Arachnid ends up on the Scrap-Heap

2024-10-14 / / 0 Comments

After much deliberation, I finally decided to scrap this game. It just wasn’t viable in my opinion. It had many fun features but it occasionally fell flat on its face. The economy was balanced on a knife edge between scarcity and overabundance. When resources were scarce, the tension was high and the decisions were interesting, and difficult. Then the balance would shift to overabundance, resulting in a very boring game. There was also an obvious dominant strategy of keeping the web clear of Critters, which was often easy to do, since they were randomly generated at a fairly constant rate. Overall, I thing the game was too determinate, lacking the flexibility needed to handle the negative events and the fluctuations in the economy.

What I’ve Learnt

The main take from this experience was that you can’t force it. Like pushing a rope, it simply doesn’t work when you try force a game to be fun, or force it to be like some initial idealistic vision you had for the game. The harder you push, the further you tend to get from your goal. A couple recent games of mine come to mind.

The first is Nova-Raiders. It is a fast paced, dice driven, space game inspired by Backgammon. The first few attempts didn’t work well, but there was definitely a game in there somewhere. Playtesting proved this out. After a few more iterations, the game seemed fairly solid and players enjoyed playing it. I’ve recently tweaked the User Interface, modified the scoring and have tried to mitigate the arbitrary Take-That features of the game. It seems to be humming along very well. This was only possible because my core mechanics were sound and people like playing the game. The game, in a sense, was pulling me along, rather than me trying to push it. This is, I believe, the way a proper game design should work.

There are always surprises, of course. Fried dice is the second game I would like to mention. It is a simple roll and write game with an interesting dice mechanism which I came up with to entertain my young nephews. It turns out that it didn’t interest them but the adults sure had fun with it. A game could take you to unexpected places, but as long as it’s taking you somewhere, it’s probably a viable game.

The Bad, the Good and the Not so Ugly

We’ll start with the Bad:

  • The game started out competitive, but I switched it to cooperative because I couldn’t overcome the politics of one player sitting back while the other players duke it, depleting their resources. This was the wrong reason to make a cooperative game.
  • The game isn’t going anywhere until the core mechanics are solid and robust.
  • Adding more stuff doesn’t fix any problems and tends to make the game worse. I had to take a hatchet to the game and do some serious trimming down more than once.
  • Players need interesting choices, not obvious ones.
  • Mismatched mechanics that don’t reinforce the theme can cause dissonance and thematic breaks. This can ruin a good game and make a bad one worse.

Now for some Good things:

  • The marble based action selection mechanism I came up with in one iteration will make a really good core mechanism in a future game.
  • The various card based action selection mechanisms that I experimented with will definitely be useful in other games.
  • I’ve worked with many other game designers while developing this game and made a few friends.

The Not so Ugly

  • I’ve really honed my digital prototyping skills and have become proficient at designing and desktop publishing.
  • I still can’t draw worth a damn, but my graphic design skills have come a long way.
  • I worked with a professional printer and managed to have some very nice prototypes made.

Overall, it’s been a good experience, but I have to recognize when a game just isn’t working and pull the plug earlier.

Lesson Learned.

House Ruling Botany

2024-04-10 / / 0 Comments

I had just received a Kickstarter game that I was eagerly anticipating for a little while now. Botany turned out to be a beautiful game, made with with high quality components. I immediately punched out the components which all fit into the well thought out storage trays and added the two additional expansions which also fit nicely in the original box. I then dug into the rulebook and started to learn the game.

There were a few confusing parts of the rulebook and what appeared to be some ambiguity in the turn sequence. I decided to try a two player game with my wife, assuming that all would be clear after the first play. This first play was a bit awkward, like a first play usually is, but we got through it fine. Going out on expeditions, collecting samples, and pushing our luck to grab those last few samples was very rewarding. However, we often found ourselves stopping to resolve issues that came up, disrupting the flow of the game. This resulted in numerous thematic breaks, just as we were getting into the game. We chalked it up to inexperience and resolved to try it again the next day.

