After many months of hemming and hawing, I’m finally taking the plunge and setting up a newsletter for my games since this blog isn’t usually timely enough and many folks are drifting from social media.
I plan on posting about every other month.
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After several years of design and development, Forbidden Jungle is finally here! In this diary, I’ll recount the search for the setting, some of the design challenges I faced, and look to what’s next.
The adventurers lift off from Forbidden Island in their helicopter to later escape in a rebuilt airship in Forbidden Desert, then power a rocket to lift off in Forbidden Sky.
When I began the design of the fourth game in the Forbidden series, the first thing I tackled was its setting. Players had already encountered a sinking island, a perilous desert, and a mysterious power platform in the sky. What was next? I figured that since Forbidden Sky ends with the players taking off in a rocket, I should pursue an outer space setting. So my initial design had the adventurers dock their rocket at a space station that I populated with self-replicating maintenance robots. The players would need to explore the station, avoid the robots, and find some means of escape. I gave the new prototype the tentative name, “Forbidden Station.”
One problem: I hated the name. The setting felt too cold and clinical. And it didn’t seem to be in line with the line’s “adventure” genre.
A screen grab from a fairly early Forbidden Station prototype file (July 2021).
A screen grab from an early Forbidden Island prototype. Forbidden Island also began its life with a space theme.
Coincidentally, way back in 2009, I pitched the design that went on to become Forbidden Island also as a space game. In the first prototype, Asteroid Storm, the players were in a spaceship that had drifted into an asteroid field. They needed to gather up four pieces of equipment (space suits, food for the journey, a flight plan, and their alien artifact*) and make it to the escape pod before their ship was blown to pieces. During play, asteroids slammed into the ship, damaging it, and if damaged pieces were hit again, they were removed from play.
Because Gamewright wanted to avoid a space theme, we switched its setting to sinking island. The modules of the space station became different locations on a mythical island and the equipment to be gathered became treasures that the players would need to collect. CB Canga’s artwork brought the game to life and we all agreed that this story and setting was much stronger.
Forbidden Jungle saw a similar shift during development. I changed the space station into an abandoned spaceport on a remote moon, overcome by encroaching jungle (think: Yavin 4 from Star Wars). I changed the self-replicating robots into aliens that resembled spiders.
I found that using spiders had lots of advantages: they could be shown in various life stages: egg, hatchling, and adult, they could sting the adventurers, and they could spin webs to block tile exits. While the self-replicating robots functioned in similar ways (they came in small, medium, and large sizes, could zap adventurers, and spray hull-reinforcing, hardening foam to block the exits) they felt like much more of a stretch thematically. (I especially grew tired of explaining the idea behind the foam.) But the biggest reason I changed from station to jungle was how I imagined the setting would be brought to life in the game’s illustrations. An ancient spaceport, overrun by jungle and inhabited by spiders would result in much more pleasing and lush visuals compared to the (typically) sterile environment that a space station suggests. Jungle felt like a better fit.
I never want to add a title to a series unless it offers something new to it – so a player would consider owning every game in the line. Forbidden Island offers an easy onramp and features a rapidly shrinking board. Forbidden Desert ramps up the challenge and has players shifting the board around as the winds of the sandstorm dictate. Forbidden Sky has players exploring and building their board as they go. For me, the challenge for game #4 was, after shrinking, shifting, and building what’s next?
I ultimately answered this question by sampling a little bit from each of the earlier titles. As you play Forbidden Jungle, different tiles sink into sinkholes, shrinking the board like Forbidden Island. You explore the jungle, flipping tiles over to see what’s inside them and can shift them in a way that is similar to Forbidden Desert. And you must also assemble your escape route by arranging a portal next to four powered gems. This echoes how you power up the rocket in Forbidden Sky. There are callbacks in Jungle to each of the preceding titles.
