Nestortiles is something new from Spanish publisher Néstor Romeral Andrés: not just a game but a game system in the form of packs of these funky foam panels that can slot together to form not only customizable dice, but also elaborate 3D structures. The panels look like a really neat way to quickly prototype custom dice for game design projects and the standard pack of 60 panels would allow for a massive variety of different combinations of colour and number to tried out. Plus, you get a fun building toy at the same time! What’s not to like?

More information is available on the nestorgames website and on the product’s BoardGameGeek listing. [via BGDF]

For a while now I have been struggling to make progress with some of my game designs. I have plenty of ideas, and many prototypes, but when a particular design doesn’t quite cut (which is, on sober reflection, most of the time) it can be difficult to see the path ahead.

Gil Hova, a game designer from New Jersey whom I met in New York a couple of months ago, recently tweeted that one of his own designs wasn’t working, and that “it just doesn’t have that pop”. I thought at the time that this was a particularly eloquent and efficient description of a sophisticated problem. All I can say is: I know the feeling.

A game is not — cannot be — merely the sum of it parts. Take a box of components, a few mechanics, a little, or a lot, of theme; add some choice, or some chance, or mix the two to your pleasing; throw in a helping of tactics, or maybe a slice of strategy. Shake, stew, blend, bake or even leave in a warm, dark place for a few hours covered with a damp tea-towel, and what have you got? Well, 9 times out of 10 — if not 99 times out of a 100 — you’ll get something that looks exactly like its constituent parts. Only more messy. Which is to say you’ve got something only a mother could love.

The only question that counts, of course, is to ask of the game: “Is it fun?”

“Is it fun?” (bellows the incredulous and imaginary designer). “Didn’t you notice how clever it was? Didn’t you stop to admire all these hand-picked, top-quality ingredients! Or marvel at my cunning for putting all of them together with such subtlety, novelty and elegance? Did no-one ever tell you that a definition of genius is the ability to connect the unconnected?”

“Yes, I noticed all of that” (whispers the patient, implacable and equally imaginary playtester). “I’m not an idiot — and you, I hope, are smarter than you look — but you have created an experience that I don’t enjoy. And this isn’t the first time. Did no-one ever tell you that a definition of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results?”

So I would say the following, principally because I think I need reminding: if a game isn’t fun then it isn’t much of a game. The point of creating it is to entertain, and not to demonstrate either the ingenuity of its construction or that of its designer.

Like I said, no-one eats cake to taste the flour.

This excellent set of laser-cut dice coasters from designer Philip Morrison are available from the Ponoko website — the so-called ‘world’s easiest making system’ — and would cut quite a dash under anyone’s wine glass, although they would be a little cumbersome in your next game of Settlers. For that you might consider a couple of these hansom handmade — or should that more precisely be hand-engineered? — dice from self-styled Dicecreator Abraham Neddermann.

This game isn’t news of course, either to the boardgame industry or to me, but I just wanted to share these great images of the forthcoming LEGO Games release Harry Potter Hogwarts — and at the same time offer a grateful tip of the hat to Huw Millington at Brickset for tracking them down in the first place.

So let’s recap: this is a boardgame, made of LEGO, about Harry Potter — it is therefore something of a perfect storm of unalloyed geekiness to the right sort of geek.

Someone like me, for example.

Plus, I am in the very fortunate position of having already played a late prototype of the game, and am very happy to confirm that it really is a whole lot of fun. The board itself is fantastic, and, just like those pesky Hogwarts’ staircases, actually moves around, twisting and sliding to create an ever-changing route through Hogwarts. It’s a great mechanism for any game, but in this case the elegant, tactile precision and weighty, engineered three-dimensionality of the board — in short, its essential ‘LEGO-ness’ — makes the experience incredibly satisfying and engaging, and quite literally a world away from anything a more traditional cardboard implementation of the same game could possibly have achieved.

Harry Potter Hogwarts is one of four new LEGO Games coming this autumn, along with Meteor Strike, Orient Bazaar and Atlantis Treasure (all of which have already been handily catalogued by Huw).

I have played prototypes of all four, and can genuinely recommend each and every one, but Harry Potter Hogwarts has to be my favourite. I have no insider knowledge about the release schedule, or in which international markets in 2010 the games will be released, but my guess is that Harry Potter Hogwarts, at the very least, will be worldwide. There is the small matter of the first part of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows movie coming along in November, after all.

Last year I reported on the impending launch of the LEGO Games, and later got the low-down on the development process from LEGO’s lead designer Cephas Howard. Since then I have been extremely lucky to meet the design team and discover more about the great games yet to come… about which I must be duly tight-lipped.

To quote River Song: “Spoilers!”

Tonight’s episode of The IT Crowd included a nod to the modern boardgaming community in the shape of a nice pile of boardgames stacked on the shelves at the back of the set. As can be clearly seen above, the titular computer geeks appear to be particular fans of the Days of Wonder catalogue, but also enjoy the odd bout of War on Terror, from the UK’s own TerrorBull Games. [Screenshot from 4oD]