UX/UI & Board Games, Ep. 12: The Game’s Not Broken, You Just Didn’t Read the Rules

A player gets frustrated.

They call the game unfair, impossible, and badly designed.

Then someone points to the one paragraph they missed in the rulebook, and the problem disappears.

Every board game designer knows this moment and we see the same thing in design.

It is not always the system that fails. Sometimes it is the handoff.

Confusing onboarding, missing context, unclear labels. One small misalignment and the user feels like the whole experience is broken.

Games like “Twilight Imperium” and “Mage Knight” are infamous for this.

Get the rules wrong? You do not just play badly. You play an entirely different game…

So how do we help users avoid this trap?

🎯 Build onboarding with failure in mind - assume confusion is inevitable

🧭 Give just-in-time guidance, not just up-front instructions

📕 Treat the first experience like a co-op tutorial - not a final exam

Because it is not enough to design the system.

You have to design the invitation to play.