Instead of relying solely on the board to differentiate the game, I decided to focus on its antagonists. Forbidden Jungle is the first game in the series to feature baddies that are actively out to get you. In contrast, the other titles all feature environmental threats – rising water (threat of drowning), a blowing sandstorm (threats of exposure, dehydration, being buried alive), and a thunderstorm (threats of electrocution or falling from a great height). In Jungle, players must avoid being overrun or poisoned by the spiders.
I was especially drawn to having a stronger sense of an embodied threat on the board after seeing the reception of Forbidden Sky. Forbidden Sky has you constructing an elaborate – and functional! – electrical circuit to power your escape which is thrilling when you can accomplish it, but the antagonists in the game are quite abstract. You’re up against time, the threat of being struck by lightning, and the strength of your rope – none of which are shown on the board. You don’t get the visceral sense of an island rapidly shrinking to only a handful of tiles or sand accumulating into larger and larger dunes. With this new game, I wanted even casual observers to be able to glance at the game on the table and think: oh, wow, I can see that you’re all in a lot of danger!
But picking a baddie for a game targeted at kids and families can be a challenge. You don’t want to pick an antagonist that is too scary and yet, you don’t want the players to feel remorse after removing them. I was initially excited about the robots since they can be disassembled without too much fuss on the players’ part. But it turns out that creepy, dangerous, otherworldly spiders also felt like fair game – especially if they are aiming to sting or bite you.
The inspiration behind the three life stages of the spiders (egg, hatchling, and adult) came from Tom Wham’s classic game, The Awful Green Things from Outer Space which I played and loved in college and the movie Alien, both, coincidentally from 1979. (Though in this game, the hatchlings are relatively harmless, unlike the face-huggers of Alien.)
With the threat well established, I wanted the players to have a robust set of options to consider while solving it. To that end, Forbidden Jungle offers a variety of machines that you can discover that unlock new abilities:
The Destruct Switch gives you the power to destroy a tile in the game – and everything on it – by spending a single action. Being able to blow up a tile full of spiders can feel incredibly powerful. You need to show some restraint though: if you blow up all of the portals (or any of the illuminated gems), you’ll find yourself without a way out.
The Configurator allows you to rearrange the space station’s tiles, moving them like a sliding puzzle. This has all sorts of uses: first, you can slide gems next to an escape portal to power it – but you can also slide tiles containing other adventurers to help them move or slide spiders closer to the Electrifier which works as a glorified bug zapper.
The Compeller lets you move a group of hatchlings and adults from one tile to another. This can be handy if they’re in your way, about to sting your friend. You can also move them into the Electrifier. Zap!
The Portal is about as simple a machine as you can get. It features one button. If you press it, you win the game! (Provided that everyone is assembled on the tile, it’s powered up, and there aren’t any aliens on the tile.)
These special tiles let me expand the range of options available to the players, widening out space of possible solutions, without dramatically increasing the complexity of the overall game.
Samples of the machines from a printer’s proof. (Images may change slightly in the final game)
Maintaining the spider population proved to be one of the thorniest design challenges. Early versions of the game relied solely on the threat cards that managed the life cycles of the spiders. These cards have the adults lay eggs, turn eggs into hatchlings, and turn hatchlings into adults (who can then lay more eggs). This worked great, except that if the players managed to clear the board of spiders, their population would crash, bottoming out most of the tension for the remainder of the game. To solve this, I supplemented the life cycle cards with three new cards that have adults emerging from the portals, hatchlings emerging from the tunnels, and eggs being discovered in nests. With this design, as you explore more and more of the board, more portals, tunnels, and nests appear and the danger increases in parallel.
These six cards increase the population of spiders in the jungle. Early prototypes only used the first three cards. The last three cards ramp up the tension of the game as more and more of the jungle is explored.
