May 072008

Last night at our design meeting, I mentioned a game that I thought related to the topic at hand. We were discussing designing a game with a space ship control panel, when I remembered this game called Wormhole that had that very thing.

According to the entry on BoardGameGeek.com:

‘Wormhole’ by www.worldworksgames.com is a tabletop space combat game which promises an affordable yet paradigm shifting gaming experience. Taking the “virtual board game” concept to the bleeding edge; instead of forcing overpriced lead miniatures on players Wormhole offers a complete fleet of high quality 3-D models that you print and build from your home printer. This feature alone gives players the opportunity to build massive fleets without breaking the bank.

Wormhole promises “cinematic” space combat with visual style and presentation not yet seen in the genre. Rules are easy to understand but offer a scaling level of depth for a variety of play styles. Wormhole also introduces an interactive damage and orders system which removes heavy book-keeping tasks and replaces it with a “control panel-like” interface (you feel absolutely in control, barking orders to your fleet). A number of unique gaming elements conspire to make Wormhole a truly immersive and completely original gaming experience.

Notice how in the top right picture how the panel is modular!

I don’t know if it is just the lighting, but this looks awesome!

And here are the ships you actually play the game with.

After a hiatus, we returned to meeting last night. One activity we partook in was to come up with lists of board game titles. We then exchanged them and tried to describe the game that came to mind. Below is the list of game titles that you may one day see at a game store near you:

  • Longest Beard
  • The Missing Pocket Protector
  • I’ve Never Eaten So Much Licorice in My Life
  • Leptoglossus
  • The Happiest Alligator
  • Drunk on Christmas
  • Whatever Ian Wrote
  • Don’t Drink the Milk!
  • Mrs. Bossman
  • Oubliette
  • Space Hemorrhoids
  • Knizia Takes a Dive
  • Emo Factory
  • Llama Race
  • Euthanasia: The Game
  • The Hand of Solitude
  • Gordon’s Waffles
  • The Land of Cyclops
  • The Bloodstorm
  • Night of 1000 Sores
  • Robot Detox
  • Omelet of Disease
  • Crossbow Cows
  • Turtle Trance
Feb 262008

Tonight we will be able to continue with out weekly design meetings on our regular night and regular time. I’m stoked!

Exceptions

I have been playtesting Stellar Underworld at my local game store and with other gamers here and there. At one of those playings, I had one especially “thorough” playtester who offered more advice than I expected. I knew we were in for a rough game when he questioned my decision to include almost every aspect of the game. Why do we start with two of these? Why not three? Why not have an ability to do this? or that? Now keep in mind, a lot of these comments were before I was even finished explaining the rules. I was getting frustrated pretty quickly, but once the game got going, it settled down a bit. After the game, and after I had a few days to think about his comments, I realized that there were a lot of kernels of truth in what he had to say. The thing that stuck with me the most when he rolled his eyes a lot when I explained certain rules. To be more precise, it was the exceptions to those rules that were the problem. Thats when I realized that my game was full of exceptions.

For example:

  • You can use one henchman to transfer a cube into your warehouse, except for the first one each turn which is free.
  • You can use one henchman to trade a cube with the black market, except for the first one each turn which is free.
  • The starting sector is just like every other sector, except you can only take two cubes from it, it doesn’t replenish, and it starts with two cubes per player.
  • Cubes next to your ship as considered aboard your ship, except when your ship is at a sector where they are considered available for pickup.
  • Abilities can be used any number of times, except for the cantina ability which you can only do once, and certain sector abilities.

There are probably more, but these are the ones that jumped out at me. Exceptions are ok in small numbers, but in larger quantities it makes the game more difficult to follow for new players. My goal now is to weed out some of these exceptions, while retaining their original purpose. So far, I’m having luck at some of them, but others are kind of difficult. It is a three way battle between simplicity, gameplay, and theme. Hopefully, they’ll all be winners, and I know the game will be better for me having taken the time to put this problem under the microscope.

Feb 082008

Lately, our meeting schedule has been in flux, so last night when Ian and Marc came over, it was a nice treat.

Taktika

Ian discussed his latest scenario for Taktika. It involves a special disk known as the Glyph of Protection. The rules were simple and straight-forward. We recommended that he publish it on the web.

Coalescence

Marc showed us some really neat looking rings that he is using for his game Coalescence. He has painted them in such a way that, depending on the number of players, the rings can be used as different colored player pieces.

