Tagged: board games

divergent evolution

Talking about SpaceCards here and there with anbrewk (I know, I know, I was supposed to move on. Sue me), he began chasing ideas in much the same way as I have been: “Ah, wouldn’t it be cool if there were different weapons/systems/frameworks/captains/races/frameworks.” Before too long, both of us had mentally invested quite a bit into this exploration space. For every one of the mechanics and ideas I had already established in my existing iteration, he had a new “what if” to counter or expand upon it. Likewise, I was quick to latch on to some of his ideas and discard others as they fit more or less well with the schema I had envisioned. And so, a fork. He began work in earnest on his own vision while I returned to my drawing board with a handful of fresh adaptations to try. The next couple of days found us popping in on each other, sharing our most exciting developments and listening for interesting potentials in the other’s work. It’s remarkable how someone working in parallel can motivate you to keep moving forward.

I’m quite interested to see the different sorts of games we end up making. I’m pretty confident with the mechanics I’ve established; it’s now just a matter of writing up some of the cards and balancing them against each other. Similarly, Andrew seems to have no misgivings about his design and is happily working away at enriching some of his thematic elements. As a bit of a historical record (strange though it may look in the future), here is my idea of both games:

berv: Two spaceships chase each other to every corner of the galaxy, with crew members scrambling to add, modify, and drop installed systems, always seeking to optimize for the next confrontation. The very shapes of these ships change as combat makes its mark, but each is indefatigable, regrouping every time and coming up with a new synergy to stay in the game. Opportunities to attack are taken when they arise, with the attacker’s direction, target, and armaments being pitched against the defender’s shields, armor, and evasive capability, all of which have a different effect on how combat unfolds. With over 100 different systems cards driving every aspect of the game, no two duels will play out the same way.

anbrewk: A challenge between captains leads each to spare no expense as they lock their ships in for a duel to the death. Each captain brings not only a particular specialty to the table, but also a ship of unique design, providing benefits, detriments, and possibilities beside the other’s. Not all systems are created equal, so each player will seek out the strongest equipment, trading in and upgrading at the temporary cost of some flexibility. Blast, board, or ram your opponent before they can jump away from combat, but never forget that, with enough power, you can chase right after them. With a wide selection of systems, captains, and ships to build upon, each duel will be a unique and memorable one.

Do those sound largely the same? Ha! Maybe they are. They’re both coming in hot from FTL-driven imaginings, they’re both based on a card-driven system, and they both play with spatial arrangement a little bit. Where I think they’ll differ is in the overall game feel. Where mine will be a series of escapes and exchanges, anbrewk’s might be more a constant struggle to keep things together under pressure. If I had to guess, I think his overall experience might be closer to FTL while mine would look more like Race for the Galaxy. But it’s all speculation at this point. We’ll see soon enough.

confidence- –

Agh; I’m living too much in my head again.

I began my day continuing work on this 1v1 spaceship battling card game, chewing on some tough questions about the relevance of ship layout and systems positioning, when thoughts of my old cooperative spaceship game began to resurface (do I like spaceships? Yes I do). I began thinking about what differentiated the two games at their core in order to appropriately divide ideas between them. In doing so, I considered a handful of other games that have walked similar paths either in terms of theme, mechanics, or both. I felt like some of the aspects I was considering were too much like Galaxy Trucker while others felt too liberally borrowed from Glory to Rome. And in investigating the “genre” of high-pressure cooperative spaceship games, I came once again across Space Alert. I had had a vague familiarity with the game, but investigating its rules more deeply today has left me a bit disheartened. Within it lie so many of the ideas I’ve been excited to see implemented: frantic scrambling, rush decisions, partial information, and consequences shared by the whole team. And it leaves me wondering: what else do I have to offer?

It is perhaps a challenge to be expected, given the way I’ve been approaching design. Rather than beginning with a clever and satisfying new mechanic, I start with the sort of experience I’d like the player to have. “Panicked astronauts scrambling to put out fires; desperate retrofitting of systems to deal with emergent threats.” With only this picture in mind, the mechanical ideas that most readily come to mind are those I’ve encountered in other games. This leads to an endless recombination of systems as I waffle on what would be the most interesting. It’s at this point that I find something like Space Alert, which has taken an idea in this sphere and committed to it. Because it’s finished, because it’s cohesive, it seems like the paragon of achievement in this genre. Which is of course not true; it only represents one of many ways the theme might be explored, but it’s hard to get around sometimes.