In playtesting, players found blowing up tiles felt incredibly satisfying. Early prototypes had only a single piece of equipment (Explosives) that let you remove a tile adjacent to your adventurer. To give players more opportunities to blow stuff up, I added the Destruct Switch… and then a second Destruct Switch! These tiles not only let you blow up spiders, but also allow you to remove tiles that may be in the way of completing the puzzle.
Early prototypes featured “Computers” that could only shift a tile up/down or left/right. In testing, these felt quite grindy. You’d need to move to one computer, operate it to move tiles in one direction, then run to a different computer, and operate it to move it in another direction, and so on. The Configurators in the final version of the game let you feel much more powerful—you can choose any direction: up, down, left, or right, then move the tile any number of spaces in that direction.
Forbidden Station also had players managing their oxygen levels like water in Forbidden Desert. This was a bit too similar to Desert, felt mostly like work, and since the game already had plenty of other problems to juggle, I was happy to ditch it.
It took a bunch of iterations to nail the figures down. The adults had to be scary but not too scary. (Some early versions were quite goofy looking.) The final adults are quite tall which let them have long, scary legs without taking up too much space on a tile. I specified little nubs on the ridges of the hatchlings so they’d be easier to pick up off the tiles. And getting the small/medium/large proportions just right was surprisingly difficult. The illustrator, C.B. Canga specified a color palette for them which helped them coordinate with his illustrations while feeling otherworldly.
A partial evolution of the adult spider. As they evolved, the adults lost their goofy grin, collar, and stinger and grew sharp teeth. The left two figures are from .stls found on the web and were used for inspiration. The Sculpey one was made by my daughter Anna as part of an experiment exploring scale.
Early (left) and final (right) aliens: adult, hatchling, and egg. I had the sculptor add nubs to the edges of the hatchling so they’d be easier to pick up. The most important change here was a sense of large/medium/small scale. In the original metal comps the hatchling looks smaller than the egg!
In response to all the enthusiasm for the variable island layouts that were first featured in the German edition of the Forbidden Island, I included six different spaceport designs with Forbidden Jungle so that you can try your hand at each one of them. Their design was a bit counter-intuitive – denser spaceport layouts were actually harder to play since the tiles have fewer degrees of movement.
To ensure variety and challenge, your next game can feature a different mix of adventurers, explored machines, equipment cards, random tile arrangement, along with a different spaceport design and/or difficulty setting.
Different space station layouts add variety to the game.
If and when the adventurers escape, what lies beyond the portal? Will they ever find the Archeans? I’d love to hear your theories!
*I was able to realize a similar objective in Space Escape (formerly Mole Rats in Space), except that the alien artifact became a toothbrush, along with a few other tweaks. They both featured duct tape.
CMYK posted a new version of the How to Play video for Daybreak. I’m really happy with how it turned out!
An early prototype of Daybreak
Matteo and I have been busy documenting the journey we took while designing Daybreak.
Here are all the entries we have published and planned to date:
We enjoyed looking through the hundreds of photos, dozens of kits, and our 500+ page design journal when putting this together. We’re now entering one of my favorite stages of a project: reviewing and evaluating all the product, graphic design, illustration, and editorial choices for the game.
Hope you enjoy this look into our process. If there are any other aspects you’d like to know about, please leave a comment!
After more than two years of design, Daybreak is now live on Backerkit. Check it out!
We’ll be crowdfunding Daybreak on BackerKit starting on 20 September 2022.
Sign up to be notified when the project goes live!
Daybreak is a cooperative boardgame about stopping climate change. It presents an optimistic vision of the near future, where you and your friends get to build the mind-blowing technologies and resilient societies we need to decarbonize the world.
I designed it with Matteo Menapace and the game be published by CMYK Games. It’s expected to ship in 2023.
Find out more at daybreakgame.org.
No small part of game design involves figuring out how to best explain your game. An old adage of software design was, “write the manual first” as this forces you to think about how the end user will experience your product. This carries over into game design as well: if, when writing the rules or teaching a game you find that you can’t explain it, it’s time to have a hard look at the underlying design.
