Tag: Game Design

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.

More Better Bugs….Arachnid version-27

2023-01-24 / / 0 Comments
Arachnid Version 27 on TTS

I have finally gotten the core game loop running smoothly and revised the turn structure so that it is easier to follow. The game theme is also changed to something that fits the mechanics more closely and is a bit more palatable. The original theme of spiders triggering a nuclear war was novel and punchy, but it was an awkward fit for the game and a bit of a depressing theme. The spiders are now living in a secret military lab. They’ve grown intelligent and learned how to get along without eating each other. The “Hoover-Bot” is still getting closer and closer, threatening a “Hoovergedoon” but the spiders have gained enough intelligence to build an EMP. Can the spiders find enough spare parts and to build and trigger the EMP to destroy the Hoover-Bot?…. You’ll have to play the game to find out.

You can check out the Tabletop Playground Simulation of this game Here.

Arachnid on Tabletop Playground

You can check out the Tabletop Simulator workshop module of this game Here.

Arachnid on Tabletop Simulator

Feel free yo check it out and message me if you need me to demonstrate the game. I would love to hear your thoughts.

Voices in my head?

2022-05-15 / / 0 Comments
The Sheeny-Man Game

My head is a scary place lately. I’m supposed to be working out the kinks of my latest game “Arachnid” and finalizing the rules, but I keep getting distracted by two new games in my head, just itching to get out. I’ve put a couple earlier games on the back burner for now so I can concentrate on the latest one, but these two new games are coming together as if they’ve got a mind of their own. Here’s a peek at one of them.

Sheeny-Man

Sheeny-Man will be a card based game that has a two-phase turn system. Each player, in turn order, will perform phase one, which will be two actions from a list of three or four available. These actions will include “Pick’n” to collect items, “Shift’n” to arrange them on your tableau (Your junkyard) and “Swap’n” items with other players. There will be a unique method of set collection and a super simple but effective market mechanism. Turn order will be tracked by the “Sandford and Son Pick-up” first player marker which is passed to the next player after phase#1.

The second phase will be led by the previous winner of the “Gavel”, rather than the next player in turn. This is where a player can auction things off to other players, sell items at the market and then auction off the “Gavel” by itself, or auction off various power-ups which become available in the later part of the game. The player with the “Gavel” will have an edge when auctioning the power-ups and can only sell their valuable sets of merchandise when they have it. This will make the “Gavel” a very desirable item. It is passed to the winner of the Auction, ending phase#2.

The next round will be started again at phase#1 by the player who has the pick-up marker. Phase #2 will then be initiated by the player who holds the “Gavel”. It is possible for one player to have both items, which could result in a powerful turn.

Timing is crucial in this game. The value of your items will fluctuate with the market, there will be times when you really need that Gavel, and don’t forget about the “Market Crash” which happens near the end of the game.

Accurately assessing your opponents is also important because different phases of the game are triggered as players fill their mattresses with money. You need to anticipate when somebody is going to trigger the market crash or the final phase where the market is declining again and you must hurry to sell off your items before they become valueless.

There should be a lot of fun decisions in this game. For example, when Pick’n at the dump you might find a “Diamond Ring”, but you could also find a “Dead Possum” which will actually cost you money to get rid of. Don’t worry because you can always auction off the possum to another player who’s desperate for that “Gavel”.

Stay tuned for Sheeny-Man…..At tables near you.

Broke Again – The Arachnid saga continues…

2022-05-15 / / 0 Comments
Arachnid version 20 by RogerDogerGames

The Arachnid game was coming along quite nicely. The cooperation between players works quite well. Each player tends to have their own speciality, but they also have to depend on each other to get things done. The mechanics are smooth and intuitive and the game length seems just about right. In spite of all this, I still went and broke the game.

Working out the earlier kinks made the game run smoother. Unfortunately, it started to make the game a bit boring and predictable. There was no compelling reason to come back and play the game again. The players had experienced most of what the game offered. I needed to inject some replayability into the game or it would just end up on the shelf after one play, never to be taken out again.

