Hello and thank you for visiting David Gordon Game Design!
Queue
Released:
• 2024: Monkey Palace (Asmodee LEGO) – co-design with TAM (won Belgian Toy Federation Strategy Game of the Year for 2024!); widely available
• 2024: Würfel Wedding (self-published and co-designed with Jonathan & Tara Gilmour-Long); Kickstarter fulfillment (some copies may still be available – contact me if interested)
Expected upcoming releases:
2025 winter: Super Secret Design with a wonderful and prominent publisher – co-design with tba designer
2025 winter Kickstarter Campaign: Making Monsters (Astoria Games) – co-design with Jonathan Gilmour-Long
2025 winter: Push Push Penguin (Wacky Wizards) – co-design with Chris Chan & TAM
2025 Mar: Floristry (UP Games) – co-design with TAM
2025 Mar: Crafting the Cosmos (Asmodee Office Dog) – co-design with TAM
2025 Aug: Name TBD (Friendly Skeleton) – co-design with TAM
2025 Oct: Name TBD (Mighty Boards) – co-design with Jonathan Gilmour-Long
2025 Fall: Name TBA (publisher TBA) – co-design with TAM
2026 spring: Scurry Up! (UP Games) – co-design with TAM
2026: Inle (Play To Z Games) – co-design with TAM
2026: The Last Tide (Doomsday Robots) – co-design with Caitlyn Brynn Greene and John Olson
2026: 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 & Appearances
It’s heartwarming to see press about my work:
• Paula Deming’s Gen Con Top 10 here.
• Jaysen Headley’s review of Floristry here.
• Grant Lyon’s review of Monkey Palace here.
• Leah & Phillip humorous video of Monkey Palace here.
• Candice Hill interview of TAM and me on Monkey Palace here.
• Paula & Matthew Jude’s picks of the month and review of Floristry here.
• Rodney Smith’s Watch It Played for Monkey Palace here.
• Dice Tower top games list here.
• Legendary Tactics interview with Paula Deming here.
• Andrew Brassleay article on Monkey Palace here.
• Dicebreaker on the release of Monkey Palace here.
• Review of two of my games at a convention here.
• Blog post about my games by Phil Amylon here.
I’ve been honored to participate in panels at the following conventions:
• Nonepub 2023 (topic: co-designing) with Jonathan Gilmour & TAM
• Unpub 2023 (topic: co-designing) with Chris Chan & TAM
• Metatopia 2023 (topic: design goals) with Sydney Engelstein & Zintis May-Krunins
• GAMA 2024 (topic: pitching to publishers) with Molly Zeff & TAM
• Metatopia 2024 (topic: pitching) with Geoffrey Engelstein, Carla Kopp, Curt Covert, & TAM
Endeavors
I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to get involved in a few exciting endeavors over the years.
I am thrilled to have formed a publishing company called UP Games with Greg May, Ammon Anderson, and TAM.
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) (now Virtual Play Testing (VPT)) discord group, and Heavy Championship Playtesting (HCP) discord.
I have enjoyed and found fulfilling the opportunity to be a mentor in the Tabletop Mentorship Program through Unpub. It has been great to see the designers I’m working with make progress and even get games signed as a result of the work we did.
It was an honor to lend a hand to Ben Beagle with Heather O’Neill, Danielle Reynolds, and Mike Belsole in the creation of Nonepub, the online version of Unpub during the pandemic.
I have had the great fortune to help form a development & play testing group with Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Ian Moss, TAM, Danielle Reynolds, Muzzy, Ammon Anderson, and Whitney Red Loraine. I was also a partner with Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Bobby West, Beneeta Kaur, and TAM in the development company Tabletop Refinery.
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.
Appreciation
I’m delighted 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 TAM, Jonathan Gilmour-Long, Christopher Chan, Danielle Reynolds, Michael O’Connell, Ryan Reynolds, Rocco Privetera, Byron M. Huang.
• Gil Hova and the entire NYC-Playtest group, in particular TAM, Christopher Ryan Chan, Daniel Newman, Rocco Privetera, Muzzy, Ryan Rodriguez, Ryan Reynolds, Alex Mont, Orion McClelland, Scott Gratien, Catherine Stippell, Spencer McCormick, Molly Zeff, Byron M. Huang, Josh DeBonis, Andrew Carter, Jim Williams, Nick Celenza, Aaron Wilson, Zintis May-Krunins, Marni Abramowitz, Micah Heiselt.
• 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 Caitlyn Brynn 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 and in addition to those listed above, Jamey Stegmaier, Elizabeth Hargrave, Alex Schmidt, Rikki Tahta, Daryl Andrews, Bobby West, Beneeta Kaur, Ian Moss, Andrew Lynch, Luke Peterschmidt, Bryan Bornmueller, Pat Marino, Brianna Woodward, Tanya Thompson, Jacob Way, Joe Wiggins, Naomi Brugnatelli, Ammon Anderson, Sydney Engelstein, Doug Levendowski, Roberta Taylor, John Prather, Zach Connelly, Whitney Red Loraine, Dustin Wessel.
• 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, Pete Fulton, Joe Bisz, Emily Wong, Amanda Cooper, Amy Meckler, Josh Gaylord, Asa Swain, Aleea Dugstad, Jon Busky, Galen Sherwin, Cate Lloyd, 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.