Dice Game

Marc showed us a quick two player dice game that he whipped together. It had a hand drawn board that kept track of the score. The players rolled the dice simultaneously, then selected one secretly to withhold. Depending on the dice left over, you could claim a spot in a column on the score chart. The earlier you get into a column, the more points. I think he’s on to something here, and I applaud any new non-yahtzee-like dice games.

Space Port

Space Port has shed its placeholder name and now dons the title Stellar Underworld. It connotes the seedy side of space life and has a unique ring to it. Just be thankful I didn’t put Galaxy or Galactic in the title! We’ve had enough of those words in game titles these past few years.In this latest version, we used new sector cards. The sectors are now split into three distinct groups each with their own deck. This allows players to have access to the sectors of one particular group if they want to use it as a part of their strategy. This was initially done to allow guaranteed access to sectors that desired contraband. Since several other mechanics revolved around contraband (Black Markets, Inspections) I didn’t want players to have to wait for the luck of the draw to utilize it. Besides putting contraband-loving sectors into one group, I also distinguished the groups by tiering their production. Sectors now either produce two, three, or four cubes based on their type. Overall, I think this system work great.

This was Marc’s first game, excluded some earlier proof-of-concept mock up. He said that the game had a daunting feeling to it when he started. Every player is given the same 16 cards, and each can only be used once. He felt that is was a difficult decision to play any particular card since he wasn’t sure how valuable any given card was. Also, the first turn gives you so many options that don’t pay out until later turns. After his actions started getting him some points after a few rounds, he said it started to click for him.

In the end, the score was 10 (Ian), 11 (Dan), 12 (Marc). I was very pleased with the way the game was played. Everyone was into it until the end. I’m stoked!

I’ve been revamping Space Port lately to fix some issues with the game. Actually, I’m revamping it to allow for more design space to fix some issues. Here are the changes:

StarCreds

The first change I made was to the currency system. In this universe, I used StarCreds as the money of choice. It was a name made up during one of our improv game design sessions and has been a running joke ever since. The problem with StarCreds is that is just a simple system. You gain StarCreds through certain actions, then you use them to pay for other actions. Basically, they function just like any other currency. As I was looking over ways to create more design space, I saw that the StarCred wasn’t pulling its own weight. It functioned as just a number. It was always just in a range of zero to some unbound amount. My idea spurred from the desire to inject more information into this mechanism. What if the used StarCreds didn’t go away, but just stayed there in a “used” state? What if there was a limit on the number of StarCreds you could own? Bam! That’s when it hit me.

To make sense of what I was about to do, I rethemed the StarCreds from currency to Henchman. Henchmen are just like StarCreds except they have a binary state: active or inactive. When you would gain a StarCred, you now activate a Henchman. When you would pay a StarCred, you now use (deactivate) a Henchman. New actions also have arisen such as recruiting a henchman, which is just taking a Henchman from the supply. New design space has arisen from this all over the place. There is now a limit on how many Henchmen you can have active at a time (Before there was no limit on StarCreds). You can increase that limit by recruiting (a whole new area to design with). Timing (my favorite game mechanic) comes to the limelight as now it becomes important when you gain a massive influx of “currency” because sometimes you have the room for it (a lot of inactivate henchmen), and other times you don’t (only one is inactivate). Also, the main use of StarCreds was to pay for loading goods, trading, and “borrowing” ships. Instead of paying for it, you now just have your Henchmen do the job for you!

StarCreds acted as another way to gain points at the end of the game. Each two StarCreds was worth one point. Gaining those points just happened, and there was no real thought involved. This scoring is now replaced by Henchmen which are each worth one point (active or not). To recruit a Henchman, you need you use two other Henchmen while at a Cantina. See what happened there? Using two Henchmen is the same as using two StarCreds. Instead of having two StarCreds left at the end of the game to give you points, you now have to make the decision to buy that point during the game. Of course, recruiting a Henchman has other benefits, so it all fits seamlessly together. Letting the player make the decision is what game play is all about.

Risk Management

Bad stuff can happen to you in the game and you just have to sit and take it. This was brought to my attention by Ian and Drey. We talked about the issue at length, but in the end it boiled down to risk management. I decided that by giving the player the choice to protect themselves at a cost, he can choose the level of risk he wants to take.

