Huff No More

17/06/2024

This week we are focusing on COMPONENTS for which is a really important topic in respect of playtesting and making prototypes. You could have the most awesome, interesting and unique component ideas but if they are a high cost to manufacture then would be a major challenge to potential publishers or make the cost of your game too high to self publish.

We have stumbled across an example of this with our prototype for Tricky Word Game. While not exactly massively unique components, the cost of 50x bespoke dice would certainly push the price point of the game up beyond what we would want for what is essentially a quick card-based word game. While the dice added a really nice variability to game play, we are looking to switch to alternative components for if Tricky Word Game becomes a future release.

Have you had experiences where you have felt you’ve needed to change game components to make a game more publishable? Share your stories in the comments!

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

11/06/2024

Thanks so much to The Offline Gamer for coming to meet us at UK Games Expo!!

Check out the link below to see Mike being interviewed about Sakana Stack 🐟🐡

Thanks to Mike for showing us Sakana Stack!https://www.huffnomore.co.uk/https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sakanastack/sakana-stackhttps://www.instagram.co...

08/06/2024

Was awesome to be interviewed at UK Games Expo by the brilliant Board Stupid ! Check out Mike trying not to be super nervous in the vid. And great to be alongside the wonderful KUGO

We chat to Kugo Games, Huff No More, and Camden Games about their upcoming releases at UK Games Expo 2024!

You can find the video here! https://youtu.be/B1sdl-BZuK8

KUGO is a flick based dexterity game made out of all-natural, solid wood. But this isn't just one game. This is a box to make lots of games, You can create minute long flip tricks or trick shots or sets up longer team-based games like "Capture the Flag" or "KUGO K.O." And you even create your very own games!

KUGO gameplay centres around a saucer-shaped disc called "The Puck". Flick the puck through tricks, games and obstacles. It's that simple, if you can flick, you can play.

Built for all ages, built to last, use the pieces in the box to build games, create tricks and unleash your imagination in a world of flick-based fun!

You can back it on Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mikeyallan/kugo

Sakana Stack by Huff No More is a climbing/shedding card game where players are playing Stacks of seafood from their hand with the aim of having the most valuable Stack in play. Stacks can be played of matching numbers, but they must match the last played card by suit or number.

Players score the top card from their Stack if the next player passes, so the bigger the Stack the higher the scoring opportunity. Play continues until a player sheds all cards in their hand, or the draw pile runs out twice and all cards scored are counted and recorded. Play a number of rounds equal to the number of players to determine the most successful Market Vendor.

You can follow their kickstarter here! https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sakanastack/sakana-stack

20/05/2024

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

This weeks’ theme is LEARNING and wow we have learnt so much on our game design journey. So much so that we wanted to highlight how great tabletop game designing can be for education.

The story behind Sakana Stack coming to life is hugely influenced by education, from Joss creating the artwork and graphic design game for her Graphic Design degree and our nephew building an AI simulation for his Computer Science degree. But not only that, our 7yo has become really interested in designing his own games as a result!

This picture shows our 7yo at playtesting his first completed game with the wonderful team. Here Come The Vikings! was a homework project which really excited him and allowed him to be really creative. There has been so much for him to learn in this process from building mechanics, problem solving, using maths for certain actions and building the game narrative. This all culminated in him running playtest sessions of the game which is brilliant for his confidence, public speaking and explaining information.

Tabletop gaming has so much potential to support learning and education, in both adults and children, in a really creative way 😊

17/05/2024

Another teaser today as we continue to get ready to build our first ever exhibition stand!!

Joss has been working hard on the final designs and seeing it all come together as finished pieces is really exciting! Only two weeks to go and we’ll be at the NEC and we can’t wait to meet you all and play some games.

Further stand teasers to come and next week maybe a fun giveaway announcement… 🐟🐡

13/05/2024

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

This weeks’ theme is CRAFT, a topic which can be considered a number of ways. From the DIY crafting of early prototypes through to the many skills in creating hand-crafted artwork for games.

So with the hand-painted artwork Joss has crafted for our game Sakana Stack, we wanted to use that style in design for our stand as we prepare for later this month.

