OUR DESIGNERS

Dr. Bronn

Designer of Torus

An author on Mathematics in Biology, Dr. Bronn had been modelling neural networks and biological systems, but when teaching his students how to simulate the biological world using computer technology he kept encountering the same obstacle – Boundary Conditions. This is a concept in physics and the most unpredictable variable when solving any problem.

Using his “Bagel Principle” or Torus, Dr. Bronn was able to open up the game field and play on the ‘other side’ of the board with no boundaries or limitations, successfully transforming the 3D shape of a bagel or Torus onto a 2D playing field.

Studies of computer models of the brain led to the creation of ‘Cellular Torus’ or CTOR and the development of a new board game, in 1988. The first 100,000 copies sold out  in six months. It was such a success that the popular journal “Science and Life” changed its ‘School of Go’ column to ‘School of CTOR’.

Wishing to expand availability of his ultimate strategy board game, Dr. Bronn partnered with Analog Game Studios to publish ’Torus’, a family oriented version of the game, but with the same advanced strategic playing mechanism.

Corey Keller

Designer of Latte Throwdown

Corey is a board game designer who has been playing games ever since he can remember! His obsession with board games comes from the desire to bring people together. To encourage people to meet someone new over a game and share a common goal. To build community through gaming and spread the love of tabletop gaming to new generations. This is why designing games is so important, to always bring something new to the table.

Corey lives in Oklahoma, where he owns and operates a coffee shop. While working in the coffee business he had the idea for Latte Throwdown! A game where baristas battle it out pouring beautiful latte art. Since coffee is his other passion, he knew he had to make a game involving coffee!

When he is not in the coffee shop you can find Corey in his home office continually coming up with new games or tweaking a current game design. His process involves designing 5 fully playable games a year in order to keep his game design skills moving forward.

In his free time he enjoys walks with his wife and pug, being a DM for his D&D group and writing music.

David Van Drunen

Designer of Gnomes at Midnight

I love bringing people together around fun, exciting experiences.

It’s so rewarding seeing an idea take shape into a game that people enjoy. I feel like a “Fun-Smith”, crafting board games out of raw meeples and cards.

Ever since I could roll dice I’ve been playing games, (and losing to my older siblings). Like a lot of people, I started designing with some “house-rules”, then started creating whole new parts. After a while I realized I could just design a whole game straight from scratch.

My first game was an attempt to combine Risk with Settlers of Catan. It was an overly complicated failure, but I learned a lot from it. (I ended up breaking it into two different, simpler games.)

Now my process starts with a feeling, “Wouldn’t it be cool if?”

When it hits me I quickly get the feeling into words; often replaying the song, or re-reading the passage that triggered the idea. Then I brainstorm physical actions, (slapping down cards, gathering cubes), that fit the feeling. After that I write the rules to help structure the actions as a playable game. Then comes a prototype and play-testing!

Gnomes at Midnight’s feeling was, “Wouldn’t it be cool if checker pieces could ‘hold-hands’ and move together; and if the board ‘changed’ as you played!”. I knew right away, I wanted gnomes scurrying around together; and eventually worked out the idea of shifting moonlight for a ‘changing’ board.

In the end, the incredibly supportive game design community helped me go from broken prototypes to great games. It’s been amazing to connect with so many generous people who want every game to be it’s best. (Thank you all for your time, experience, and support!)

See you at the table!

Jeremy Moshe

Designer of Duels of Cartisora

Jeremy Moshe has been playing and designing games his whole life.  As a child he would create schoolyard games for his friends, develop lego battle games with his brother and invent new variants of old board games.  When he got older he was an active custom map designer in Warcraft 2, Starcraft and Warcraft 3.

When the indie flash game movement started, Jeremy became an active member with several small published titles under his belt and countless unfinished prototypes.

Jeremy now works as an Instructional Designer / Game Designer for a company designing and developing Math-based games and software.  In his free time, Jeremy likes to play games, study game design and channel all his excess creativity into designing board and card games.

ELISA PRASHAD

Designer of On Pointe

Elisa Prashad has been a life-long ballet dancer, which was her inspiration for a beautiful and exciting game that plays through the journey of a dancer, from the Barre, to performer on stage and eventually a star.  She is also the co-designer of #demiDancer, with Richard MacRae.

Elisa is an artist and business professional, with a keen eye for the aesthetic beauty in life and all that she does.

You’ll find her most at home on a dock by a lake or travelling the world, but it’s her innate creativity that gives her wings.

In addition to creating the On Pointe game, she directed the essential accompanying artwork that makes this game so very unique and loved by fans of ballet dance who follow her on social media.

Erik Åhsgren,

Björn Bergström &

Björn Torstensson

Designers of Listit

We escaped to the Caribbean away from fake news and while enjoying the sunsets on the beaches of Rincón, with some of the  excellent local rum (Ron del Barrilito), a lively discussion on ways to fix the world ensued. With our Swedish heritage of structure and consensus, the most natural thing to do was to list ways to turn the world around.

So it happened that the creative cocktail of rum, our Scandinavian urge to compromise and the Caribbean laid-back atmosphere led to the only logical answer on how to save the world: Leave ideology, borders, nukes and taxes for later and let’s agree on the everyday questions first!

With a new purpose in mind, we created Listit – the card game that’s 95% awesomely fun and 5% world-saving. After all, if we can learn to understand how other people envision the world, perhaps we can finally solve the eternal question of “Why can’t everyone just get along?”. One list at the time.

Joe Slack

Designer of King of Indecision

Joe is a lifelong analog gamer, who loves teaching others all about  tabletop board game design.

He has taught at the University of Laurier’s Game Design and Development Program and he’s a published author of the #1 Bestseller book:  “The Board Game Designer’s Guide:The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games that People Can’t Stop Playing”.

His games are very intelligently developed and always fun.  He enjoys sharing sage advice and good guidance with other board game designers, who benefit greatly from his knowledge.

You could say that there’s a little ‘Joe’ in a whole lot of other designers’ games that he has play tested.

Joe also writes a weekly blog about current key topics to game design, called: Crazy Like a Box, where you’ll always pick up useful tips on clever approaches to board game design.

RICHARD MacRAE

Publisher at Analog Game Studios and Co-Designer of Centrix with Corey Myckan and #demidancer with Elisa Prashad.

Life can always use a whole lot more fun; an attitude that’s been with me a long time.

I’ve been playing board games since I was a little kid, so I get to be a big kid when I play a new game.

I spent over 10 years in the Canadian Army and the past 20 years as a business professional and entrepreneur, after which I combined my skills with my love of games.  I started Analog Game Studios to make a difference; to find and publish unique and clever games created by fresh new game designers all over the world and of course: have fun.

Play our games and if you love them, tell everyone and if not, tell me.

See you at the game table.