Shipping -The game is full of shipping. You can use your ships, neutral ships, and even other player’s ships. Other players don’t like when you use their ship even though the borrower has to pay for the privilege. The problem is that you can’t deny other players from doing this. The solution to this is to modify the cost system of borrowing. Now, the borrowing player uses a certain number of Henchmen. The ship’s owner can now deny them use of his ship by paying an equal amount of Henchmen. The ship’s owner now must manage his Henchmen so that he always has enough to thwart any attempts to hijack his ship. The hijacker must now carefully consider whether or not he wants to try and steal a ship because if his attempt is canceled, then he basically wasted Henchmen as well as a turn. Besides all that, with the new Henchmen mechanism, this oozes with theme.

Contraband - Contraband is the hot ticket item in the game. You never just want to leave it sitting on your ship or in your warehouse because someone else might play an inspection card which discards them. It was discussed that there be a way to pay for more protection for your contraband if you wanted it. So, the new system is that if you have two active Henchmen, your contraband is safe. No payment is necessary. Thematically, they just sit there and guard it. Of course, having your guys locked up to do this means that it will be difficult to pay for other things, but now at least you have a choice. I still need to playtest this a bit more, but I think it is simple enough to work.

Well, we meet tonight and I hope to test this out (and a few other changes). My preliminary testing last night made for some interesting plays, so I’m excited to see how it handles with more players.

Jan 212008

I have been looking for some boxes for my games for awhile now. In fact, I was in a car accident earlier last week on my way to Hobby Lobby to look for boxes. (Long story short: Fault-Theirs, Car-Totaled, Me-AOK). So, my box hunt lead me to Wal-Mart where I found Duck Brand Boxes. They come in a three-pack for less than $5. They are all white with a tuck box lid. They are meant to hold a regular 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, which is perfect for what I’m doing. I had to modify them with a little tab made out of scotch tape to make them easier to open, and a little more tape around the flap to make them easier to close, but other than that, I they are pretty nice. I glued a simple printout to the top for a cover and they were ready to go.

Does anyone have any good tips for game boxes?

Jan 102008

Due to scheduling changes, at least for awhile, our game design meetings will be on Thursdays. Tonight I plan on testing Space Port to get it ready for a convention this weekend.

But first, a recap of last meeting…

First Drey, Ian, Marc, and I played Space Port. Actually we didn’t get very far. The whole thing fell apart gameplay-wise so we stopped. It worked fine last time, but I must have tinkered with the wrong gears and apparently made it unplayable. Surprisingly, this turned out to be a good thing. I got a lot of feedback about my train wreck… a lot of good and diverse feedback. This had me theorizing that “great” games cause enthusiastic responses, “ok” games cause silence or apathy, and “bad” games cause productive and creative responses. I think that the last one may be because they know that everything is changeable because nothing really worked, so all suggestions are more likely to be implementable.

Then we played Marc’s new re-theming of his old game Pangaea, called Coalescence. The old theme was about continents merging into land masses. The new theme is about star systems coalescing. He fixed some rules from the last time I saw it where the end game was hard to determine. This was fixed by making most actions irreversible. This worked perfectly and the game wrapped up nicely without any confusion. Both Ian (or was it Drey?) and I had a problem with the new galaxy board design. It was too busy and distracted us from the game. Other than that issue, and the need for a tie breaker rule, the game looks and plays pretty good.

Finally, we played with some hero cards and tactics cards from an expansion to Ian’s Taktika. The hero cards are “always on” abilities. The tactics cards are “one shot” abilities. Overall, the concept worked pretty smoothly, although the actual content of the cards will probably need to be tested and tweaked a lot.

Now for tonight…

I have been solo playing Space Port as a two-player game this week for testing. Tonight, I hope to try it out with more players. Right now, the game allows two to four players. Any more and the game would probably be too crowded. I suppose I could create a different board for more players with more spaces, but that is a problem for the future. A two-player game comes in at about 21 minutes, according to the four times that I timed it. I am going to speculate that four players will take twice that amount. Of course, my timing was based on me playing as two players, so it may be more or less that amount.

