Behind nearly every board game, there’s a spark of inspiration—an image, a memory, or sometimes just a question that won’t let go. For the designer of Coming of Age, that spark was life itself: the awkward, messy, and transformative leap from youth into adulthood.
This isn’t your typical board game about trading wheat, building railroads, or raising armies. Instead, Coming of Age asks players to step into a space that most games ignore: the deeply personal struggles of growing up. Who do you become? How do friendships shift? What happens when your carefully laid plans unravel?
And perhaps most importantly—can those experiences be turned into engaging, playable mechanics without losing their emotional weight?
A Game About Life, Not Just Winning
The designer diary published on BoardGameGeek News reveals just how unusual this project is. At its heart, Coming of Age isn’t about tallying points or outsmarting your opponents. It’s about weaving a narrative—your own story—through choices, challenges, and the unexpected turns of everyday life.
That means:
- No spreadsheets
- No resource math
- No empire-building
Instead, the game leans on themes of identity, relationships, and self-discovery. It asks you to construct a personal narrative, a portrait of who your character becomes through both successes and setbacks. It’s a bold swing in a hobby so often dominated by castles, spaceships, and historical wars.
From Real Life to Cardboard
Much of the inspiration draws from the designer’s own chapters of transition—moving to a new city, struggling through a first job, watching friendships evolve or fade. Translating those moments into game mechanics wasn’t easy.
Big questions emerged:
- How do you capture the sting of failure without reducing it to a simple “minus five points”?
- How do you make the joy of a new friendship feel authentic and not just transactional?
Early prototypes leaned on real-time play, which made everything frantic—more race than reflection. Testers agreed: something felt off. Slowly, the design shifted toward narrative-driven mechanics. Cards and relationship systems became the heart, giving players the freedom to build their own life story.
The balancing act was constant: freedom versus structure. Too much openness, and the game felt shapeless. Too many rules, and the story evaporated.
Why This Matters
What makes Coming of Age stand out isn’t just its mechanics but its courage. In a landscape crowded with dragons and interstellar civilizations, it dares to look inward—toward the universal but often unspoken milestones of being human.
In that way, it resonates with indie storytelling games like Fiasco or Dream Askew but delivers that intimacy through a more traditional structure. It proves that games about feelings, growth, and memory don’t have to feel abstract; they can still be playable, structured, and meaningful.
And perhaps that’s the larger shift: as the tabletop world expands, so too do the stories we tell through cardboard. Some want to conquer kingdoms, while others prefer a quiet evening reflecting on who they were—or who they might become.
More Than a Game
If anything, Coming of Age points toward a future where board games aren’t just entertainment but instruments of empathy. Imagine a game night that ends not with declaring a winner, but with heartfelt conversations about identity, memory, and change. That’s a powerful reimagining of what play can do.
The designer’s notes remind us: games can be more than diversions; they can be mirrors. And sometimes, they help us see ourselves just a little more clearly.
What Do You Think?
Would you sit down for a game about growing pains, shifting friendships, and self-discovery? Or do you prefer your cardboard worlds to be pure escapism—battles, dragons, and distant galaxies?
Either way, Coming of Age is proof that tabletop gaming is getting bigger, braver, and far more personal.
👉 Would you like me to expand this into a cultural piece about why themes like identity and aging are rising in board games—or dig deeper into the mechanics of how those life “chapters” actually unfold at the table?