Would I be better off thinking only about mechanics? Designing something that’s fun first and finding a theme to suit it afterwards? Quite possibly: many of the digital game developers I pay attention to would insist its the only way to end up with something worthwhile. But this isn’t how my brain works. I like to think in images, in experiences, and only then begin to consider how those might be evoked. Am I setting myself up for failure? Is this not the mind of a game developer but of something else entirely? Gosh.

word thievery

It was late but we had some energy to burn, so J suggested we play a light word game, Word Thief, that she’d received as a gift. The rules were simple enough: on your turn, drawing from a hand of letter cards, either:

  1. Assemble a word to lay on the table, counting up the point values (identical to Scrabble) and taking the corresponding amount of points.
  2. Take one of your opponent’s words and, with the possibility of splitting and recombination, add at least one letter from your hand to make one or more words of your own. The player who lost the word loses its points and the player who took it gains a corresponding amount

Complicating this slightly were the standard suits that each card had, which, if played in a word of matching suits, made that word unstealable and thus locked the points in. It’s simple, it’s accessible, and given that we both like playing with words, it seemed like a decent possibility. We quickly realized a number of problems, though. If you make a brilliant eleven-letter word with two Zs and a Q, your opponent can steal it, and, with a letter of their own, break it into 4 3-letter words. Though the rules are rather unclear when it comes to how exactly the flow of points works in this scenario, any interpretation sees the clever ZZQ player losing points and the thief gaining them. Additionally, if any of the three letter words happen to match in suit, those points are locked in for that player. It’s a system that emphasizes the breaking down of words and the matching of suits over the building of tricky words and a corresponding point gain. We realized here that Word Thief, as written, was less a word game and more of a matching game. Though this would make the game more accessible, it also makes the game less interesting to us. As it was a particular sort of word game we were looking for, we set about rewriting the rules to serve our interest.

Variant 1: Stolen words may be split but may not be recombined. At least one letter must be added to at least one of the new words. Example: “doggerel” could be split into “dog,” “ge,” and “rel,” which could then be added to give “dog,” “gel,” and “relate.” Suits and letter values are disregarded; scoring is based on word length alone.

This worked reasonably well in shifting the game away from the matching mechanics that had undermined it as written. We particularly liked the scoring based on word length. We tried out (word length – 3)^2 for the scoring, and were quite happy with the resultant 11 to 17 game. It was certainly tidier and it encouraged longer words, but the word-breaking mechanic still ran against that. Thus:

Variant 2: Stolen words must remain a single word, but may be recombined freely. Additionally, one letter must be removed and any number of letters may be added. Example: “streamers” could become “masteries” with the removal of an R and the addition of an I. Suits and letter values are disregarded; scoring is based on word length alone.

This made for a really interesting game! To be forced to think of words in their totality shifted things considerably: words got progressively longer and more difficult to steal as the game went on, and the game ended with some truly incredible feats of spelling. This had tapped into what we were seeking; it required creativity and lexicographical flexibility. It did slow down quite a bit towards the end though; taking the possibilities of an eleven letter word into consideration (and the additional permutations created by removing one and adding some from your available pool) can be a pretty heavy task. Still, I think this variant brings the game much closer to that which we were looking for.

Some further variant possibilities:

  • Removal of the wildcards from the deck, granting each player a single wildcard that is returned to them whenever a word containing it is stolen. This might lead, however, to players simply ignoring each others’ wildcard words.
  • Expansion of one’s available spelling pool beyond their hand of cards and out to all possible letters. This would be a different game entirely and might be better played out on paper. It seems too bad to lose the cards, though, and a little constraint isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
  • Re-integration of the suits in some way that didn’t break the new core we’ve established. This seems pretty unlikely.

Or maybe it’s where it needs to be for now! Our second variant was well worth the time, and scratched the itch I think we were looking to scratch. Most importantly, I could see us playing it again where the basic game would just be left on the shelf. I’m pretty glad for this little freeform design jam. Wouldn’t mind doing that sort of thing again some time.

face to face

Most of my board gaming happens with only one or two other people and as such, I’ve played a lot of 2-3 player games. I’ve enjoyed getting into the mechanics of each with relatively consistent opponents and refining our strategies over time. But the other night I played a few games with a group of 5, which not only let us play a few games that don’t often hit the table, but opened up a whole other axis of gameplay.

Our games for the evening were Santiago, Mall of Horror, and a cobbled-together homebrew version of Skull and Roses1. Perhaps it’s just coincidence that we ended up with these three, or perhaps it was inevitable given the lively spirit of the evening, but each of these games is interaction-heavy in a distinctly social way. Each lays down a set of mechanics that bring the gameplay off the table and into the space between people. Though you’re still considering board position, potential point gains, and the like, the majority of gameplay takes place socially through negotiations and bluffs and open proclamations of hubris. Rather than spiraling deeper and deeper into the board as the games went on, I found myself looking more deeply into the eyes of my opponents.

It’s a departure from my usual approach to design, but I’m very curious to explore this sort of interaction space. Some truly wonderful things have been done with it lately. But it requires a completely different sort of approach. Rather than thinking “how can these elements interact?” it’s the much more open-ended question of “how can these people interact?” It presents nearly limitless possibility in a direction I had only cursorily considered until now.

I suppose I’ll put it in the old rock tumbler for a bit and see what comes out.

