GridCore Board Game

During a playtest with Taylor Hayward and the Game Designers of NC - Charlotte chapter group, Taylor mentioned he would buy GridCore (see https://www.playgridcore.com/post/playtest-may-19-2026-killing-my-darlings). That gave me the needed confidence to take more of the game away. Over subsequent work sessions, Taylor encouraged me to find the smallest playable version - the part that brings the table alive, and trust that more could always be added later. So I started remov

May 30, 2026 GridCore was played at ConCarolinas in a 45-minute Open Play session. Three players sat down: William, Chris, and Chase. The game ran through all six Records, followed by a feedback discussion. One result stood out. William successfully matched all six of his Cores. Chase matched only two. Chase won. The difference was prediction. Throughout the game, Chase consistently read the other players correctly and collected enough Footnotes to overtake someone who had pe

Sunday, May 24, Town Brewing Game Designer Taylor Hayward entered GridCore at a moment where the game was structurally functional, but still searching for stronger emotional energy at the table. And it needed to “find the fun”. Taylor’s feedback consistently pushed toward tension, and social immediacy. One of Taylor’s earliest observations was that the game needed a stronger “fun factor” - not by abandoning interpretation or philosophy, but by adding more table energy around

Town Brewing Co. — Charlotte, NC Tuesday evening, 7:00pm GridCore was playtested with a new table, including three first-time GridCore players: Timothy, Abraham, and Taylor. What started as a normal session quickly turned into a live simplification experiment. I think the unlock for me to feel at peace and go with what the table was feeling was hearing Taylor say: “I would buy this game.” That created enough safety for me to seriously explore a different direction. So we bega