Sakana Stack is set in the Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo, Japan and we wanted to try and bring a fish market theme to our stand. One of the many sights Joss saw in the fish market was the wooden delivery crates with their red and black stamps. So we have decided to mimic that style and create our own Sakana Stack wooden crates for our UKGE stand! Do come and visit us at 2-896 🐟🐡

11/05/2024

Some exciting news today as we have now launched our full website! With so many things to get prepared for we wanted to get this ready to share more information about us, our ethos and of course Sakana Stack

We have a mailing list you can sign up to where we will keep you updated on all things Huff No More. Don’t worry - we’ll only be sending occasional and relevant news!

And of course much more detail on Sakana Stack! This includes the background of the game, a bit about how to play and why we have decided to run a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter 🐟🐡

Link in bio and hope you like it!

06/05/2024

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

This weeks’ theme is STORYTELLING and we are going to put our own little spin on the theme this week. So we thought we’d tell you the story of how Sakana Stack came to be our first game!

Mike has been attempting to design games on and off for about 6 years, and really picked up designing again early 2023. Sakana Stack took a number of forms and some mechanics blocks before subtle tweaks made the game flow and work really well. From here Mike needed to decide what to do with the game.

At the same time, Joss was halfway through her Graphic Design degree. Perfect timing for Joss to take on the artwork and graphic design for the game and form part of her degree. The theme was Joss’s idea and took inspiration from her own trip to the Tsukiji Fish Market in 2015. Joss wanted an authentic look and feel to the game, so took to hand-painting each card artwork using traditional ink brushes and texturing the card design for a paper look.

And from here Sakana Stack was created! It’s been a really fun and personal story and we can’t wait to introduce our game to more people as we build up to our crowdfunding campaign later this year 😊

What’s the story behind your game design journey?

01/05/2024

Look what arrived today, a stack of Sakana Stacks 🐟🐡

We’ve been so anxious with waiting to see how these would turn out, but the good news is they are great!

So now armed with preview copies we are even more excited to showcase our game at in just one months’ time! Still so much to do, but now we actually have our game can relax a bit 😊

Please do follow our Kickstarter pre-launch page which you can find in our bio!

29/04/2024

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

This weeks’ theme is INNOVATION, something that all game designers aspire to achieve by bringing new ideas and methods to the games they are creating.

So my post is about Trick-Taking, a game mechanic that is over 1,000 years old. But it feels like we are now in a golden age of Trick-Taking games, with hugely interesting and innovative spins on the genre. I could name many games from my ever-growing Trick-Taking collection, but instead will just shout out Cat in the Box as an incredibly innovative take on the genre.

I’m working on three Trick-Taking games currently, so thought I would share a picture of the one which I think is the most innovative - Whisky Business. Rather than a must-follow suite rule, the innovation I have brought to Whisky Business is a must-follow route rule. The cards you play to the trick must be aligned to where your meeple can travel around the Whisky regions of Scotland.

What are your favourite, innovative Trick-Taking games?

24/04/2024

We are really excited to announce that we are going to be at UKGE this year and exhibiting for the first time ever! Please do come and say hello at stand 2-896

We will be showcasing the first game we are releasing ‘Sakana Stack’ in preparation for our Kickstarter campaign later this year (link in bio). So come and have a demo game and we have some more fun news to announce in the coming weeks!

We can’t wait to get to and play some games!!

Joss & Mike

22/04/2024

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

After a community vote we have a new topic this week which is FUN. A really interesting topic as there is such a wide range of games and mechanics and people find fun from games in different ways.

So what do I find fun about games? For me the most important part is the social interaction of gaming, being with people and sharing an experience together is the most fun. And then secondly is understanding how a game works. I love solving puzzles and picking up a new game and deciphering the strategy, trying to create the best plays is what I really enjoy from playing games.

So as a designer I’m aiming to incorporate both of these elements into the games I make. I feel I’ve been able to incorporate both elements in ‘Sakana Stack’, our first complete game. It’s deliberately lightweight card game, with a passive scoring and dynamic must-follow rule which keeps players engaged when it’s not their turn. As a shedding game there is deliberate constraint, but enough early choices to think about how to manage your hand. We’ve had lots of feedback from playtesters that have helped improve the game and the design, but the best feedback we can get is when people say they found the game FUN!

What do you find FUN about playing games?

