The Messy Middle: A Game Designer's Guide to Not Being Precious

In 2005 I was an intern at a music magazine when someone asked if anyone knew how to run a Twitter and MySpace. I had no idea. I raised my hand anyway.

That moment launched a twenty year career in digital marketing. Every time a new platform emerged, I was at the front of the line volunteering to figure it out. Not because I already knew how but because I was excited to find out.

I didn't realize until recently that this is also how I design games. This post is technically about Rainbow Flip & Slide, a tile game I have been designing since the summer of 2024. But it is also about the part of the design process that people don't post about often. Not the origin story. Not the launch. The messy, humbling, surprisingly fun middle and what I think other game designers can learn from it.

We Only Share the Highlight Reel

Here is something I have noticed in the online game design communities: we love sharing the beginning and the end. The spark of inspiration. The finished product. The glowing reviews.

What we almost never share is the middle. The mechanics that did not work. The playtest sessions that ended in awkward silence. The moment you realized the game you had been building for months needed to be fundamentally rethought.

I think that is a shame. Because the middle is where the real design happens. And I have seen a lot of designers give up in the middle. Or worse, keep pushing a version of their game that is not working because they have never seen what a typical messy middle actually looks like.

So here is my messy middle.

The Idea and the First "There There"

It started on a regular night in the summer of 2024. I was playing Hive with my friend Rae and I fell in love with the sounds. The clunk of the tiles. The weight of them. The click as they connected.

I thought: what if I brought that tactile delight into the Rainbow Rabbits universe?

I also had a second idea that felt core: kids would love designing their own player tiles. Drawing their own character, making the game feel personal. That seemed like a novel idea.

I started with tiny colored ceramic tiles to test the basic theory. Was there a "there there?" There was. I graduated to wooden hexagon tiles from Amazon, colored them by hand with markers, and started designing the first version of the game.

The yes and lesson here: I did not wait until I had a manufacturer or an illustrator or a rulebook. I grabbed what was available and tested the smallest possible version of the idea. A yes and move is not always a big swing. Sometimes it is just: what is the cheapest and fastest way to find out if this is worth pursuing?

Coloring Tiles

Version 1: The Game That Kept Ending Wrong

I believed the first version of Rainbow Flip & Slide was genuinely clever. Each player had their own complete set of 7 rainbow tiles plus a player tile. You placed tiles into a shared space in rainbow order, could move or hop tiles once yours were all placed, and the first to complete a rainbow sequence won.

It had strategic depth. It had interesting decisions. But, often ended in the same unsatisfying way.

Every single playtest eventually devolved into a cat and mouse chase. One player would get close to winning. Everyone else would spend their turns blocking. The game would drag into a tense, boring standoff and the fun would slowly drain out of the room.

I tried fixing it. I introduced a second win condition. Then I tweaked the character tile into a wild tile that could represent any color. Neither update solved the core problem.

I playtested these minor tweaks to these versions from July through October 2024.

The yes and lesson here: When something is not working, the instinct is to patch it. Add a rule. Adjust a number. Introduce a new mechanic. Sometimes that works. But sometimes you are patching a crack in a foundation and no amount of patching is going to make the building stand. The cat and mouse problem was not a rules problem. It was a structural problem. I just was not ready to see that yet.

The Full Reset: Questioning Everything (Without Throwing Everything Away)

After enough playtests ending the same way I made a decision that felt scary and also completely right: a full reset.

Here is what I want to say about this clearly, because I think it is the most important thing in this post: A full reset does not mean throwing your whole game away. It means being willing to question everything except the soul of it.

I still believed in two things: building a rainbow, and designing your own player tile. Those were the soul of the game. Everything else was up for examination.

My husband, Bryan and I sat down for a long "what if" session. We threw ideas at the wall and tested them one after another. Some were worse than the original. Some were mechanically fine but harder to explain in a rulebook, which is its own kind of failure. Some opened doors to more ideas.

This is where the improv principle of yes and became my most important design tool. You do not shut down an idea in a what if session. You say yes and follow it to its conclusion. A dead end is not a failure.

It is information. It tells you something about what the game is and is not, and that information is genuinely valuable.

The idea that cracked things open: what if all the tiles started face down? What if you had to flip them to discover what was underneath?

