Who is Morpho Designs?

Hi! My name is Mitchell Allen. I wrote a random board generator for my game, Gauntlet. I used Microsoft Access 97 because of its powerful report capabilities. As I worked on Gauntlet, I began to visualize a general-purpose random board generator! The more I thought about it, the clearer it became: if I could create enough games that took advantage of this randomness, I could revolutionize the entire board game industry! I would be rich! Whee!

Morpho Designs was born from that vision. I rewrote the program in Visual Basic, naming it Morphoboard. Of course, I had to learn how to make great games. Otherwise, nobody would care about my nifty little program. So, I joined BoardGameGeek to see what made a game great (or not) and the Board Game Designers Forum (BGDF), to learn how other designers did things.

Somewhere along the line, my thinking shifted. I began to look at Morphoboard as more of a prototyping tool. I think it had to do with the fact that it was more fun cranking out different designs than actually finishing any of the games I made up around those designs. According to the wise ones at BGDF, you actually have to have an idea for a game before creating the board! Bah! A minor detail, that. Function follows form, in this case, and I believe you will find Morphoboard to be an excellent brainstorming tool.

While I intend to focus on Morphoboard as a prototyping tool, I will showcase its talents as a game system.