Part of my plans this year is to playtest as much as I can at conventions, especially easy-on-the-wallet local ones. This weekend Ian and I will be attending a convention in Round Rock where we plan on playing, playtesting, and selling some of out games. I’m trying to get Space Port to a solid enough state to where I can play it with strangers without having to apologize every minute about a hole in the rules or about a clunky mechanic. I am also printing up another copy of Travelogue to play. I haven’t played it since July when I sent it away to Italy, so I’m curious about my new perspective on the game.

I have been busy this past week working on Space Port (or sometime Space Dock, as I interchangeably call it). I can’t remember the last time I’ve worked so hard on playtesting and revising a game in so short a time. I think it may be a by-product of my new schedule for game design this year. Now that I know that I only have a fixed amount of time to work on this game, I guess I am putting more into it up front. I work better under pressure, and it shows. My current year’s calendar has me working on Space Port for four months starting in January. By the time March rolls around, I should be heavily playtesting it with whoever I can find. By the third month, I’ll have a polished copy of the rules to begin blind playtesting. In the end, I should have a publisher friendly game box with a nice prototype and rules.

Starting in February I will begin work on my war game for four months. So, the two games will overlap for awhile. This will allow me to have something to do when I’m frustrated with the other game. We’ll see how that goes. I plan on entering both of these games into the Hippodice game design contest at the end of October. I’l probably have to retheme them since they are both sci-fi themed, but that’s another issue for another day. So, February is my unofficial mini-deadline for Space Port since at that time my attention will be divided in half.

The rest of my year is also planned out with new games and old ones that need revisiting. One new game is for the Lucca contest, which I wont start until they announce the rules for entry. Another new game is just left wide open. I wanted to give myself an “elective” game of sorts. That way I can come up with a cool idea and rest assured knowing that I’d have time set aside to work on it. The old game I’ll be working on is Venture Forth which has been received with glowing indifference. I basically need to inject some pop into the game because I think it is worthy of it. I also have my group of finished (or 99% finished) games that are “on” all the time which means that I should be always actively dealing with them by sending them to publishers or refining that one extra piece. It is comforting to have this plan because I feel that I’m in more control over where my games are headed. While the past two years my games were in pre-school running rampant and doing what they pleased, this year they are in college with a nice schedule to help further them along to “graduate”.

So far, my plan is going smoothly. At the very least I feel more relaxed and focused.

Dec 112007

The latest game design that I’m working on has spawned from a single mechanic into something really fun to work on. I won’t go into the mechanic now, but I will talk about the theme of the game: Sci-Fi!

The game’s setting is inspired by Mos Eisley from Star Wars. The central board of the game depicts a spaceport where there’s lots of hustle and bustle amongst the lowlifes and smugglers. You play as the equivalent of a Hutt Crimelord. Your job is to get your shipments of goods and contraband to where they need to go. You loosely control pilots and their ships to do your dirty work. Yes, this game could just as well be played in the Mediterranean with your typical traders with weird hats, but who wants to play that yet again?

By setting this game in a familiar place, I can infuse theme into the game by asking WWHSD? Han Solo would find business at the Cantina. Han Solo would do anything for the right price. So far, that seems to be working. Those ideas translate into: You can convert goods into contraband at the Cantina. You can use your opponent’s ships by paying the other player off. As I hone down the rules and mechanics, I’ll be adding more thematic elements like these.

Last night I refined my prototype to make sure I had enough pieces to play. When I threw the game together initially, I just grabbed some wooden cubes and said to myself “This looks like enough.” So, I looked through my box of game bits and found some colored cubes for the shipments. I took some small wooden milk bottle things and made them into rocket ships. My board, which is just a circular ring of docking bays, needed some cantinas, so I just added some gray blocks to the board. I put the board on a black cloth just to add to the space-faring theme.

The individual planets that a player controls were fun to design. Right now, they are just denoted by what cubes they produce and what cubes they require. Since there are only three types of planets and three types of goods, it was a bit tight to design them yet still make them interesting. Also, one of the planets is a Rebel planet. It is where all of your contraband needs to go once you acquire it. I still need to make the individual planet place cards because as of right now the cubes will be sitting on post-its.

Right now, I’m still in the design phase, but certain rules are starting to congeal into permanent ones. I’m still experimenting with ideas and trying new techniques out, which is where most of the fun is when working on a game. I’ll try to keep you posted on my progress.

Last night I had some friends over to play House of Whack. Most of them had played the version that comes in the box, but I wanted to show them the version that comes *outside* the box. This was the version I had always wanted to play. It’s not something that can easily be explained in a manual as you really have to experience it firsthand due to its emergent, organic game play.