20/04/2024

We’re back at !! Mike is in the demo zone playtesting all day today so come say hi and try out our games

We have ‘Sakana Stack’ with us in its final version before preview copies are made

‘Fine-Tuning’ which is our musical note card drafting/set collection game where you build musical compositions. Previously known as ‘Eleven Pipers’ and runner up at Handycon 11 design competition

The first public outing of ‘Tricky Word Game’, a trick taking card game where you are trying to win letter dice matched to your suits to make the best word

And our son’s home work board game Here Come The Vikings! as well for our 7 year old’s first day out as a playtester!

15/04/2024

is a community and a weekly hashtag challenge, where designers can share their work, ideas, tips and progress. Every Monday is a new theme! Send a message to me or to join the chat!

Today is the first and the theme is FIRST so thought I’d post my first ever prototype. This has been sitting in my desk drawer for 5 years so was nice to get it back out again!

About 6 years ago when I first joined a local board game group I quickly decided I wanted to make a game. I hadn’t played many games at that point so with fairly limited knowledge I made ‘Bowerbirds’, a deduction game with territory control elements with a theme based on male Vogelkop Bowerbirds decorating their nest site to attract a mate.

Looking back now there are so many things wrong with the game, but also many things I’m really proud of. It was a huge learning experience and definitely helped me understand more about the design process for later games.

14/04/2024

In celebration of the new tv show landing this week Mike thinks it’s a good idea to get the Fallout board game and New California expansion from out to play!

As a huge fan of the video games Mike had to buy the board game a few years ago and played all of the scenarios solo throughout lockdown. The game is a really fun mix of exploration, storytelling and variable missions. Components are of excellent quality with some fabulous minis.

Any other Fallout fans watching the show and what do you think? We’ve only seen first two episodes but are really enjoying it so far!

06/04/2024

Excited to announce that we are going to be back at Handycon Double 6 with a Saturday playtesting slot! Handycon 11 was our first public playtest of ‘Sakana Stack’ and this will be the last playtest opportunity before we go into preview copy production.

‘Sakana Stack’ is a fast-paced shedding card game for 3-5 players, set in the Tsukiji Fish Market and takes about 15-30 mins to play.

This time we are looking for volunteers for blind playtesting to learn to play from the rulebook and check it all makes sense! Mike will have 1 hour slots from 10am-5pm so please comment or send a message and we can get you booked in. The game is 3-5 players so we can help to group players together too.

Look forward to seeing you all at in a couple of weeks!

28/03/2024

Another game Mike picked up at was Odin by and we’ve managed to play quite a few times already

When we first heard about Odin being a shedding game in a beautiful small box where you can lay multiple cards of the same number it felt very close to home! So we had to check out the competition for ‘Sakana Stack’ and get a copy.

Fortunately it’s very different! And also a really lovely, light card game to play. A little bit of hand management adds thought to the cards you play, but building up big plays is really fun with a limited hand size. And our 7yo and 5yo picked it up super quick so a fun family game.

20/03/2024

So we got our first ratings and comment for ‘Sakana Stack’ on and it’s a great one!!

It feels great that someone who experienced playing our game has taken the time to leave such a lovely comment and wants to play again! We were fortunate to play many demos of ‘Sakana Stack’ at and feedback was really great from people looking for a lighter, quick-to-learn card game.

More events to be announced very soon!

18/03/2024

Wow, was incredible! First time attending and Mike was blown away by the event. So many amazing people and so many games played - Mike counted 32 separate games over the weekend, including a good number of playtests of games in development!! Was great to hang out with the South London Playtest group and Trick Talkers UK and get to know you all better over really fun games!

A huge shout out to for setting up a solo attendee group. I could see how daunting it could be for people coming on their own and this helped create a really nice group of people to get together and play games 😊

Also it was great to meet with so many indie publishers exhibiting and demoing who have amazing current and upcoming releases! Make sure to give them a follow and support indie publishing! (Sorry if forgotten anyone!) .studio

14/03/2024

As we get ready to attend tomorrow, what better time to announce our official Kickstarter pre-launch page for ‘Sakana Stack’ in anticipation of launching the campaign Autumn 2024!! Link in bio

Since deciding late last year to self-publish it has been a real learning experience of how to bring a game to life. We have been fortunate to have met so many amazing people who have been so generous with their time, knowledge and guidance. Can’t wait to catch up with lots of you this weekend!

