Four tips for self-publishing your game with designer Chris Wray

Plus: A look at six self-published trick-taking games designed by Chris Wray.

Every so often, I like to feature a bit of an interview with a board game designer here on Don’t Eat the Meeples. This time around, I’m doing things in a slightly different way — I interviewed noted self-published trick-taking game designer Chris Wray. We discussed what’s commonly known as the trick-taking renaissance, self-published games at Tokyo Game Market, his advice on self-publishing games, and quite a bit more.

I’ve had the privilege of gaming with Chris at TTUTCON 2024, where we played some great games together. When I reached out to him to talk about his experience self-publishing card games, he was kind and generous with his time. A thank you goes to Chris for his time.

Before we get into his tips on self-publishing, I think it’s worthwhile to talk about his games — both to demonstrate the work and to shout out the incredible work he’s done.

Chris Wray’s Xylotar. I know, it’s not one of his self-published games, but I’ve been away from my games and camera this week. | Photo by Matt Montgomery

You might know at least one of Chris Wray’s games if you’re into trick-taking or read this newsletter regularly. The mind behind Xylotar, which is a reimplementation of his self-published effort Magic Trick, Chris Wray undertook a six-game self-publishing experiment. (You can read about it on his blog on BGG, which I’d highly recommend.)

The array of games he published really explored the fringes of trick-taking designs. Each of this is designed and self-published by Chris Wray and illustrated by Megan Russell.

LetterTricks is sort of what it sounds like — it has competitive and cooperative modes, both of which involve spelling words with letter cards, and both are trick-taking games. As a cooperative game, you’re working together to spell words each trick. If you do, you’ll earn points. As a competitive game, you win tricks with higher letters (Z being the highest, A being the lowest), and then you earn points for spelling words with those cards at the end of a round. There’s even a team variant and a three-player variant — a common theme you’ll find with Chris’s games is that they’re often packed with variants and options.

Where a traditionally published game might focus on just one variant and three expansions or standalone sequels, these self-published games provide lots of opportunities to explore. You’re often not just getting one game when you buy a Chris Wray game — you’re getting several.

February is a trick-taker themed around the month of February (a very good month, as my birthday is in February), and since its 2022 release, Chris has released a new ruleset every year, and he even released a special Leap Year edition of the game in 2024 in addition to the 2024 ruleset. It has a novel must-follow (except in 2024 Leap Year, where it’s must-not-follow) mechanic, where you follow either with the week (say, the 2nd through 8th, as it is this year) or with the day of the week (Sunday, Feb. 9 could follow Sunday, Feb. 23, as another example).

Magic Trick (later published by Bezier Games as Xylotar) is a trick-taker in which you can’t see the rank of the cards you have, as they’re face down, and one of your neighbors has seen them and sorted them appropriately for you. It’s such a cool concept, and I think it’s perhaps not surprising that it’s the game from the project that ended up being picked up by a publisher.

Change of Heart is four distinct takes on the classic, definitive trick-taking game Hearts. Each of the games could be played with a standard deck of cards with the high cards (10 through A) taken out and replaced with the same cards but a different card back. (Chris Wray games sometimes feature something interesting about the card backs. I like that!) The rulebook even provides rules for plain-ol’ Hearts, which I think is a nice touch. Anyway, I could talk about each of these, but just know that it’s weird and great.

Rewind is maybe the most unusual of the games here, insofar as you play your hand twice — first forward, then backward. Rewind! Your goal as you play your hand in reverse is to end with the same rank as in the first round — so, if in the fifth trick of the first round you took second place, you’d be trying to do the same in the second round. What a wild little game.

Kansas City: The Trick-Taking Game is the final game in Chris’s self-published experiment. The illustrations are really lovely and art deco-inspired — I actually didn’t know about Kansas City’s art deco history, but it’s quite beautiful. The game itself features a very cool idea: As you play, you can upgrade your cards to the trump suit, which is done by turning the card to its reverse side. The game’s also exacting about how many tricks you can win: In a four-player game, you’ll get five points per trick for the first three tricks you win, but if you win four tricks, you’ll just get five points instead of the maximum 15, and if you win more tricks, you’ll get no points at all. It’s punishing, especially because in every game, somebody’s going to win too many tricks. Ah, I love that.

A small update: Chris has made his games available again on The Game Crafter for a short time — so if you’re interested, head on over.

Four tips from Chris Wray on self-publishing games

I’ve added a little bit of color below each of these tips. Sometimes it’s a little, sometimes it’s a little more than a little.

You don’t need somebody else’s permission to make the game.

I love this.

I think the most important thing is find a good artist. People take games that look nice more seriously than games that don’t.

You can see this tip very clearly in Chris’s designs. They’re really well-illustrated, down to the last. He typically works with Megan Russell, an illustrator, but he’s also done some very small-run games for conventions with the renowned Japanese illustrator Sai Beppu. When I look at a Chris Wray game, I get excited by the cards, as you’d hope for a great card game.

If you just web publish a set of rules and say you can play this with any deck, I don’t think that will gain traction. One of the things that does seem to be a phenomenon is people do like to have a product they can purchase. They won’t just gravitate toward a web-published game, in my experience. You have to make a full production of it.

I’m certainly guilty of this myself as a player — it does sort of tie right back into what he was saying about people taking nice-looking games more seriously, too. Of course, there’s another factor, and it’s one we discussed: There are so many games available, sometimes you just need to see a game on the shelf to get it to the table. (To that end — I kind of want to start putting together a resource for myself for great web-published trick-taking games. If anyone’s interested in what I put together, drop me a note.)

Make a game that you love, and it doesn’t matter if anybody else loves it. Every game I’ve made, I have a lot of people that love it, and a lot of people that hate it. It never really bothered me either way as long as I loved the game. I think that’s a healthy attitude to have. I think a lot of people that try this that struggle with the negative feedback. My reaction was always, do you like the game? If not, why did you make it?

This is such perfect advice for life. I think we all sort of get hung up on this during the creative process, and I personally could always use a reminder to step back.

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Thanks again to Chris Wray for his time and thoughts. If you haven’t played one of his games before, Xylotar’s going to be your easiest option, and it’s a great one! You could also proxy Change of Heart easily with two decks of standard playing cards, so maybe that’s something to consider, too. Or Rewind! That could just be a standard deck, too. He publishes full rulesets on BGG for his games as well as Frequently Asked Questions pages, which do talk about how you can proxy his games.

And thank you to you, dear reader. We’ve just returned home from a quick trip to Seattle to visit some dear friends and to meet their new baby. It was a real treat, and we hope to see them again soon. I hope you’ve had a nice week, too!

Next week: What I’ve been playing lately

Soon: Great trick-taking games published in 2024