—

1<If these were digital games, I’d link to the designers’ pages to ensure they got the traffic. But given the board game industry’s heavy reliance on the manufacturing and distribution benefits conferred through partnering with publishers, the designers often don’t have a prominent online presence apart from those of their publishers. So these links are all to the games’ respective BoardGameGeek pages, where many of the designers tend to hang out.>

gobbing

Just finished sitting in on a blind playtest of my goblin boardgame. Completely exhausted.

Note to self: tune play so as not to allow this tidy 30-min experience to become a 2-hour slog.

Ha ha.

gobs of gobbs

It’s been a bit of a slog getting through the last of my rules illustrations for that goblin boardgame of mine, but now they’re finished and I have a shiny manual full of awful placeholder art! Shaky hand-drawn arrows! Public domain clipart! Low res!

I’m actually pretty excited about this. It is, at this point, a more or less finished game! The system is pretty tight, there’s some good variety both in player strategy as well as initial configuration, and a fairly feedback-heavy set of mechanics. The next step is to sit in on a blind playtest, a step I am fortunate enough to have volunteers to help me with. Will they, the newly initiated yet terribly clever, find obliviating rules loopholes and shake my game to the core? More importantly, will they enjoy themselves?

I haven’t done much yet in the way of investigating publishers and the whole process of transforming these, my ideas, into something real and tangible and pretty, but it’s got me a little excited, too. Anbrewk was speculating about the world of rights and royalties and it came into sharp relief how little I know about those things. But it’s a path others have walked before, and one that some of the particularly generous have documented for my benefit. It sure would be neat to have a publisher pick up all those aspects that I’m not so familiar/confident with. That’s really the dream life, no? Design and design alone…

One step at a time, berv…

gobbs o’ fun

Taking Ceej’s advice, I put some time today into my goblin-themed boardgame (still searching for a title…). It’s very close to finished; what I’m working on is writing up the manual so someone who hasn’t designed the game can make sense of it. This isn’t so bad a process as I’m pretty comfortable with descriptive writing and have most of it down already; it’s the illustration that really wears me out. It’s all placeholder art, of course, as the hopes are that I’ll be able to find a publisher to take on everything that isn’t design (ha! hoping for some particularly receptive folk here), but it’s fiddly stuff all the same. Lining things up to a grid, making tidy curved lines, and all sorts of resolution twiddling.

I’m writing this as a break from fiddling away at it in Photoshop but, as I do, I’m coming to realize that I’m going about this in entirely the wrong way. Each aspect of image editing that I get hung up on provides the potential to not get hung up in that way in the future. Sure, it might never be my most-looked-forward-to element of a project, but the more time I spend with it the easier it will become, right? And, as I’ve stated before, even just acquiring a greater understanding of the processes of digital artists  can’t be a bad thing.

I hope, though, that those who might assess this little game don’t mind too terribly my clip art pastiche. A goblin looks like a goblin and a tunnel a tunnel, but it’s a long way from visual cohesion. Which makes me wonder what it might look like in the hands of a capable artist. Madcap cartoon goofiness? Oversaturated fantasy oils? Perhaps, one day, I will see.

drr… drr…

So where to now? Having seen a (very small) project to completion, I can’t decide in what direction I ought to resume working.

There are the bigger projects that I’ve been kicking around for a while:

  • Space: Myst combined with Mirror’s Edge; a focus on discovery through exploration and kinaesthesia. I’ve got a cohesive visual style down and a reasonable grip on the gameplay; my biggest obstacle with this one is all the environment modeling required. Perhaps this is my impetus to get more comfortable with Blender.
  • Wizards: All I’ve got here to be excited here about is my vague spell system. Right now the play looks a bit like Smash Bros., but shoehorning the spells into that framework would be anything but easy (and would likely be nigh-unplayable). Either I work more in the Smash Bros. direction and see what new things emerge, or I put the spell system in my idea box for later.
  • Restaurant: Inspired by this Blendo post, I’d really like to create a short, emergent, iterative experience to be played through multiple times. Wouldn’t it be neat if it was interesting and dynamic enough that people might want to share their particular iterations as videos? This is a long way from anywhere right now; programming an interactive global AI is a pretty heavy task.
  • Board games: I’ve got the mechanics of my goblin game pretty well polished up, but what’s next? I suppose I ought to refine the written rules… but then I’m going to need art! Ack! That process of seeking out an artist without having a plan for where all this is going is a little daunting. Maybe I should make a plan. Apply to publishers? Put it up as a print-and-play download? Self-publish? How do I go about gathering an audience?

With each of those, there are big pieces keeping me timid and I’ll need a concerted effort to tackle any of them. So I tend to flit about smaller things! Such as:

  • Dialogue colours: Navigate dialogue not with literal options but vague emotional nuances! Reactions differ widely depending on context! Blend your nuances for even greater control! To what end?(!)
  • Absence: A series of short genre-based games, each lacking an element standard to their genre. An RPG without text! A shoot-em-up without shooting! These might be a good way to stretch my game making skills…
  • Dark Souls: Shoot, someone already did that one. Ha ha.

Pick a direction and go with it, berv…