Sometimes one of the six games in my catalogue is exactly right. Sometimes it's close, but not close enough - the team dynamic is unusual, the culture shift is precise, the strategic context is yours and nobody else's. That's when I design from scratch: mechanics built to your brief, not an existing game with your logo pasted on top.

What building a game from scratch actually looks like

Here's the part most people get backwards. A custom game doesn't start with a theme or a clever storyline. It starts with a brief - the exact behaviours you need to surface, who your people are, and what has to be true six months from now. From there I engineer the decision architecture: the mechanics, the constraints, the information each player does and doesn't get, and the consequences that make a bad call actually bite.

Only then do I choose theme and narrative, to fit your world and pull your people in. The behaviour drives the design, never the other way round - which is exactly why a repurposed game with a new coat of paint so often falls flat in the room.

The honest caveat: a custom build takes more time and more investment than pulling a game that already exists. It earns that when the need is precise, the audience is specific, or you'll run it cohort after cohort - at which point a game made for your people quietly becomes the cheaper option per head.

Where a custom game earns its keep

A few of the briefs I've built for from scratch:

• Read a leadership team before you restructure it. A diagnostic that shows how they really behave under pressure - before the org chart shifts underneath them, not after.
• Onboard your high-potentials without the induction snooze. They show you who they are in week one, not month six.
• Make an abstract culture change land as something people did. Not a poster in the lift - a decision they felt the consequence of.
• Get observable behaviour out of an assessment centre, not self-report. Real data on how candidates actually decide under pressure, instead of how they say they would.
• Plus: a conference keynote or large-format event people still talk about. A room of hundreds playing, not politely watching slides.

Before you reach out, sit with three questions

You don't need a polished brief. Rough answers to these three are more than enough to start:

• What behaviour or capability gap is actually costing you right now?
• Who's in the room, and what's their world like?
• Six months after the session, what's visibly different?

Bring those, and we figure out everything else together in the conversation. No polished RFP required, and no obligation - if a custom build isn't the right call for you, I'll say so and point you to the game that is.

Message me about your brief Call +91 99458 61640

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