Sunday, June 1, 2025 - 12:30pm to 3:30pm
For this 4-part series of workshops, we will explore tabletop game design! These are no-experience-required workshops that introduce attendees to making games with cards, dice, tokens, boards, or in the mind with plenty of rules!
Part 1: Brainstorming Game Design!
First in this series is a brainstorming and information session where we will look at the history of some popular boardgames and the cultural history of a few card games.
We’ll look at comparing the essential parts of our favorite tabletop games and game-making questions like “Can Monopoly be played without a board?” “Can Yahtzee be played without dice?” or “Does Poker really need cards?”
We’ll hold a brainstorming session thinking about what Player, Tokens, Dice, Ruleset, and Game Board and other game-making terms mean when we play games.
Finally, we’ll finish by staging out a simple game design flow process of Brainstorming, Creating, Playtesting, Prototyping, and Shipping. Participants will leave with a vocabulary for game-making and a graphic organizer for game design flow.
Please register for each workshop separately. Other workshops in the series
Instructor: Victor, Digital Media Lab intern
We recommend that participants remember their email logins or bring in flash drives to store files over the course of the series.
Iowa City Public Library Iowa City Public Library America/Chicago public
Digital Media Lab
For this 4-part series of workshops, we will explore tabletop game design! These are no-experience-required workshops that introduce attendees to making games with cards, dice, tokens, boards, or in the mind with plenty of rules!
Part 1: Brainstorming Game Design!
First in this series is a brainstorming and information session where we will look at the history of some popular boardgames and the cultural history of a few card games.
We’ll look at comparing the essential parts of our favorite tabletop games and game-making questions like “Can Monopoly be played without a board?” “Can Yahtzee be played without dice?” or “Does Poker really need cards?”
We’ll hold a brainstorming session thinking about what Player, Tokens, Dice, Ruleset, and Game Board and other game-making terms mean when we play games.
Finally, we’ll finish by staging out a simple game design flow process of Brainstorming, Creating, Playtesting, Prototyping, and Shipping. Participants will leave with a vocabulary for game-making and a graphic organizer for game design flow.
Please register for each workshop separately. Other workshops in the series
Instructor: Victor, Digital Media Lab intern
We recommend that participants remember their email logins or bring in flash drives to store files over the course of the series.
If you need disability-related accommodations in order to participate in this event, please contact the Library.
This event is open to the public.
The Digital Media Lab is not available during this event.
