Innovation lab
The Game Designlab
An experimental lab for inventing new game mechanics and formats — a playtest bench for ideas that don't fit existing categories.
Coming soon
- Innovation lab
- Coming soon
17
hubs in formation
Open
Founding membership
2026
Founding cohort
An experimental lab pushing new formats for the field.
About this lab
What this lab is
Where the Game Design hub is the professional community of authors and publishers, the Game Design Lab is the experimental bench: a place to invent mechanics, break formats and playtest ideas that are too early, too strange or too risky for a product roadmap.
The lab is forming now. It runs on rapid cycles — propose, prototype, playtest, write up — and its findings belong to everyone: new mechanics, tested and documented, that any member can build on.
The practice
What members will do
- Join rapid design sprints around a shared constraint or theme
- Playtest early prototypes and give structured design feedback
- Explore mechanics for new contexts — hybrid, outdoor, asynchronous
- Document what works into open design patterns for the field
- Graduate mature ideas into the Game Design hub for production
At a glance
- Type
- Innovation lab
- Status
- Coming soon
- Founding membership
- Open
Other hubs
All 17 hubsThematic hub
Transformational Games
The launch wedge — for practitioners of transformational, metaphorical and self-discovery games.
Visit this hubHelp build the Game Design lab
It's free to apply, and founding members shape the lab from day one — the agenda, the standards, the community. Tell us this is your lab in your application.