Thanks for visiting my games page!
I’m a board game designer, developer, art director, and illustrator. I’ve just started working at Asmodee as Game Design Manager for Office Dog and Z-Man Games.
Previously, I worked as a developer for Floodgate Games, and I taught game design at the University of Wisconsin–Stout.
My published games include: Four Humours, Skyrockets, Lunar Skyline, Guesswork, Alphabet Stoop, Hedge Mage: Blizzard Wizard, Surplus of Sloths, The Troubadeck, and the upcoming Ringyō with Paverson Games.
I co-host The Tabletop Takeaway podcast with my designer friends Ananda Guneratne and Trevor Muller-Hegel.
I also write songs and compose music for films, and I’ve made a few soundtracks for video games and board games (Décorum and Thrive). My project The Troubadeck combines my love of music and games into decks of playing cards that double as songwriting tools.
Original Tabletop Game Designs (as of August 2025)
- 8 Published Games
- Several Upcoming Games signed with publishers
- 3 Self-Released Games
- Many more Prototype Games
Awards
- 1st Place • Button Shy “Number on Cards” Contest • Guesswork
- 2nd Place • Button Shy “Standard Playing Cards” Contest • Marry Up!
- 3rd Place • Cardboard Edison Awards 2019 • Four Humours
- “Rookie of the Year” Nomination • Deck of the Year Awards 2024 • The Troubadeck
- Finalist • Cardboard Edison Awards 2020 • Dragon Insurance
- Judge Semi-finalist • The Game Crafter Community Anthology Challenge • Darwin’s Desert
Podcast
Co-host of The Tabletop Takeaway with Ananda Guneratne and Trevor Muller-Hegel
Teaching
2022–2023 – Taught Introduction to Game Design full time at the University of Wisconsin–Stout, in the School of Art & Design
Interviews
- Board Game Design Lab – “How to Live a Creative Life”
- Indie Board Game Designers – #152
- OMG! Nexus – “Four Humours Board Game Kickstarter Interview”
- We’re So Board! – “Four Humours”
- Lunchbox Reaction – “Interview with Charlie McCarron”
Game Industry Work
Asmodee
2025–Present: Game Design Manager for Office Dog and Z-Man Games.
Floodgate Games
2022–2025: Game developer/designer of Skyrockets, Hedge Mage, Flintlock!, and other yet-to-be-revealed games. Also composed music for the companion app to the game Décorum.
Fantasy Flight Games
2015–2016: Development intern, worked primarily on Star Wars Destiny.
Published Games
Four Humours
1-6 players, 45 minutes, ages 10+
Status: Published by Adam’s Apple Games
Based on the medieval theory of personality. Influence citizens on location cards with secret tokens, strategically working with or against your fellow players in unique game theory / prisoner’s dilemma scenarios.
3rd Place in the 2019 Cardboard Edison Awards
Skyrockets: Festivals of Fire
2-5 players, 20 minutes, ages 6+
Status: Published by Floodgate Games
Based on mechanics from Floodgate Games’ Kites, my role was to develop a campaign version with 30 unique gameplay modes.
In Skyrockets, players take turns to play cards and flip the matching sand timers (your fireworks) without letting any run out.
Keep the timers running as you advance along the Festival Countdown Track, and work together to amaze the crowds at each festival to earn the highest ratings.
Lunar Skyline
Compete to shape the skyline of a lunar metropolis in this trick-taking game featuring double-suited cards.
2-6 players, 15-30 minutes, ages 10+
Status: Published by Dead Alive Games
Each card you play features two suits, giving you the flexibility to follow either lead suit. You can also win tricks with expert ace pilots, or use your underground connections to smuggle in the resources you need. Every trick you take brings in valuable resources for your architectural masterpiece, but the real challenge is outpacing your competitors to complete your building contracts. Nail those bids, and you’ll earn lucrative bonuses that can make or break your business. Will you rise above the rest and dominate this new frontier?
Guesswork
2-8 players, 20 minutes, ages 8+
Status: Published by Button Shy Games
An 18-card cooperative party game where you have to read your friends’ minds as they fill in the blank on questions like “If I had 18 thumbs, how many thumbs up would I give the movie ______?” or “How many ______ could I fit in my mouth at once?” Inspired by games like Wavelength, Timeline, and Mad Libs, and fits in your pocket.
Winner of Button Shy’s 18-card Contest (Numbers on Cards, Round 2) as “18 Thumbs Up”
Alphabet Stoop
2-5 players, 20 minutes, ages 6+
Status: Published by Pops & Bejou Games
A word building, tile placement game. Move your package carriers from stoop to stoop. Drop off your packages on stoops and form words with newspapers (vowels), magazines (wild letters), and other packages (consonants).
Hedge Mage: Blizzard Wizard Expansion
A wacky expansion for the wacky maze-building and navigating game Hedge Mage.
2-4 players, 45 minutes, ages 10+
Status: Published by Floodgate Games
Charlie designed this expansion to Connor Wake’s Hedge Mage.
Surplus of Sloths
2-4 players, 15 minutes, ages 8+
Status: Crowdfunded by Weird Giraffe Games
A quick and strategic card drafting game.
The Troubadeck
A deck of chord cards to inspire music makers.
1-8 players, 10 minutes, ages 8+
Status: Self-released, Kickstarting a reprint with Weird Giraffe Games
Kickstarted in January 2024 for the Make 100 project, the Troubadeck is a deck of chord cards that can be used for music-making inspiration. While the deck can be used as a standard deck of playing cards, Charlie is also developing a series of games for music-learning edutainment.