Below you can see a 7-minute overview of the in-progress game, Daybreak that I shot yesterday for a group who will be playing this Friday.
The game continues to evolve, but it’s exciting to see the changes get smaller and smaller with each iteration. Once that wraps up, we’ll shift into product design and at some point, our videos won’t feature so much shiny Scotch tape and awkward transitions. In the meantime, have a look and let me know in the comments below if you have any impressions.
If you found this interesting, you can follow our design process more closely in our design log. You can also sign up for exactly 1 email when Daybreak launches at daybreakgame.org.
UPDATE:
The new, updated version of the video is now available:
You can also check out the first version of the video that originally accompanied this post.
Donna and Colleen at the end of a testing session of Daybreak.
In August 2019 a climate scientist named Declan Finney emailed me, explaining in great detail the gravity of the climate crisis and offering to help re-theme Pandemic to fit the topic. The idea was to help people better understand the situation and what could be done by wrapping it up into a game. This was a bit of a kick in the pants for me. I’d been thinking about doing something similar for some time, but hadn’t started on anything. I began researching. Months passed. I decided that the topic was deserving of its own game (not a re-theme of Pandemic) but it also felt enormous, daunting, and somewhat hopeless to me.
Then, in April 2020, I came across an article about learning from Pandemic during the Pandemic on Twitter, written by Matteo Menapace. I noticed from Matteo’s bio that he was interested in games and climate and contacted him about the possibility of collaborating on a game about the climate crisis with me. We hit it off and we’ve been working together ever since.
Photo: Peter Prato for The New York Times
Here we are, one year later, and we have a design—Daybreak—that we’ve been putting through its paces, both on the table (with our families) and in Tabletopia (with everyone else).
Daybreak puts you in the role of a world power. Your goal is to decarbonize your economy while at the same time build up the resilience your people will need to survive climate-induced crises.
If you and the other players can collectively draw down emissions to net zero while ensuring that no single player has too many people in crisis, you all win the game. This is quite difficult—but crucially, possible.
If you’d like to learn more about the game, Matteo has written an overview of the design so far. We also did interviews with the New York Times, Wired, and Polygon.
This has been one of the most rewarding designs I’ve worked on to date: the problems we face with global warming are deep and complex. Turning them into game dynamics that are representative, balanced, and—perhaps most importantly—engaging and fun to play is a steep challenge. And we want to get it right. To that end, we’re looking for critical reviewers. If you think you might be a good fit for this, have a look at what we’re looking for and let us know.
I’m also happy to share that CMYK has come on board to publish the game. If you’re interested, you can sign up to get exactly one email when the game launches.
And finally, happy Earth Day everyone! I hope you can find a meaningful way to observe this day, even it’s as simple as taking a walk or hike outdoors.
If you’re like me and isolating due to Covid, you’ve probably had to find new ways to play boardgames with friends. I’ve been playing boardgames online now with two groups of friends and one of our most frequent stops is Board Game Arena.
So I was happy to learn that Forbidden Island is now available to play on the platform, starting today. If you haven’t checked out BGA, have a look. They have many games that are free to play; other games require a premium membership, which will run you about $2 per month for unlimited use and it allows you to host games for others who don’t need to pay themselves.
I also found it fun to learn that Jeff DiCorpo implemented the game. Jeff’s local to the San Francisco Bay Area, and we’ve been gaming together on and off for many years. Thanks Jeff!
It’s startling to revisit this excerpt from The Game Designers showing the Lucca and SPIEL game fairs with their massive crowds. SPIEL drew close to 200,000 attendees from around the world in 2019 and Lucca—the city—fills to the brim of its medieval walls with people, elbow-to-elbow. We were carried away by the crowds.
Seems like so long ago already.
This clip is from The Game Designers, a feature-length documentary, directed by Eric Rayl about professional and fledgling board game designers. Available on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube Movies, Amazon, and Vimeo.