About half way through the second game, we noticed that the game flow had actually seemed more discordant than the first time and there was some ambiguity in the turn action order as described in the rules. We tried to follow a more consistent turn flow during the second half of the game to reduce the thematic breaks and were finally successful near the end. It seemed to be the event cards which gumming up the works. Not the events themselves, but how and when we resolved them. The game took even longer the second time, even though we were more familiar with it. This was due to the Reputation Track, which was also the game timer, being constantly set back by the event cards. The game overstayed it’s welcome. It was a shame to see a game that was basically a work of art with some really fun parts to it, being bogged down with confusion and set-backs. It’s time to add some house rules.

The main source of disruptions in the game was the resolving of the event cards and when a player chose to resolve them. According to the rules, you could optionally resolve the card at the beginning of your turn, or wait until you acquired your first specimen during the movement phase. If you didn’t acquire any specimens, you could get away without drawing an event card. The events generally were something bad or something good, which was determined by rolling a single die. More often than not, it was best to avoid the events unless you had a large number of Expedition cards which helped you mitigate the die rolls or evade the harmful effects. Only a true masochist would opt to draw an event card at the beginning of every turn, but this was necessary if you wanted to pick up any specimens in your travels. Drawing the event part way into the movement portion of your turn, however, was very disruptive. You had to stop dead in your tracks, draw an event card, then search for Keywords on all of your Expedition cards to see if they matched the keywords on on the event in the hopes of avoiding any harmful effects. By this time you have completely forgotten how many more movements you have left and you have broken out of the really cool theme of the game. This had to be fixed.

House Rule #1

You must draw an event card at the beginning of your turn if you plan on picking up any specimens during your turn. This way, the disruptions are dealt with up front and you then can get back into the flow of the game. (If you don’t draw an event card, you can’t pick up any specimens, sorry about your luck.)

House Rule #2

Organize your Expedition cards by Keyword so they are easier to parse. I am so tempted to take a highlighter to all the keywords on the cards, but I will hold off for the moment. We’ll see how grouping the cards works for now.

House Rule #3

You can have only one of any type of Expedition card. This eliminates the many ambiguities of having more than one of any specific card. Some of these cards require you to roll a die. If you have two cards, do you roll two dice and resolve each individually? Do you roll one die to achieve double the effects? What if one card allows you to succeed and the other causes you to fail? Let’s just avoid all of these problems by eliminating any duplicates. If you draw a card from the face down pile and it matches what you already have, you simply discard it and draw another one. If you can’t find any cards that you don’t already have, you have too many Expedition cards anyway. Having more than one type of card also gives too much of an advantage to a player.

House Rule #4

Modified turn flow and turn reference card. The existing turn reference card was very helpful for a standard turn and reflected my earlier suggestion of drawing an event card at the beginning of your turn. Between step #3 (Move) and step #4 (Specimen Cards) there should be a special highlighted note to Flip the card over if you reach the Estate. (Your movement ends)

Standard Turn

  1. Pay one coin
  2. Draw an event card, Optional
  3. Move

Flip this card over if you have reached the Estate

  1. Draw new Specimen Cards
  2. Collect Income
  3. Buy an Expedition Card

Estate Turn

  1. Draw new Specimen Cards
  2. Collect Income
  3. Deposit Specimens
  4. Optionally Sabotage other players
  5. Gain additional income from Deposited Specimens
  6. Optionally purchase a Garden Feature
  7. Optionally Cycle Expedition Cards
  8. Fund the next Expedition

House Rule #5

Remove 19 of the of the Event cards. There are a total of 76 event cards in the base game and players will only see about 25 of these during a typical game. Nobody is going to miss the19 cards you removed. The following cards can be eliminated:

  • 13 situations which could cause a player to lose reputation. This will speed the game up and keep the tension high.
  • 5 cards which could cause a player to end their turn immediately. Losing a turn slows down the game and makes it vary unpleasant for the player.
  • the “Income Taxes” card because it forces players to choose between two vary bad outcomes. It just isn’t fun.

Removing these cards should prevent the game from dragging on too long and provide a more positive experience.

We haven’t fully tested these rule tweaks, but we will in the following weeks. If you’ve tried these out yourself, please let me know how it went.

