Consulting

Interested in working with us on your new or existing board game?

Ranging from heavy cooperative games like Frosthaven, to 1v1 duelers like Legacy’s Allure, to social deduction games like Hysteria, Shelfside has plenty of experience helping designers test, iterate, and expand their designs.

We’re more than happy to provide development assistance on the systems, mechanics, and balance of your game. From a game’s feel to how graphic design ties in with gameplay, we can provide our thoughts on any aspect.

Playtesting

We’ve worked with Isaac Childres and the Frosthaven playtesting team on multiple locked classes! While we can’t spoil their names, the two that we’ve most extensively tested (and have our feedback implemented) are:

We’ve worked with designer Antonio Liga on a prototype of Kabula, playing over Tabletopia with him, and multiple player counts in person! We found issues with balance and timing, and of July 26th, 2022, our suggestions were implemented, namely:

1) Character progression has been patched, with every encounter having 2 personality traits to always progress!

2) The abilities that allowed you to get more hashtags were rebalanced, avoiding game states where the Kabula is stolen before Round 4.

3) The cost to activate attacks which don’t end your turn was increased (Ashton’s note: this will definitely prevent cheese-ing we mentioned in the cons of our review, where someone can end the game too early!).

4) All Hero Abilities, items, and Guardians, and Rulebook were reworked to be easier to follow, more balanced and thematic when applicable. Familios were given more abilities which give benefits outside of fighting.

5) Art and design were finished, and the rulebook is being rewritten.

For more info on Kabula, check out our review here.

Worked with designer Keith Rice on Tabletop Simulator during two separate occasions. First was to confirm his thoughts on overall game design and potential ways to expand the game, and the second was to take a look at new visual overhauls.

Rice: “Shelfside Games rightly noted that the strength of Legacy's Allure is in the competitive 1v1 experience. They do not think that this game can have a strong campaign mode…”

Check out Rice’s full summary of our consultation here, and here.

Worked with Matt Hanna on Tabletop Simulator on April 14th, 2021. A runthrough of campaign, general mechanics, art, and game direction was performed, as he was looking for a semi-cooperative, medieval themed game that could be played via many hours.

Full written consultation was given for Puppet Masters for Austin Koepp after receiving a physical copy.

SUMMARY: Tons of variety in archetypes/puppetmasters is fascinating to theory craft with and look through, but overkill for a base game where focus should be directed onto newcomer enjoyment… While mechanics are clearly puppet-oriented and feel that way, artwork does not reflect that intention.
ASHTON’S PERSONAL FEEDBACK: Openings never feel similar because of how the archetypes blend on the board, combined with my opponent’s puppet master ability. Puppetmasters never lends you to getting screwed off of mana draws, almost always something in the center to buy, sacrificing units adds a layer of management, continually thinking about buying spells/items with money.

Early stage game design was done with Shadi via video chat, with running through a physical prototype copy of the game with the designer. Discussed plans to weigh in further on the dating aspect of the game, while balancing “take-that” elements with deck size.

Physical prototype was heavily playtested for Brouhaha Games during August 2021, noting the inconsistencies with social deduction potential for Hysteria. Playtested with multiple player counts.

Peeking is a decently common thing in games like these, and the reason why it feels odd in Hysteria is because multiple players are getting 100% perfect information on a person's exact card in the time frame of about 30 seconds, leading to practically no social deduction necessary (unless in that rare instance where 2 humans coordinate lying on a skeleton card).