I started with the current main objective. Players have to acquire 4 or 5 keys to enable the launch button before “Hoover” ends the game by finally reaching the web. This worked fine, but would just be a boring repeat if the game were played again, in spite of the different ways the spider characters evolve during the game. I decided to mix it up a bit. Players can play their introduction game with the keys displayed on the corners of the hex shaped player board as before, but they can choose to randomize the positions in subsequent games and hide the keys under rocks. This way, a player never knows when lifting a rock, whether it will reveal a new ability, be one of the sought after keys, or reveal a dangerous critter. This will create some variability to the game.

I also decided to start working on the action cards, increasing the count, so that only a small subset of the total cards would be in play in any given game. This should greatly help with the replayability of the game. It’s a real challenge coming up with new and interesting spider behaviors and ways to implement them, but I’m slowly picking away at solving this puzzle.

The third way I plan on dealing with the replayability problem is by introducing different scenarios with unique objectives. I will address this after I work out the latest kinks in the game and expand the deck. Some of the new cards can even be specific to certain scenarios. I will get to all of this after I fix what I just broke in the latest version of the game.

One of the complaints from the paytesters was the excessive administration of the “Critters” during their activation phase. This caused a break in the rhythm of the game which broke the players immersion of the game. This needed to be dealt with, so I decided to simplify the critters to eliminate redundant behaviors and reduce the administration of these A.I driven beings. This is how I actually broke the game……BOOGERS…..!

Originally, as you tried to acquire the keys, you activated Critters from the same location which could start chasing you around the web or wreak havoc in other ways. There were some logistical problems with the new, hidden, critters which were revealed as you turned over the rocks so I had to change this. In an effort to simplify the rules, I decided that the critters would enter the web at one of the six points of the board. This would be decided by rolling the A.I. die, the same way as they entered when drawn from the event bag. This simplified the rules, but turned out to be a very bad decision.

The result was a reduced risk of exploring and acquiring things because the critters would enter the web in places that didn’t immediately affect the spiders. This removed almost all of the tension from the game and made it very easy to win. It sucked the life out of the game, just like a spider drinking a “Critter Shake”. I now have to backtrack a little and find another way to deal with the introduction of the critters as they are revealed. They absolutely must start out from the rock under which they are revealed. This will create a tense moment whenever a rock is flipped over. I don’t know what I was thinking when I eliminated this in favor of a simpler rule-set. I just have to find an elegant and intuitive way to do this. I’m always amazed at how easy it is to derail a game with a simple rule change. It’s time to put my thinking cap back on and fix this game, then start making it better. Piece of cake…..LOL!

More Bugs – Less Filling

2022-04-20 / / 0 Comments
Arachnid 19d
Arachnid 19 on Tabletop Playground

Arachnid has gone through some major changes to reduce the number of components, simplify set-up and streamline game-play. I was worried for a moment after I finally worked out most of the problems with the action deck and action board. Once the game flowed smoothly, I realized that there weren’t enough interesting decisions throughout the game. I thought this game might just end up on top of the ever growing scrap-pile of dysfunctional games.

I took a short break from the game before deciding it’s fate. After taking a fresh look, and getting some good input from my #1 playtester (my wife) I was able to narrow down the problems. To start with, the game was too easy to win and the path to victory was too obvious. The “Critters” attacking the web weren’t really much of a threat and the end-game countdown (Hoover) wasn’t very dramatic. This all made for a boring and predictable game. With just a few tweaks, I was able to turn all this around.

The main objective in the game is to acquire the four keys in order to unlock the “Launch Button”. I made this task more complicated so players had to work together or find different ways to get them. I added more Critters and gave them more interesting and dangerous behaviors. This really ramped up the tension in the game and forced some tough decisions between defending the web and acquiring the keys. Having so many things to do and limited time to do it, automatically, made the end-game count-down much more dramatic.

It looks like the game is back on track and it’s time to write a final set of rules. Writing the rules is an important part of the design process. It reveals logic errors and provides a completely different perspective on the game. I’m really looking forward to ironing out the final glitches. I just hope there aren’t any really big issues I’ve missed. The “Kinda” “Sorta”, simultaneous turn-order (but only if you need to…) is going to be tough to explain. This should be fun!

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Arachnid Version 19