Greetings

Hello confused!

Nice to meet you man, you should fit in well here :)

Ok so you want to make a boardgame eh? Brilliant there's a few ways you can get started:

Start with a Theme
Gangsters? SciFi shooter? Dungeon Crawler? High Fantasy? Modern corporation? Historical?

or

Start with a mechanic
Worker Placement? Deck builder? Bidding mechanic? Dice fest? Non-tradiitonal? Abstract elements?

these are the two main popular ways to start a game. Once you have one, the other one needs to nestle around it, then once you have that main idea and the theme and mechanics to go with it - you can start fleshing it out.

Things that help after the idea
How many players does the game play? How long is a game? What do you want the players to feel as they play the game? What options do players have? What is the win condition?

Here's an example I will do very quickly now for you, lets make a game!

I'll start with a mechanic: Dice!
Theme: well you are from belgium, what do I know about belgium? not much :( - But I understand the chocolate is fabulous! Ok so the theme will be about chocolate. Lets go for a chocolate factory!

So far: Each player is a Chocolate Factory competing to out sell the other factory and the game uses dice.

hmm....ok so lets go for 3 players; game lasts 30 minutes; the players need to feel like they need to create better chocolate recipes and outsell the other guy using sneaky tactics; the players can research to make their own chocolate better or concentrate on selling lots of mediocre chocolate; the first player to get 100 dollars wins! No wait... this might make it very easy for players who invest their strategy into selling rubbish chocolate (but lots of it) so I will change that to the "player with the most money once all of the supplies have finished".

Ok so lets now think: Each player has a "player board" that has some squares on it showing their options. A dice rolls of 1, or 2 allows them to take that many supplies collection (cocoa and oil and whey etc). A roll of 3,4 or 5 allows the player to make or sell chocolate that has a "dice value" of 3,4 or 5. And a 6 roll makes the player able to research a new type of chocolate or factory method or something. Hmm...one dice feels pretty random here. Lets change it: 2 dice per player. That might not be quite enough, so I will let each player re roll 1 dice once - but they must keep th result.

The supplies may only be taken one at a time and the chocolate must fit within the rolled number. (eg: if I roll a 4 , then I am able to make a chocolate with the dice value "3" or "4". To make a "5" value chocolate: i must roll 5.
Also, to SELL the chocoalte (once I have made it) I must use one of the correct numbers (eg if I roll to 3's , I am able to produce a "value 3" chocolate and then sell the stack of chocolate on my player board that I have stored up that is "value 3")

When researching: I can choose to research (or unlock) better chocolate (each player starts with only the 3 value slot available) OR better factory. This gives me the ability to modify dice rolls (eg: if I research "Oil Seperator" it gives me the ability to change one of my dice rolls by +1 and if I research "Cleaning Crew" I can change a dice roll by -1) but hmm...with this extra dice changing - it might make it very easy to score what the player wants. Hmm ok how about instead of the free "reroll one dice" thing I gave earlier, I will change this to a factory research machine. Cool. This feels like it will play better

So there we are! That is how my mind would progress in making the initial ideas and now, I am nearly at a position to start cutting out some paper and drawing the factory upgrade slots on them, then cutting out some squares of paper that show the type of chocolate produced!

:)

I hope that little exercise helped you buddy, you see now that you need to 1) Get your ideas down, 2) Start drawing on some paper!.

Feel free to ask anyone any questions around here, they are all very friendly !

Hope i've helped,

sam

My pleasure!

Also, I am jealous of your chocolate now ¬_¬

sam