Contents
Welcome
Boardgame Creator lets you build a real, playable board game — the board, the cards, the rules — right in your browser. As you build, a friendly Advisor watches your design and suggests what works well together. When you're ready, you can:
- Play it on screen — pass-and-play with up to 6 players on one computer, with the app enforcing the rules, rolling the dice, and keeping score.
- Print it — a complete PDF kit with the board, cut-out cards, playing pieces, and a rules sheet, ready for the kitchen table or classroom.
Everything happens in your browser. Your games save automatically on your own device — nothing is uploaded anywhere, no account needed.
Quick start (about five minutes)
- Open the My Games tab and click a starter template — Gem Quest is a great first pick.
- Hop to the Design tab. Rename the game, try a different theme, and click a few board spaces to change what they do.
- Press ▶ Playtest this game, add two players, and take a few turns to see how it feels.
- Go back, tweak anything that felt slow or unfair (the Advisor will chime in with ideas).
- When you love it, press 🖨️ Print & PDF kit to take it to the real world.
Prefer to start from nothing? Choose Blank game in My Games and build every piece yourself.
A tour of the four tabs
| Tab | What it's for |
|---|---|
| Design | The workshop. Set up your game's basics, board, mechanics, cards, and win condition — with the Advisor alongside. |
| Play | The table. Runs the game you designed as a pass-and-play session on this computer. |
| Mechanics Library | The encyclopedia. Browse all 189 game mechanics with filters for subject and thinking skill. |
| My Games | The shelf. Start new games from templates, reopen saved ones, and import/export game files. |
The name of the game you're working on is always shown in the top bar. Every change saves automatically — there is no save button to forget.
My Games — saving, templates & sharing
Starting something new
The buttons at the top create a fresh game and open it in the Designer:
| Template | What you get |
|---|---|
| Blank game | A clean 36-space track with a challenge deck to fill in — build it your way. |
| Gem Quest (general) | A jungle race about collecting gem sets and pushing your luck. Highest score wins. |
| Number Kingdom Race (classroom) | A math quest with answer wagers, bingo cards, and action points. First to the castle wins. |
| Power Sprint (general) | A quick race with power cards, tug-of-war duels, and a catch-up boost for last place. |
| Comet Chase (grid board) | A space adventure on a free-movement grid — chart your own path to the finish. |
Saved games
Every game you touch appears in the list with Open, Export, and Delete buttons. The app keeps your 50 most recent games.
Sharing a game with someone
- Click Export — this downloads the game as a small
.jsonfile. - Send that file to anyone (email, chat, USB stick…).
- They open this site, go to My Games, click 📂 Import game file…, and pick the file. It opens as their own copy — your original is untouched.
The Design tab
The Designer is a stack of panels down the left, with the Advisor and the ▶ Playtest / 🖨️ Print buttons pinned on the right. Change anything, in any order — it all saves as you go.
Game basics & themes
- Game name & description — the description appears on the Play setup screen and the printed rules sheet.
- Players — the allowed range, from 1 to 6.
- Target playtime — an estimate in minutes. The Advisor uses it to judge how many rules your game can comfortably carry (shorter game = simpler budget).
- Mode — General fun or Classroom. Classroom adds educational targeting; see Classroom mode.
- Theme — the complete look of your game: board art, space tiles, playing pieces, card frames, and dice. Six themes are included: Classic, Number Kingdom, Deep Space, Ocean Voyage, Detective Agency, and Jungle Trek. Switching is purely visual and always safe — swap freely, even mid-design.
The board
Two board types, chosen in the Board panel:
- Track — a winding path from Start to Finish. Players move along it exactly as far as they roll. The length slider goes from 12 to 64 spaces, and resizing keeps your existing space layout where it can.
- Grid — an open field (4–8 rows × 4–10 columns). Start is top-left, Finish is bottom-right, and each roll lets a player move up to that many spaces in any direction — up, down, left, right, no diagonals — choosing their own landing spot. Changing the grid size re-deals the space layout.
Click any space on the board preview to change what it does. Each click cycles through the types: normal → challenge → bonus → chance → setback → safe. (Start and Finish stay put.)
- Setback slide-back — how many spaces a setback sends you back (1–10).
- Auto-sprinkle spaces — re-deals the whole board with a balanced mix of space types. Handy for a fresh start, but it overwrites your hand-placed spaces.
Space types
| Space | What happens when you land on it |
|---|---|
| Start | Everyone begins here. |
| Normal | Nothing happens. Catch your breath. |
| Challenge | Draw a Challenge card and try to answer it — points if you succeed. |
| Bonus | Good news! Collect a token (and/or a power card). If neither is in your game, +1 point. |
| Chance | Draw an Event card and do what it says — could be great, could be trouble. |
| Setback | Slide back (by your slide-back number), or skip a turn if the Lose a Turn mechanic is in the game. Shields can block it. |
| Safe | A rest space — nothing bad can happen here. |
| Finish | The goal. Reaching it triggers the end of the game (see Winning). You don't need an exact roll — overshooting still lands you on it. |
Mechanics
Mechanics are the rules-of-play ingredients — dice, set collection, trading, bingo, and 180-some more. The Mechanics panel shows what's in your game at the top, and a searchable library below, filterable by subject, thinking skill, or text search. Click Add or Remove to change your mix.