Charlie custom composed all the chord progressions and drawing all the silly medieval animal art.
Upcoming Games
Ringyō
1-4 players, 45-90 minutes, ages 14+
Status: Signed with Paverson Games
A simultaneous worker placement game about sustainable forestry set in feudal Japan. Paverson Games will be crowdfunding in the second half of 2026.
The game will feature art by Kwanchai Moriya (Apiary and Dinosaur Island), graphic design by Brigette Indelicato (Let’s Go to Japan and Endless Winter), and cultural consultation by James Mendez Hodes (Dungeons & Dragons and Distilled).
林業 (Ringyō), which translates to ‘forestry’ in English, blends simultaneous worker placement, environmental management, and competitive strategy into an immersive experience that rewards foresight, adaptability, and respect for the natural world. Only the daimyō who accumulates the most favor after five rounds will be celebrated as the Shōgun’s favored lord.
Chroma Zone: Journey to Europa
Semi-cooperative space survival with a visual twist: players wear red glasses (computer team) or blue glasses (human team), and their vision of the world changes dramatically.
2-4 players, 45 minutes, ages 12+
Status: Signed
Video | Sell Sheet | Rules
Earth has fallen to a nasty virus that turns everyday humans into “Biters.” Humanity’s best chance is to start over by sending a spaceship to Jupiter’s most habitable moon, Europa.
Because space travel is stressful, the ship is equipped with a definitely-trustworthy Computer and a few Cyborgs who can hide among the humans and make sure the mission goes as planned.
Unfortunately, rumors abound about stowaway Biters, which the Computer will need to deal with before the journey is complete.
Wearing the glasses that match their team color, the Computer players (red) see each astronaut as merely a number, while the Human players (blue) see astronauts’ stress responses: Panic, Scream, Bite, Snoop, or Hack.
Professor Picasso (Formerly “Drawbacks”)
A game of hilarious drawing challenges!
2-12 players, 30 minutes, ages 6+
Co-designed with Peter Jensen
Status: Signed with PickPocket Games
Video | Sell Sheet | Rules
Professor Picasso is a funny, friendly drawing game where each player plays as a different wacky art professor. The professor has 40 seconds to draw a secret phrase with 2 drawbacks like “Swole: hold the pen in your bicep” and “Professor Woodpecker: only draw dots.” Then their “art students” (all other players) have 40 seconds to draw their interpretation of the clue giver’s often hilariously incomprehensible drawing. Finally, the art students present their drawings to the professor to see who was closest to the secret phrase.
Self-Released Games
Land of 10,000 Mistakes
2-6 players, 15 minutes, ages 8+
Commissioned by Three Rivers Park District for Silverwood Park’s E-cology event on July 22, 2023.
Status: Self-released, open to publishing elsewhere
In Land of 10,000 Mistakes, players will compete to successfully grow plants and humans on their own mini Minnesota map. Play it safe with plant life, or add more cities and risk catastrophic floods!
Darwin’s Desert
2 players, 15 minutes, ages 12+
Status: Released in The Game Crafter Community Anthology, open to publishing elsewhere
Your dice are the key to strategically “adapting” your creatures each turn, to respond to your opponent’s dice and come up with your own creative path to victory.
Judge Semi-Finalist in The Game Crafter Community Anthology Challenge
We Roll the Dice – Gordon Parks High School Redlining Game
1-20 players, 15 minutes, ages 8+
Status: Seeking educational partners to make the game available for schools & communities
Charlie worked with students and teachers at Gordon Parks High School to design a game that teaches people about the discriminatory lending practice of “redlining.”
Game description at 2:00.
Other Prototypes
Fruitful
2-4 players, 20 minutes, ages 8+
Co-designed with Trevor Kirchner
Fruitful is a strategic pattern spotting game where players stock a tropical fruit market using produce picked from their rainbow orchard.
Your orchard is filled to bursting with fruit of every color! Pick the perfect produce to create eye-catching displays in the bustling fruit market.
Sitcom
A creativity-building party game. Cooperate to make a TV show!
2-10 players, 30 minutes, ages 8+
Fill the cast with hilarious characters, then try being a writer, storyboard artist, actor, director, and producer.
The Sinking States of America
A climate catastrophe roll & write game.
1-6 players, 20 minutes, ages 8+
Video | Rules | Print & Play
A competitive flip-and-write game where players grow their personal state map with trees, families, and houses. Choices matter; the more greedy and human-centric the group is, the more climate catastrophes will befall your state: floods, fires, viruses, etc. Each game is played in a different state (18 variants) with a unique map, goals, and disasters.
Rulers & Rebels
2-6 players, 45 minutes
A puzzle-y and tense polyomino and dice game, where you send serfs, knights, and barons out on boats to claim land. Semi-cooperatively work with neighboring players to sway the tides of the game.
Marry Up!
3 players, 15 minutes, ages 8+
Placed 2nd in Button Shy’s Standard Playing Cards Contest
An 18-card, pick-and-pass drafting game where you’re trying to arrange the best marriages.
Dragon Insurance
2-5 players, 20 minutes, ages 10+
Finalist in the 2020 Cardboard Edison Award
A competitive word-building game where you’re a medieval insurance agent strategically insuring castles, sheep, knights–everything dragons love to burn.
Get in Touch
Feel free to reach out about any of these games! charliemccarron [at] gmail [dot] com
I always have new prototypes in progress. Sign up for my email list to stay informed about my games coming out.
If you’re an aspiring game designer, here are some tips and resources I’ve found helpful.