The GameChanger Project
We’ve got some exciting news to share! Mighty Boards is officially partnering with the Institute of Digital Games at the University of Malta for a new project called GameChanger.
The GameChanger Project?
We’ve been living in the golden age of board games for the last decade or so; every day we see more games, more innovation, more complexity, more daring themes. It’s great to be able to contribute to this industry, but like all other industries it comes with challenges of its own; designing and balancing games is not a piece of cake. GameChanger is about building better tools to support that process.
Throughout this project we’ll be working on:
1) Creating digital versions (“digital twins”) of physical board games
2) Using smart, automated game players to run thousands of play sessions
3) Turning those sessions into clear, useful feedback for designers
The goal isn’t to replace human playtesting. Nothing replaces sitting around a table with real players. But before we even get to that stage, there’s huge value in being able to simulate games quickly, test edge cases, explore unusual strategies, and spot balance issues early.
Think of it as giving designers a powerful sandbox where games can be stress-tested long before they hit the table.
This is also a very challenging task, as modern board games are wonderfully intricate. There are multiple paths to victory, asymmetric powers, layered systems, solo modes, campaign structures, and even real physics involved in some case!
This complexity may hide dominant strategies that only show up after 50 plays, or that are apparent only at edge cases with a specific number of players. It also makes it difficult to scale up the player count, or to balance well for a solo mode, for example.
Running thousands of full play sessions with human groups just isn’t practical at the early stages of design, while the game is changing rapidly, as physical prototyping is inherently slow. With GameChanger, we can explore those possibilities much faster, find solutions early, and then bring human testers in later with a stronger, more refined foundation.
There’s another exciting side to this: building digital versions of our games also opens the door to new ways to play our games, through online multiplayer games, solo experiences, or hybrid physical/digital formats.
Why partner up with the Institute of Digital Games?
Mighty Boards has a long-standing excellent relationship with the IDG. Some of us are Alumni from their courses, and we regularly hold board game nights there to foster and grow the local community.
The Institute of Digital Games (IDG) was established in 2013 and has grown into one of the leading technical games research centres in the world — currently ranked 5th globally (and 1st in continental Europe). Their M.Sc. in Digital Games was ranked among the top programs worldwide by the The Princeton Review.
But rankings aside, what really matters is what they do. IDG brings together experts from computer science, the arts, and the humanities. They work on game design, technical game development, and explainable AI — meaning they don’t just build systems, they make them understandable and useful for humans.
They’ve delivered innovative projects across EU-funded programmes (Erasmus+, FP7, Horizon 2020) and developed educational and research games used around the world, including titles like Iconoscope, CURIO, Green Home, and worDefense. They also run the Artificial Intelligence and Games International Summer School and teach advanced AI-focused courses every year.
In brief, they are games experts. They know technical systems, and they know how to turn research into practical tools.
What makes GameChanger different?
GameChanger isn’t about generating content or replacing designers. Its about understanding how games behave through systems that can play rapidly, repeatedly, and intelligently. The project will then aim to create informative logs of what happens during those plays, and provide clear visual tools to help designers interpret the results.
One of the most exciting parts of the project is building interfaces that make complex simulation data actually useful. This is where IDG’s expertise really shines: they will ensure that the tools create meaningful insight instead of just producing data.
This project will help us to strengthen our design pipeline in the long term, helping us bring to you games that are even better tested than the titles we already have. It also allows us to explore new digital opportunities, possibly bringing your favourite tabletop games to a portable digital format. It will also upskill our team and introduce us to advanced game development tools, which will ultimately help us in our goal to make better, more beautiful games for you.
In brief we look forward to GameChanger, hoping that it gives us a chance to experiment, learn, and push our art forward in novel ways.
More updates as the project develops.
This project has received support from the Digital Technologies Programme project GameChanger (No. DTP-2025-18), funded by Xjenza Malta and Malta Digital Innovation Authority.