Cutting the cards

We’re used to seeing games in finished form. Ideally, every system and component interact to create a finished whole. But, lying just outside of that curated garden is a larger design space of bad ideas. I haven’t seen a lot of self-critical writing about bad game ideas and why they didn’t work out. Yet, I think failed explorations can be more illuminating of design principles than finished products. So, this post is about some of the cards tested for Bidlz that didn’t make the cut.