Take Care and Happy Gamming

RogerDoger

Arachnid gets a Reality Check

2023-11-22 / / 0 Comments

Designing Arachnid has been a long learning process. Just when I think I’ve made every possible mistake, I managed to make a few more. The most notable mistake was being blind to the flaws in my game. I also became too attached to one of the cool new mechanisms I came up with which resulted in me losing my objectivity. These major flaws were finally brought to light in a recent play test with other game designers. They were honest and forthright with their observations and I thank them for that, The consensus was that I have to put down the scalpel and bring out the axe, some things in this game have to go.

Arachnid Version #31
The above Image is version #31, with more mechanisms than you can shake a stick at.

The concept was sound, the theme was good, but the mechanics were horrible. The worker placement and action selection system was very fiddly, causing players to constantly disconnect from the theme. The action queue, using marbles in an angled trough was a cool mechanism, but it was ill fitting and under-utilized for this game. It was the first thing I decided to remove. Everybody liked the marbles, and they will definitely be used in some other game, but not in this one.

A really cool but misplaced mechanism. It will be used in another game.

The next thing to go was the awkward bug event deck, this will be replaced with a simple chit-pull system used in the earlier iterations of the game. The action queue was also used to trigger certain events in the game, but this tended to divert the players attention away from the core actions of the game. These actions will be integrated into the turn structure instead, and hopefully provide a smoother game flow. 

Also gone, is the movement tracking system because it was fiddly, and players constantly forgot to reset their movement tracks during the opponent’s turn. I had noticed players disengaging from the game, so in the last iteration, players would have to rest on the other players turn by moving their action markers back one space. I thought this would keep the players engaged between tutns and focused on the game. The exact opposite happened. Players struggled to remember to reset their action token, causing them to disengage from the game more than before. I guess that didn’t work.

Arachnid version #32, a cleaner and simpler design.

The player boards are gone, now that the action system is being reworked, and the auxiliary board with the hospital and nursery are no longer required. Eliminating all this excess junk gave the game a much cleaner look. The only items on the table are;

  • The main board as well as tokens for webs, flies and Critters
  • The spider university, a market where spiders acquire new action cards.
  • The scenario board which controls each of the four scenarios.
  • A bag of event tokens
  • A deck of action cards which the players use to perform their various actions throughout the game.
  • An Alpha Spider token used to indicate the first player each round

The actions the players perform are the same, but the old worker queue and placement system is replaced by a deck of cards. Players simply select an action from a hand of 6 cards. The movement is tracked by discarding cards face down from the hand. The finite amount of cards forces players to choose their actions wisely and move efficiently. 

The critters move after all the players have performed an action and the bug events are determined by drawing a token from a bag whenever the players refresh their hands. The peril advances after each action round and hand refresh. This will hopefully make for a much more streamlined game. The next play-test will tell me if I hacked off too many parts of the game. It’s time to put the axe down and carry on.

La Famiglia gets a second life

2023-07-18 / / 0 Comments
La Famiglia, $-Player on Screentop.gg
La Famiglia – Version 9 4 player team game on screentop.gg

How it All Began

I’ve dusted off the cobwebs and given La Famiglia a second chance. I’m even planning on entering it into a contest. This game has a long and tangled history and it is finally going to see the light of day.

It all began in late 2019. I was tired of playing euchre the traditional way and started to make up my own variations. Some of them worked quite well, especially a two player variant I called Domination. It was a mash-up of one of the “Rook” games and euchre. This is still my favorite way to play two handed Euchre. I soon started with variants of the standard 4 player Euchre. Some worked and some didn’t, but they were the beginning of something new and interesting.

Late in 2020, after researching many trick-taking games, I decided to come up with one of my own, which incorporated my favorite mechanics from existing trick-taking games and added a few of my own. The Mafia Theme seemed to fit nicely, so I named it La Famiglia. (The Family). I had worked out most of the bugs by version 4d (2021-03-29) and made up a prototype deck as well as a digital prototype on Tabletop Simulator. It seemed to work OK in a few playtests but didn’t really appeal to hobby gamers. I shelved the game because I didn’t think it would be marketable and considered it a good learning exercise.