The key thing to understand is the ▶ playable badge:
- ▶ playable mechanics change how the game actually runs on screen — the computer enforces them. All of them are described in Special rules in play.
- Everything else is design guidance — real, proven mechanics that shape how you build your board and cards (and they appear on your printed rules), but the on-screen player won't enforce them yet.
Each mechanic also carries a feasibility badge (HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW) — how practical it is in a printable family board game.
Cards
Games start with a Challenge deck, drawn when someone lands on a challenge space. Each card has:
- Card text / question — a trivia question, a math problem, a dare, anything.
- Answer (optional) — shown on demand during play, printed in the host's answer key, and used to build Bingo cards.
- Points — what a correct answer is worth.
If your board has chance spaces, you can add an Event deck with one click. Event cards carry their own effects (move ahead or back, gain or lose points, swap places with the player ahead, push everyone else back) and resolve automatically in play.
Too busy to write cards? The ✨ generate buttons add ready-made sample sets — silly party prompts, math problems, or classic events — which you can edit or prune afterwards.
Winning
| Win condition | How it plays out |
|---|---|
| First to reach the finish | The race is the whole game — the moment someone reaches the Finish, they win. |
| Most points when someone finishes | When the first player reaches the Finish, everyone else gets one last turn — then the highest score wins (furthest along the board breaks ties). Reaching the finish first isn't automatically winning, but with End Game Bonuses in the game, finish order pays bonus points. |
| First to reach a points target | The instant anyone hits the target — from cards, token sets, bingo lines, even mid-trade — they win on the spot. |
The Advisor 🧭
The Advisor panel re-reads your whole design after every change:
- Complexity meter — every mechanic has a teaching cost, and your target playtime sets a budget. Blowing past it doesn't break anything, but it's a sign your game may be hard to learn.
- Things to look at — color-coded findings. Red flags are serious ("your win condition needs points but nothing awards points"), yellow are cautions (mechanics that fight each other, or a challenge space with no deck to draw from), blue are gentle notes.
- Suggestions — proven combos you're one piece away from, structural fixes, and classroom-fit tips, often with a one-click + Add button.
The Advisor never blocks you. It's a coach, not a referee — you can playtest and print any design.
Playing your game
Press ▶ Playtest this game (or the Play tab) to bring your design to life. Play is pass-and-play: everyone shares one computer, and the app runs the rules, rolls the dice, draws the cards, and keeps score.
Setting up
Choose how many players (within your game's range) and type names — each player gets one of the theme's playing pieces. Then Start game.
The anatomy of a turn
- Turn start — automatic effects land first (income, interest — see the special rules table). If you have power cards or a trade to propose, now's the moment.
- 🎲 Roll — click Roll.
- On a track board, your piece moves that many spaces automatically.
- On a grid board, spaces within reach glow — click one to move there. You can move fewer steps than you rolled (but at least one), counting only up/down/left/right.
- Optional extras — before you land, you might see 🔥 Push your luck or ⚡ Boost if those mechanics are in the game.
- Land here — locks in your spot and the space does its thing: challenge card, event card, bonus, setback…
- End turn ➜ — passes the computer to the next player.
The Game log panel narrates everything as it happens — rolls, cards, points, bingo calls — so nobody loses the plot.
Challenge cards
When you land on a challenge space, the card appears large on screen:
- Read the prompt aloud and let the player answer.
- If the card has a stored answer, click Reveal answer to check.
- The group is the judge: click Got it! to award the card's points, or Missed it.
If the Bids as Wagers mechanic is in the game, the player can first stake up to 3 of their points on being right — a correct answer wins the stake back on top of the card points; a miss loses it.
Special rules in play (playable mechanics)
Each ▶ playable mechanic you added shows up as buttons, panels, or automatic effects during play. Numbers below are the built-in settings.