Before we set up, I asked each player to describe what made a game fun for them. Nick said he enjoyed player interaction. So I then asked for another player to take on the responsibility of making sure Nick had player interaction. Julia volunteered. Next, Jen said she really enjoyed being able to hoard money in a game. So Cory volunteered to introduce financial tension in the game. Jake liked games with bidding. Nick offered to oversee that aspect. In fact, when Julia said she wanted a game with multiple end goals, Nick made everyone bid for the right to manage that. Jake won by bidding two blue beads (at this point Cory had yet to reveal the value of any of the beads in play). Finally, Cory said he liked games where player actions had lasting ramifications. Jen took on the responsibility of making sure that element was in the game.

Everyone then chose a playing piece from a selection of D&D minis and HeroClix figures and placed them on the Start tile. I then said, “The rules say you start out with three Drama cards each, but what do YOU say?” The players proposed that everyone should get five cards instead, except for Nick, who got only two. He was outvoted.

I explained that the information printed on the cards should be used as a last resort, if the players had difficulty inventing an alternate purpose for a card. I said that the name of the card and the artwork were actually more important than any rules they might find there. Nick immediately played the Destiny card, but called it the “High 5” card as it showed a hand on it. He announced that whenever two players high-fived, they got two gems. I pointed out that Nick had now made an offer to the other players. The players then had the opportunity to agree with this new “rule” or modify it. I discouraged outright vetoes.

The players began exploring the House. They decided to ignore the movement rules and say that you could use an Action to automatically move to an adjacent room. When a new room was revealed, I asked the player to tell everyone about the room and if there was anything special we should know about it. For instance, if someone entered the Clone Chamber, they had to face a horrific clone duplicate of themselves. One of my favorite inventions was the Whack Ball room. Nick decided that players could engage in a gladiatorial sport called “Sun Fighting.” Each player started with an arm extended above their head. You won the battle by pushing down on your opponent’s fist so that it went down past their shoulder. At one point, Nick and Cory got swallowed by the Dire Frog and discovered a room inside the Frog’s belly. But then Julia played the Impostor card and switched their position with Jake.

I should point out that Nick never chose a playing piece. It was discovered that Nick and Cory were somehow grafted together like conjoined twins. Wherever Cory moved, Nick was there too. This also gave each player access to the other’s Drama cards. When they tried to high five each other to gain 2 gems, the other players protested, saying it was actually just clapping, given their circumstances.

A few rooms were in play before Cory realized that he had no idea how to win. Jake, thinking of Julia’s desire for multiple end goals, proposed that there be multiple ways to win. This was put to a vote. Each player then came up with a way to win or end the game. So, in this instance of the game, a player could win by having the most money (but Julia could win if she had the least), or if they rode the Walking Room, or if they ever had 15 cards in their hand, or if they recovered all four of the Sacred Artifacts, or if there was no more room on the table for more room tiles, or if someone sang the best rendition of Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire.”

During this game, most of the action was in the Drama cards. Only about five rooms made it into play and about six Whack cards were drawn. The Guest cards were never used. Jen caused a tower to rise up in the middle of board. Jake used the Architect to build himself a tiny green house which allowed him to charge rent for anyone who landed in that room. And I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, but Jake sent an army of ninjas off to retrieve something that Jen was trying to steal, but they ended up getting destroyed in a war. Cory played the Scarf Trick card on Nick, who had recently taken up knitting and was literally knitting a scarf during the game. His trick was to instantly change his sad face to a happy face behind the scarf. It was one of those things where you had to be there to appreciate it. This applies for the entire play session too.

I was really happy with everyone’s inventiveness concerning the Drama cards. I felt that each of the players was able to tell an interesting story with their cards and make convincing cases for actions they were trying to perform.

The game ended when Nick entered The Gate and discovered the Walking Room, which he was able to ride. Jen won the game because she had the Hope card in her hand, which granted 10 Gold Hearts at the end of the game. Cory revealed that the hearts were indeed the most valuable currency in the game, worth much more than the red, blue and gold beads.

Overall, I couldn’t have been happier with how the game went. It was exactly how I imagined the game would be played. The actual “rules” that come with the game were rarely referred to. So hopefully this account will inspire you to try playing the game in a completely different way.