Not too long after, there were quite a few new trick-taking games which were very unique and inventive. The Crew was one of the more notable games to come out. It had a deck of cards which gave the players a number of different variations to play. Even though The Crew was a cooperative game, it had some similar features to my game. I decided to abandon my game and leave it on the shelf for good.

It’s Back

I decided to give the game one more go. After all, my family enjoyed playing the first prototype and people who have played traditional trick-taking games seem to enjoy the digital prototype as well. It probably won’t ever be in the BGG top rated games because it is too much like a traditional game like Hearts or 500, but it’s mine and I like the game. I also would like to make this game a reality, even if I only sell a handful of games. It will be dedicated to my Mom who recently passed. We wore out more than a few decks of cards playing euchre. You can even say that I learnt how to count playing Euchre. (My Kindergarten teacher had to teach me that One comes before two…not Ace..and Jack Queen King aren’t really numbers.) Here’s to you Mom.

The New Deal

La Famiglia – Version 9 2 player set-up on screentop.gg

It’s July 2023 and La Famillia v9 is rolling out with the following changes:

  • The Main deck is modified.
  • The Situation Deck is completely revised and reduced to just 13 Scenarios.
  • All the art is changed so that it can be made available to the public. (The art is still cheesy clipart, but it is all legal now.)
  • The Ruling Family (Trump) tracking card has been added.
  • The new digital prototype is ready for Prime Time on screentop.gg
  • The Rules have been simplified and will soon be written down in official form.
  • I am currently working on a Print and Play version. (As soon as I figure out how to do it.)

There will be three modes of play:

  • 4 Player Team based, with two players on each team.
  • 2 Player mode for head to head play
  • Solo mode

The game will be composed of a single deck of 54 cards which will fit in your pocket. The instructions will be available as a PDF, which you can access by scanning one of the “Counter” cards. You can carry this game with you wherever you go.

Board Games as a Negotiation (Part 1)

2023-03-31 / / 0 Comments

I recently picked up an interesting book by Herb Cohen called “You Can Negotiate Anything”. It is an in depth look at how humans negotiate, and the underlying power struggles. I originally thought that this would provide some insight into player interactions, but I began to see that it was much more than that. Not only are there occasional negotiations between players, but the interaction between each player and the game itself could be perceived as a negotiation. This shines a new light on player behavior and portrays the board game as one of the parties involved in an ongoing negotiation.

I will go through this book with you, summarizing what I believe the author is explaining, then explore how it correlates with board games. This will be my interpretation, of course, and may or may not be what the author intended. I strongly recommend reading the book yourself because it is a worthwhile journey. I hope you can get something from this slightly askew view of a self-help book.

The beginning of the book

The author opens by defining what a negotiation is. “Your real world is a giant negotiation table” is the very first line and I can definitely see this as being true with board games. That stubborn piece of cardboard in front of you, has something you want and you may have to wheel and deal to get it. Not only do you occasionally have to deal with players, but you may have to outwit the dice and cards or try to outmaneuver other players on a player board.

The author also explains that almost everything is negotiable, even certain things that we assumed weren’t. You can’t affect the result of a die after it is thrown, but can can alter the odds by choosing to throw multiple dice or deciding when to throw the dice in order to maximize your return for the risk you’re taking. This can be viewed as a negotiation between you and the game. Cards are even more subject to manipulation, or negotiation. Once you have an idea what the other players want, know what cards have been played, and know the contents of the deck, you can make a good guess as to how the cards are going to come out. This translates into a subtle shift of power to you as the cards become more and more predictable. This, in a way, is like a negotiation between you and the game, where you are gaining the upper hand.

Cohen describes the three important elements to any negotiation:

  • Information – understanding the needs of others in order to gain leverage.
  • Time – a high time investment makes people less likely to back out of a negotiation. This relates to the “Sunk Cost Fallacy”
  • Power – The actual or perceived power held by an entity in the negotiation.

All three of these are present in most tabletop games and I will explore them each further in future posts as I read this fascinating book. I hope you can enjoy it too as you follow along.