Dwarven Smithy - Dev Post

Other game designers blog or post about how they come up with their idea for games and how their game was developed. So, I'd like to tell a short story about how I came up with the idea for Dwarven Smithy. It happened on the way to work...
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Charles, Craig and I were already working on a few other games so I didn't plan on making a card game that day. Sitting at a stop light, waiting to turn up a road to get to work, I looked down at my phone then looked up again to check the light and a fast moving dump/cement truck was just a few inches away from the front of my car! I remember seeing a blur of a name on the side of the driver’s door, "Smittys". I sat there for a few moments more, waiting for the light to change, composing myself and thought a few inches closer would have been bad bad news. I'm thankful I wasn't hit or hurt, it was a close call.

So I turn, travel up the road to work and started to think,'Smittys', then thought 'Smithys'. I asked myself, 'Is there a game about dwarves in a smithy shop?' During that day at work and on my breaks, an idea started to form in my head of a card game and I started to type on my phone the outline of the game.

In making the outline, I had a few ideas/goals to keep in mind when I chose the mechanics of the game.

• Meaningful choices for players
• Use game down time to add value to cards
• Winner is revealed at the end of the game
• Feeling of a workshop (limited amount of space to work in)
• Make the game play unique

By the end of the day, the core mechanics of the game were figured out. Within a month, we were developing and playing a prototype.
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~ Mike Warth