| Mechanic | At the table |
|---|---|
| Track / Grid Movement, Roll & Move, Dice Rolling | The core engine: roll, then move — along the track, or your own path across the grid. |
| Events | Chance spaces draw Event cards that resolve on the spot (move, points, swaps, and more). |
| Set Collection | Bonus spaces award a collectible token. Complete a set of 3 and it cashes in for +5 points automatically. |
| Push Your Luck | After moving, gamble: roll again to move further. Roll the bust face (a 1) and you snap back to where you started the turn, turn over. You can keep pushing as long as your nerve holds. |
| Action Points | Gain 2 AP each turn (bank up to 4). Spend 1 AP to ⚡ Boost one extra space after moving, or 2 AP to 🛡️ Shield a setback when you land on one. |
| Lose a Turn | Setback spaces make you skip your next turn instead of sliding back. |
| Bids as Wagers | Wager up to 3 points on your challenge answer before revealing it. |
| Catch the Leader | Whoever is alone in last place gets +1 on their movement rolls until they catch up. |
| Income | +1 point automatically at the start of each of your turns. |
| Automatic Resource Growth | Interest! At the start of your turn, +1 point per 5 points you're holding. |
| Hand Management | Everyone starts with 2 power cards (hand limit 4); bonus spaces deal more. Play them before rolling or after moving: Sprint (+2 spaces), Tiptoe (+1), Lucky Charm (auto-block your next setback), Second Wind (+2 points), Trip the Leader (knock the front-runner back 2). Card slides don't trigger spaces by themselves — wherever you finally land is what counts, so a well-timed Sprint can hop you past trouble. |
| Bingo | Each player gets a 3×3 bingo card built from your challenge deck's answers (center is FREE). Whenever anyone answers a challenge correctly, that answer is "called" and everyone marks it. Completed rows, columns, or diagonals score +5 points each. |
| Tug of War | Land on a space someone else occupies and it's a duel: both roll, loser slides back 2. Lose a tug on your own turn and you're pushed off before the space takes effect. |
| Trading | Once per turn, before rolling, propose a deal — points and/or tokens both ways. The other player accepts or declines on screen. |
Ending the game
When the win condition triggers, a 🏆 banner announces the winner with the final scores (end-game bonuses, like finish-order points or "most gems," are added first — ties for a "most" bonus award it to no one). From there, Play again restarts with fresh setup, or Back to design returns to tinkering.
The Print & PDF kit 🖨️
The 🖨️ Print & PDF kit button turns your game into letter-size sheets:
- Cover & rules — what you need, how to play, your game's special rules, and a space legend, all generated from your actual design.
- The board — with numbered spaces. Print two copies and tape them together for a bigger board.
- Challenge & Event cards — six per page in your theme's card frames, numbered (C #1, E #1…).
- Card backs — print on the reverse of the card pages (duplex, flip on long edge), or skip backs and use card sleeves.
- Playing pieces — fold-over standees: cut the solid lines, fold the dotted one, tape the base.
- Token sheet — 24 cut-out tokens, if your game collects them.
- Answer key — every card with a stored answer, numbered to match. For the host's eyes only!
Click 🖨️ Print / Save as PDF and use your browser's print dialog:
Classroom mode 🏫
Switch Mode to Classroom in Game basics and the Designer grows a "Classroom focus" section:
- Grade band — K-2 through adult.
- Subjects and cognitive skills — click the chips to set what the game should exercise. The same filters appear in the mechanics picker and Library, so you can hunt for mechanics tagged for, say, mental arithmetic.
In classroom mode the Advisor also surfaces classroom-specific cautions (pacing, downtime, competitiveness) and notes when none of your mechanics match your chosen subjects.
Classroom favorites worth knowing about:
- Sample math cards — one click in the Cards panel gives you an editable set of arithmetic and algebra problems.
- Bingo — turns your challenge answers into per-student bingo cards, so everyone stays engaged even off-turn.
- The printed answer key — lets a student host run the game while the teacher circulates.
- Self-checked challenges — the group judges answers together, which is itself good practice.
Questions & troubleshooting
Landing on a challenge (or chance) space does nothing
That space type needs a deck that draws on it, with at least one card in it. Check the Cards panel — and the Advisor, which warns about exactly this.
Bingo cards aren't showing up
Bingo cards are built from your challenge cards' answers. Fill in the Answer field on your cards (8+ distinct answers works best, or the cards repeat values).
Where did my saved games go?
Games save in the browser you designed them in, on that device. A different browser, a different computer, or clearing browsing data means they won't be there. Export the games you care about as files — importing them later takes seconds.
Can we play on two computers?
Play is pass-and-play on one screen. To play at a distance, share the game file — or print the kit and play it physically. (You can also both open the site and mirror each other's moves over a video call.)
The printout has no colors or board background
Turn on Background graphics in the browser's print dialog. It's off by default in most browsers.
I can't propose a trade
Trades happen before you roll, once per turn, and need another unfinished player. After rolling, the moment's gone.
Why didn't finishing first win me the game?
Check your win condition. Under Most points, reaching the Finish only triggers the final round — the highest score takes it. Add End Game Bonuses if you want finish order to pay points.
A mechanic I added doesn't seem to do anything in Play
Only ▶ playable mechanics are enforced on screen. The rest guide your design and appear in the printed rules — the library and picker both show the badge.
Is my data private?
Yes. The app has no server and no accounts — designs live in your browser's local storage and in any files you export. Nothing you make ever leaves your device unless you share it.