That single idea shifted the whole game. From building your own rainbow to hunting for a rainbow in a shared patch. The tension changed completely. The discovery element became exciting and the cat and mouse chase disappeared.

The yes and lesson here: The reset is not the end of your game. It is the beginning of the version that actually works. And you will not find that version by protecting the one you already have.

Not Being Precious: The Hardest Skill in the Game Design Process

I want to stop here and say something uncomfortable.

I see a lot of designers in playtesting situations who are too precious about their work. They hear feedback and they defend instead of listen. They know a mechanic is not working but they cannot let it go because it was their cleverest idea. They keep trying to make the current version better instead of asking whether the current version is the right version.

I understand this completely. I have been there. When you spend months on something, you are bound to get attached. The idea of pulling it apart feels like losing.

But here is what I have learned: your attachment to a mechanic is not evidence that the mechanic is good. Sometimes the ideas you are most attached to are the ones most worth questioning, because your attachment might be the very thing preventing you from seeing clearly.

Not being precious does not mean not caring. It means caring more about the player's experience than about your own cleverness.

Serendipity Favors the Open Mind

Before the reset I briefed Ryan, the designer who had worked on the Rainbow Bunny Bop packaging, to mock up the new tile concepts. The mockups arrived in February 2025 and they were good. Technically solid. But something felt off. The game had become cozy and organic but the mockups were more aligned to the old version of the game: structured and bold. I had updated the game mechanically but I hadn't made the bridge aesthetically.

I started sketching new directions with floral patterns. I was doing this a lot while waiting during my daughter's music lessons.

One afternoon I got chatting with another mom. It turns out that she was an illustrator. Her style matched the vibe in my head almost exactly. We started working together.

That illustrator was Leanne Markle. And then one day while reviewing concepts she mentioned that she was born on St. Patrick's Day. I told her I am an expert four-leaf clover finder. The clover patch was born.

It wasn't luck, it was serendipity. Serendipity is something that happens when you stay open. When you say yes to the conversation at the music lesson. When you follow the idea about the face-down tiles even though you do not know where it leads. When you are not so attached to your current direction that you cannot see the better one when it shows up.

My entire life has unfolded this way. It is how I move through the world.

The yes and lesson here: You cannot manufacture serendipity. But you can create the conditions for it. Stay curious. Stay open. Say yes to the conversation you did not plan to have.

The Playtesters Who Changed Everything

In June 2025 I put out a call for playtesters online. Over 50 people raised their hands.

I playtested extensively in person too, including at a game event at MoPOP Museum in Seattle. People loved it. They kept coming back to play more rounds.

The feedback was consistent, honest and sometimes hilarious. It refined the game in ways I could not have achieved alone. And the experience of watching 50 strangers engage with something I made on a kitchen table with Amazon tiles was one of the most best things I have experienced as a designer.

The yes and lesson here: Get it in front of people earlier than feels comfortable. Your playtesters are not judging you. They are helping you. And the feedback that stings a little is usually the most valuable.

Solo Mode Ah-Ha Moment

Somewhere during the testing phase, a fellow game designer, Molly asked if I had considered adding a solo version to the rules. That was a new challenge for me. The only solo game I have ever played was solitaire, so I wasn't sure I was up to the task. But, by now you can guess what happened. I said yes and that sounds like worth investigating.

Luckily, the gameplay lends itself really well to a solo game naturally. So, I shared the solo rules with my playtesters and a handful were able to test. The consensus was that the solo version was puzzly enough that scratched an itch. I can also now I say I have played two solo games ;)

Where Things Stand Now

Rainbow Flip & Slide has a manufacturer. It has a launch planned for later this year. Final designs are still being finessed, but we are getting close. And it has a waitlist of people who want to be the first to get their hands on it.

It also has a history that looks nothing like a straight line. And I would not change a single wrong turn.

If you are in the messy middle of your own design right now, I want you to know: this is what it looks like. It is supposed to be messy. The mess is the work.

Stay open. Question everything except the soul of it. Say yes and follow it wherever it goes.

You are not doing it wrong. You are doing it.

Rainbow Flip & Slide is a 1-6 player tile game for ages 8 and up, coming in 2026. Illustrations by Leanne Markle. If you want early access and founding backer pricing, join the waitlist at rainbowrabbits.com/rainbow-flip-slide-waitlist