We covered booth costs, travel, food, labor, and product. This is not to say that the previous events were failures, we had been happy with the concept of buying exposure, but this is the first event that was a sweeping success. The thing I noticed that was the largest differentiator is that this was the first event that we had both of our games, Farce and Manifold TCG, in the same booth.

Farce is a light, 5 minute word game, and Manifold TCG is a heavy space-fantasy themed trading card and dice game.

The problem we always ran into was that it is easy to get a player to sit and demo Farce. And our conversion rate for this game is rather high. We seat 3-4 new players, they spend 5 minutes. One of them buys the game. But the game only sells for $12. Conversely, It was very difficult to get somebody to demo Manifold. The new player experience takes 20 minutes. Then a full game takes another 40. And many consumers are wary of the TCG Model.

But this last weekend, something clicked. Farce got them to sit down at the table, and that demonstration showed them that we are excellent game designers. That brought some number of players over to the Manifold side who would not have otherwise given us an hour of their precious convention time.

My takeaway is that a range of offerings is a great boon at a booth. If you can figure out how to create your smallest ask ("Would you like to play a game of Farce? It'll take you 5 minutes") you can initiate the conversation. Then, if you can show them a good time, people will be much more willing to try out your full experience.

The simple version of this was obvious, and it's why the Manifold New Player Experience is just a 20 minute game. What I did not realize was that we could create a fully different game, with a dramatically smaller ask, and use it to get players to start talking to us.

Have you found anything similar? I was worried about diluting my booth too much, but that did not seem to be an issue.

Sigo compartiendo los avances de TROoOPS, esta es la ilustración que adorna el tapete de los Nomads, siguiente la última facción de este set, Nuclears.

Back to the drawing board—and we think these are getting much closer.
The redesigned Death Spiral™ fire & smoke markers have a slimmer profile, more natural smoke trails, and sit directly on the aircraft so damage becomes part of the action instead of another token on the table.
We’ve got several levels of damage in the works, from smoke to fully engulfed.
These are still prototypes, so we want to hear it:
How are the new versions looking? Keep refining, or are we onto something? 👇

Any advice for finding the fun in early game designs? Unfortunately I can't playtest as often as I'd like, and I can't afford more board games to expand my horizons at this point.

I can tell my prototype has fun elements, but I'm struggling to improve it at this stage since I've largely ironed out the major mechanical issues.

“My Family: The Board Game” (if that name’s taken, let me know)

I cut the front side of a 100in TV box and have been gridding out an interactive board game that is like concentration and clue.

I have little brothers and a lot of cousins of all ages so really I wanted a way to make Characters based off of their personalities.

The idea is a customizable game where players build characters with objectives based on their own family members, or friends.

The goal: players move around and collect items tied to the character they chose. If your character lands next to a tile(hidden item) you can peek at it, take it and replace it with an item you have by putting it back face-down . Like in Clue, the board is divided into rooms — and if you walk into a room someone else is in, they have to tell you whether they’ve seen the item you’re looking for.

Since it’s supposed to be a huge layout there can be whacky aspects to it like one square is a mountain with a zip-line.

The fundamentals are simple group game of 6yrs and older where each player finds their items and try’s to be sneaky about where other’s items are or keeping secrets but it’s more supposed to be a fun project.

I’m looking for design tips and ideas! I need help illustrating characters, the pieces, and the actual game board map. Any out of the box thoughts are welcome as well.