The Pandemic Survival 2020 tournament season may have been canceled this year due to the need for physical distancing, but that doesn’t mean that we all can’t enjoy it together over Zoom! That’s what Rodger van den Braak and thirteen other former contestants did last month. I hosted a tournament myself last weekend to try it out—and it worked so well that I’ve written up rules and tips for all of you to try out on your own!
Two-player teams compete to be the first team to find all four cures or the last team to survive.
Images: Sasha Shen Johfre
If you’re not aware of the format, Pandemic Survival pits multiple teams, each composed of two players, against each other with the aim of being the first team to find all four cures or the last team left standing. Every team plays with the same roles, starting hands, player deck, and infection deck. It’s then up to each team to decide how best to play with what they have. The game is typically played on the heroic level and each turn has a time limit of only 75 seconds.
Sound crazy? You are correct.
Up for giving it a try? If you have a copy of Pandemic in your home and access to friends over Zoom (that also have a copy) you have everything you need.
Here are the full rules. I’ve left comments on in the rules document—if you have a question, correction, or suggestion, feel free to note it down or contact me.
I hope this gives you a fun, new way to connect with people while you’re distancing.
Now go wash your hands!
A screen snap of the seven-team tournament that I ran last Saturday. Special thanks to Siew, Alain, Donna, Colleen, Beth, John (hiding behind the whiteboard of doom), Phil, Leslie, Hannah, Sasha, Rich, Michelle, Ken, and Jos for participating. And congratulations to Hannah and Sasha for surviving!
The keynote I gave at TableTop Network just went up today. If you're interested in the importance of emotion in game design and empathy as a design skill, check it out:
What’s the difference between a good and a great game? Often it’s the depth of the emotional response that it generates. But how do you know when your game is effective? Learn more about the importance of emotion in game design, empathy as a game design skill, and a technique for determining whether you’re on the right track when you design games to solicit an emotional response.
Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman
Empathy: Why it Matters and How to Get It by Roman Krznaric
Empathy Engines by Elizabeth Sampat
MDA: a Formal Approach to Game Design and Game Research by Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, Robert Zubek
Tabletop Network is an annual gathering of tabletop game designers, dedicated to honing the craft of game design. Tickets to the 2020 conference will be on sale soon. Learn more at: https://www.tabletopnetwork.com
It’s been longer than a quarter. Has it really been six months?! Here’s a summary of what’s been going on since I last posted.
As you might imagine, the Covid-19 outbreak has generated a lot of media interest in Pandemic. Here are a few interviews and articles that I participated in recently.
The Washington Post ran a story on the popularity of games centering on the “proliferation of pathogens” including Plague Inc. and Pandemic: Virus games are going viral as the coronavirus spreads.
The Chicago Tribune ran a story on Pandemic as well. (This one was actually queued up by the Tribune prior to the outbreak of Covid-19, but by the time the interview happened, the topic was unavoidable.) Q&A with the Chicago creator of Pandemic, the board game that has become all too real.
Dicebreaker did an interview last February. "It's difficult to keep things fresh": Pandemic creator Matt Leacock on Legacy, co-ops and Lego which ranges over several topics including the game development process. (Not sure why they chose that headline as the article spends most of its time attempting to prove otherwise.)
Speaking of Covid-19, everyone please:
Avoid close contact with people who are sick.
Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.
Stay home when you are sick.
Cover your cough or sneeze with a tissue, then throw the tissue in the trash.
And here’s a suggestion: let person who encourages everyone to wash their hands (for at least 20 seconds) before your game be the start player.
More advice on prevention at the CDC site.
The appropriately titled expansion to ERA: Medieval Age.
The ERA: Medieval Age Expansion is due at Gen Con this year. Eggertspiele released a short teaser video (20 seconds) which shows off some of the new pieces including rivers, roads, gates, bridges, and more.
