I'm stuck right now on all of my board game projects I'm currently working on. I have two games that have been playtested a lot and are fully functional, fully playable... but... they aren't "fun".
My local board game design group (we meet weekly) has helped me refine these games and I've gotten them down to pretty smooth and functional games, but as I said above, they don't give me the same level of fun that I get from other games. And I'm the kind of player who can play almost anything and enjoy myself (I don't win a lot of games but usually just the fact that I'm sitting down with some friends and playing something is enough for me to have fun, as long as the game looks good, and even a few games that don't look the best but are well designed [I'm looking at you Trajan])
My group keeps telling me they have the most fun with board games that gives players interesting decisions, and I agree I enjoy games that do that as well.
I dunno, any thoughts on this?
I guess I should clarify... I am very passionate about my games and can spend a lot of time working on them and thinking about them and enjoy every bit of time I spend working on them. But when it comes to playtesting them, things work fine, the game plays as I imagined it would, but no one seems to be having fun. And I guess I'm the kind of player who gets a lot of enjoyment from playing a game if everyone is having a good time.