We have so much work to do, expos to announce we are attending, prototypes to make and manufacturers to talk to and this will be our main channel of updates. We would love to talk to some content creators for previews so please do get in touch 😊

Any questions please let us know but otherwise hit that ‘Notify me on launch’ button and thanks so much for your support! 🐟 🐡

Joss & Mike

13/03/2024

Final preparations now taking place before and then we’re ready to go!

Hopefully this will be last time the steel ruler and craft knife are used for ‘Sakana Stack’ as we prepare to get our first prototype games printed later this month. It’s been a real journey learning about CMYK specs to get the print output to be exactly as we wanted. But really happy with our new Pufferfish cards and the vibrant yellow suit 🐡

Look forward to getting playtester feedback over the weekend!

10/03/2024

It’s fair to say that when our 7yo came back with his home project work for this term being “Design a Viking themed board game and play it with someone” that Mike was more excited than he was!

I’m not sure if the teacher knew that our 7yo is a veteran of many Memoir 44 and Smallworld battles in the past year and immediately had a lot of of great ideas. It was important that we let him use his imagination and just tidy up the mechanics a bit so completely his creation.

And here is ‘Here Come The Vikings!’, an exploration and settling game for 2 or 3 players that takes about half an hour. Explore lands and flip over defender tokens to see how many troops you need to spend to defeat them. Build settlements, get reinforcements and be the first player to control a set amount of territory to win.

A really fun and creative experience 😊

08/03/2024

Just finished reading It’s All A Game and it was such a fun read!

Having grown up playing Chess, Scrabble, Monopoly, Cluedo and Trivial Pursuits it was great to find out more about the history of these games. We may have come such a long way since (the chapter on the birth of “Euros” is excellent), but I will have many fond (and frustrating!) memories of these games.

What I found to be amazing was the DIY approach to game creation, playtesting with friends and the word-of-mouth promotion. For people to have an idea so original at the time and to persevere in its creation is really inspiring, especially as we are on our own creative journey right now!

06/03/2024

Huff No More are going to be at !!

This will be the first time we have been to Airecon and we are so excited to get to Harrogate. We have heard so many great things about the expo and there is a fantastic line up of exhibitors.

Mike shall be in the Demo Zone on one of the Playtest UK tables on Friday and Sunday in the 10:30am-1:30pm slots. We shall be demoing ‘Sakana Stack’ so please do come and say hello and hope you enjoy our game 😊

Mike is also excited to have some free time on Saturday to learn about A History of Card Games with .clare.50 and Cozy Gaming with and - really looking forward to both seminars!!

See you there!!

05/03/2024

Back to the for another playtest of ‘Fine-Tuning’ this evening 🎶

The new changes worked really well, trying to get the balance between agency and constraint has been a real challenge but getting there. Some really great feedback and ideas to bring some extra flexibility to the game. Feels like getting closer to something really fun and engaging!

02/03/2024

It’s been a busy week but managed to squeeze some time in for playtesting today. This is the revamped version of ‘Eleven Pipers’ which came runner up in the 11 playtest contest.

After some creative consultation with a music teacher friend, changing the note cards to different orientation depending on whether they are aligned to treble clef or bass clef has proven to be a great way to add some flexibility to the cards but also makes a bit more of a puzzle when placing.

But with the change in composition structure means the need to move away from the bagpipes theme. So have gone for a piano composition and renamed as ‘Fine-Tuning’ 🎹 🎶

Playtest with my 7 year old and he really enjoyed it, especially beating me!

23/02/2024

Today it’s Friday and that means another 🎲 by to showcase the games I’m trying each week!

Today we played Kanagawa published by and it didn’t take much convincing when Mike told me we would be painting pictures in a Japanese style!

I have to start on the artwork and wow Kanagawa is simply beautiful 😍 The ink brush style landscapes are lovely and amazing components - their school board being a roll-up sushi mat is an amazing touch! I love the way the art cards are played out on the school board and you have a choice of what to take and combine the landscapes available with the pain brushes you have. The dual cards give a nice choice of how to play, but it is a little fiddly to piece your painting together. And good set collection element for bonus points.

Overall as a gentle game this worked nicely at two players, with enough choices each turn but also fairly reactive to cards being drawn so avoided lots of thinking time. Would play again, if only for how nice it looks on the table 3/5