At long last, the third and final installment in the Pandemic Legacy series is coming later this year! Keep an eye out for announcements from Z-man.
And look for one other soon-to-be-announced game—coming this summer!
A new dexterity game, co-designed with Josh Cappel. Josh and I worked together on the first edition of Pandemic over ten years ago and it’s been fun to work together again. We’ve spent over two years on this game and I’m thrilled that we recently found a great home for it.
The next game in the ERA series—which is coming together quite nicely if I do say so myself.
A new, non-Pandemic, cooperative game that I’m working on with a first-time designer.
A big box game that I’ve been developing for over two years with two established designers.
And a few other unannounced projects in various stages of development.
I appeared in the documentary, The Game Designers, which premiered last November. Directed by Eric Rayl and produced by Scott Alden (of BoardGameGeek fame), the documentary follows five different designers (Antoine Bauza, Kelly North Adams, Chris Faulkenberry, and Doug Schepers and myself) at various points in our careers, and gives an inside look at what it takes to design a boardgame.
Check out the trailer below.
You can find it on Amazon or stream it on demand via Vimeo.
So it turns out that I’ll be working with John Brieger on one my upcoming games. I bring this up for several reasons:
He’s got a new company that specializes in game development. If you’re looking for additional testing and development resources, check them out.
He’s written some great articles on playtesting and uses a process very similar to my own.
He lives in my hometown! And I had never met him until last month! (How weird is that?)
If you’re a local to the San Francisco Bay Area and are interested in doing some playtesting (your games or others’) be sure to check out some of the Meetups that he’s put together. I plan on regularly attending Friday playtesting at Game Kastle in Mountain View.
Check out the Boardgame Summit on March 17th in San Francisco. “Designers, developers, and publishers in the tabletop game (and tabletop game adjacent space) are gathering to share their planned talks from GDC, network, and talk board games. Publishers & industry service providers on hand for pitches and business meetings.”
You can also check GDC’s video archive for some great talks on design. Christina Wodtke sent me this talk by Alex Jaffe on “cursed design problems” which include the quarterbacking problem that rears its head in pure cooperative games. I thought this was a great framework for evaluating opposing forces in your game that may be irreconcilable.
I gave the keynote talk at the TableTop Network in Dallas in November, and spoke about the importance of emotion and empathy in game design. [Update: the talk is now available.]
TTN is a gathering of board game designers talking shop, networking, and refining our craft, organized by game designer, Tim Fowers.
Unlike gatherings like Unpub and Protospiel, it focuses on talks and workshops and not on playtesting. It’s a fairly new event, this being its second year. I was impressed with the quality of the talks and especially enjoyed the ones given by Elizabeth Hargrave (OMG, My Wife Loves Your Game) and Nikki Valens (Creating Representation for Marginalized Groups). They’ve also started a scholarship program to attract new voices to the industry.
I’ll post videos or links to my talk and others when Tim opens them up to the public.
I’ve taken this information down, pending information from the event organizers.
ERA: Medieval Age was released this year at Gen Con and will hit stores later this August. The game has a long history, which started nearly twelve years ago. Here’s a look at how the game came to be.
Back in October of 2007, my friends Chris and Kim Farrell threw down the gauntlet and challenged the members of our gaming group to a contest in the spirit of Nanowrimo—the National Novel Writing Month. Our mission was to each design a civilization-building dice game that was playable in 30–40 minutes, during the month of November. We were to go off into our corners and come back with our results at the end of the month.
I gave it my best shot. I saw the challenge as a great opportunity to boil down the experience from one of my favorite games—Francis Tresham’s Civilization (1980)—into something that took far less time. (Civ was best with about five to seven people who could devote eight or more hours to play, and that was becoming increasingly hard to manage.)
