Hello and thank you for visiting David Gordon Game Design!
Queue
Expected upcoming releases:
2024: Floristry (Uncommons Publishing)
2024: Making Monsters (Astoria Games)
2024: Monkey Palace (Asmodee LEGO)
2024: Push Push Penguin (Wacky Wizards)
2024: Würfle Wedding (self-published with Jonathan & Tara Gilmour-Long)
2024-25: Super Secret #1
2025: Crafting the Cosmos (Asmodee Office Dog)
2025: Spelloo (will be announced soon)
2025: The Last Tide (Doomsday Robots)
2025-26: Inle Lake (Play To Z Games)
2025: Super Secret #2
Design
Building games is a joy, a process that combines elements from many of my passions. Inventing environments and experiences for players in games activates the creative expression I used in my music composition days. Crafting, honing, and applying strategies and tactics draws on my chess, poker, and billiards background. Iterating worlds, from pieces to boards, employs tactile skills from my model train building experience. And writing clear and concise rules makes use of my years of teaching and writing manuals and workbooks for my tutoring business, Pinnacle Prep (www.pinnacleprep.com).
I am thrilled to have had the great fortune to sign several games with publishers thus far! I’m eagerly awaiting them to hit the market and will update the queue above as I get news. I’m also actively pitching many games to publishers. You can find the games I’ve signed in the menu on the Signed page and the games I’m pitching on the Pitching page.
Media
Here’s a Dicebreaker article on the release of Monkey Palace. Here’s a nice review of two of my games at a conference: review! Here’s a recent panel I did at Nonepub: panel! And here’s a wonderful blog post about my games by Phil Amylon: post!
Endeavors
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to get involved in a few exciting endeavors over the years.
I have learned so much from play testing and am proud to be a moderator for three of the most active and productive IRL and online groups: NYC Play testing, Remote Play Testing (RPT) discord group, and Heavy Championship Playtesting (HCP) discord. It was an honor to lend a hand with Ben Beagle, Heather O’Neill, Danielle Reynolds, and Mike Belsole in the creation of Nonepub, the online version of Unpub during the pandemic.
I was a founding member of Zev Shlasinger’s publishing company Play To Z Games, a partner with Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Bobby West, Beneeta Kaur, and TAM in the development company Tabletop Refinery, and a partner with Greg May and TAM in the publishing company Uncommons Publishing.
In early 2023, Jonathan and Tara Gilmour-Long brought me in to help design their wedding game Würfle Wedding. We were delighted to complete the project and deliver these wedding favors to guests at their wedding. In fact, the game was so special, that we also delivered the game to backers of a Kickstarter Jon ran several years ago.
Recently, I’ve participated in panels at several conferences, including Unpub and Metatopia with TAM, Zintis, Jonathan Gilmour, Chris Chan, and Sydney Engelstein, and I’m looking forward to presenting on a panel with TAM and Molly Zeff at GAMA.
Appreciation
I’m so thrilled to have the opportunity to devote my time to making games, and I’m very proud to have worked on ideas for over 70 games over the last 5 years.
I have so many people to thank for supporting, helping, and tolerating me in this pursuit. First and foremost, thank you Jen, Ben, and Ari Gordon. Your patience is immeasurable, and your incredible ideas, insight, and ingenuity are consistently invaluable! You and the following people have been so helpful, bravely play testing games that often weren’t quite ready yet!
• My wonderful co-designers and friends Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Danielle Reynolds, TAM.
• Gil Hova and the entire NYC-Playtest group, in particular TAM, Chris Chan, Daniel Newman, Orion McClelland, Scott Gratien, Rocco Privetera, Catherine Stippell, Spencer McCormick, Molly Zeff, Byron M. Huang, Andrew Carter, Jim Williams, Nick Celenza, Aaron Wilson, Zintis May-Krunins.
• The online community of designer play testing groups, including Remote Playtesting, Heavy Championship Playtesting, Virtual Play Testing, and Professional Board Game Testing. Thank you for providing such helpful feedback, especially from Bryn Smith, Phil Amylon, Fertessa Allyse, Chris Backe, Andrea Pincombe, Ryan Horricks, Jack Rosetree, Max Seidman (and for your invaluable tech support and scripting!), Andy Juell, Evan Raitt, Josh Bowman, Andrew Stiles, so many others.
• Industry professionals who have supported my designs and provided invaluable play testing, feedback, and other insight, including Jamey Stegmaier, Alex Schmidt, Elizabeth Hargrave, Rikki Tahta, Daryl Andrews, Bobby West, Beneeta Kaur, Ian Moss, Andrew Lynch, Luke Peterschmidt, Bryan Bornmueller, Pat Marino, Brianna Woodward, Tanya Thompson, Naomi Brugnatelli, Ammon Anderson, Sydney Engelstein, Doug Levendowski, Roberta Taylor, John Prather, Zach Connelly.
• The Pinnacle Prep team members I’ve wrangled into testing, in particular, Megan Williams, Dhaya Ramarajan, Myles Heffernan, Dennis Corsi, Cici Ogden, Corinne Wilkinson, Sadi Mosko, Chad Small, Forrest Cardamenis, Lydia Gallant, Maggie Langhorne, Lizz Brady, Blake Zolfo, Willa Tracy.
• Friends, some of whom have endured some rough testing, Simon Ying and Emilie Deschamps, Carolyn Stallard, Joe Bisz, Emily Wong, Amanda Cooper, Amy Meckler, Josh Gaylord, Asa Swain, Aleea Dugstad, Jon Busky, Galen Sherwin, Eric Weinstein, Natacha Arora, Owen and Rhea Breck, Jamie Kaplan, Alex Samuel, Betsy Cannon, Richard Wright, Gideon Lazarus, Adam Wersan.
• All the publishers who have signed my games (listed with the games)!
• My brother Joshua Hilson and my parents Ron Gordon, Sallie Gordon, Danielle Hilson, Doug Hilson.
and so many other friends and family.