I shared the results to the gaming group in early December. Encouraged by the results, I pitched it to publishers at a conference the following April. I got immediate interest and the game was picked up by Griffon Games as part of their bookshelf line. They published it as Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age in 2009. The game did well, garnering a nomination for the Spiel des Jahres in 2010.
The publisher saw an opportunity to ride on the game’s success and encouraged me to design additional ages and soon after I designed a print-and play expansion. But my attempts at other ages felt dry and lifeless, and I abandoned them. After one failed start after another, Tom Lehmann finally stepped up to extend the line with a version that we dubbed Roll Through the Ages: The Iron Age (2014).
After that, the game seemed to have run its course.
ERA: Medieval Age (2019). Cover art by Chris Quilliams.
Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age (2009). The challenge that my friends Chris and Kim threw down was to create a civilization-building dice game that could be played in 30–40 minutes.
A near-final prototype (version 23) of Roll Through the Ages from 11 years ago. The early prototypes were initially pitched as “Dice of the Ancients.”
That is, until I was approached by Plan B Games in 2016. They were fans of the game and wanted to know if I’d be up for breathing new life into it and potentially turning it into a series. I promised to take another look.
During this exploration, I started thinking about an idea where players could develop a city, drawing its buildings, instead of creating another checklist game dominated by a technology tree. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of games with a drawing component. I can trace that as far back to games like Empire Builder (1982) and Source of the Nile (1978). Even Knit Wit started out as a drawing game.
I did a bunch of reading on the Medieval period, sketched a lot, tinkered around. One key breakthrough was the idea to map the four classes of medieval society to different dice that represented their role. For example, peasants would provide labor and food, burghers would provide more trade goods, clergy could provide administration (allowing you to manipulate your dice) and nobles wouldn’t produce anything, but could raise taxes and could rattle their swords to defend their domain or threaten their opponents. Soon, I had some early prototypes of a new Medieval Age.
May, 2017. Here you can see some concepts taking shape. I often start with a concept map of the key objects and actions in the game. Sometimes this works; other times you get a boring, stilted, lifeless games.
Early sketches of buildings and resources.
More concept mapping.
This new Medieval Age used dice that were similar to the ones used in Roll Through the Ages: they had resources and skulls on them, and players rolled them three times in an attempt to optimize their turn. but the experience was nicely differentiated from the Bronze Age. When you were done, you could look at a unique city that you had illustrated over the course of play. I also came up with a new turn structure that reduced downtime considerably, and found a way to work that back into the original Bronze Age design.
After a solid year of development, the game was ready to turn over to the publisher. Contracts were signed and the game was well on its way to becoming a reality.
I spent about a year designing the roll-and-write version of ERA: Medieval Age. Players drew buildings on graph paper and drew walls segments on the lines that separated them. The game also used a reference card for building shapes and a simple pegboard to track resources.
The publisher liked the design. It was quite fun to play and fairly straightforward to manufacture. They did have one issue with it, however: it was really hard to see what your opponents were doing. (This is a bit of a classic problem with many roll-and-write games—they can feel a bit like group solitaire if you’re only focused on your own board.) They pulled out a napkin sketch of a building made from a few wooden blocks and asked me: “what if it was in 3D? Would that work?”
Little did they know that I had just received my first laser cutter earlier that week. My answer was an excited, “let’s find out.” We’d have to defer the game’s release at least another year, but hey, lasers.
I got to work.
I actually used craft foam for my first 3D version of the board, which was a direct translation of the roll-and-write shapes: buildings went on squares; walls went between them.
It looked promising. Testing soon showed, however, that players had a hard time figuring out how to place buildings on this grid.
I thought a laser-cut version with little white circles to help position your buildings might work. It didn’t.
I had to abandon this system as it went against years of Lego training.
When I moved the walls onto the same grid as the buildings, the problem went away. The board also was significantly less noisy looking.
Switching the game to a set of physical buildings opened up all sorts of possibilities. In addition to the wonderful, tactile feel, I could now work with a new dynamic: supply and demand. I modified the rules for walls so they’d come in different lengths, which introduced a strong push-your-luck element. Players now had to weigh the desire to defer buying walls (since they don’t help you bootstrap at all) against the temptation to buy them early when longer lengths are available. And if players wait too long, the supply can run out, putting a huge number of points at risk.
Having a building supply also made for a more dynamic game end condition. Rather than playing until a single player built a certain number of buildings (which was tedious to track on the score sheets), I shifted the game end condition so the game finished when a certain number of buildings ran out. This added more tension to the game since it’s harder to predict when this will happen.
All the laser-cut pieces for the buildings plus a few experimental bits and other odds-and-ends. I cut the buildings out of illustration board, glued them together using a special tacky glue, then painted them with acrylic.
A robust city at the end of a game. The buildings in the prototype had little “pips” etched into them so you could see how many points they were worth. The published version uses a more robust score sheet satisfies this requirement in a better way.
All the parts for two prototypes, painted and ready to go. Before I was done, I created six full prototypes.
A special shout out to Anthony Rubbo who worked tirelessly to convince me that the screens were worth trying out. He was right.
The additional year of development brought other improvements as well. Most notable was the introduction of player screens that hide the results of each player’s roll during the Roll step. I was hesitant to add these as I was convinced that players needed to see each others’ dice while rolling in order to increase player interaction. Testing strongly showed otherwise, however—players welcomed the faster pace, the element of surprise, and the shorter play time that the screens afforded. They also made a great home for the information on the play aid.
The Eggertspiele development team helped polish the remaining bits and pieces. Together we created the solitaire version and they helped refine the disasters, including increasing the number of scorched earth tiles that came with the game from what I specified. (Remind me to be wary of playing with them.)
The biggest change during production was to the player boards. These shifted from punchboard to molded plastic. While the icons are harder to read on the plastic boards—they’re sculpted rather than printed—the boards are much more durable than punchboard and the plastic nicely “grips” the building components, keeping them firmly in place.
In the video below, you can get a good look at how everything turned out in the final game as I give a quick overview of the rules.
The Harbor and Great Hall along with the Baron, Bishop, and Merchant dice that come in Collector’s Set #1.
If you purchase the game from the Eggertspiele web shop you can already pick up the first of several expansions planned for the game, Collector’s Set #1. This mini expansion provides two new buildings and rules for upgrading your clergy, noble, and burgher dice into a bishop, baron, or merchant.
Eggertspiele has already announced that ERA: Medieval Age is the first of three titles in the ERA series. For the second installment, it’s likely that fans of Roll Through the Ages: The Bronze Age will be re-released in an updated and modernized version.
The third game in the series has not yet been hinted at. Which leads me to ask: if you had your wish, what ERA would you want? If you have an idea, leave a note in the comments!
For some reason, I love pegboards. I think it has something to do with the satisfying way that a wooden peg bites into a wooden board—they feel great to handle. I was fascinated with cribbage boards as a kid and remember being disappointed when I learned that they were only glorified scoring tracks. My game, Chariot Race grew out of a desire to make a simple race game out of a similar pegboard.
That was part of the pitch anyway, when I signed the game with Pegasus back in 2014. Unfortunately, when we developed it, costs for doing the game in wood were prohibitive, and when the game came out in 2016 it never had the table presence that I’d hoped it would. (If you’re curious, I’ve written up more on how the game evolved given those constraints.)
Enter the laser cutter. A few years ago, I helped crowd fund the Glowforge and it finally arrived last March. I had no idea I would use this thing so much. I’ll write up another post on how I’ve been using it for prototyping extensively (everything from the ERA games to Pandemic Legacy: Season 3 and more), but to start, I thought I’d share my most recent creation.
After a couple rounds of prototyping in baltic birch, here are photos of the final result, crafted in maple, cherry, poplar, and walnut. The only thing I’ve kept from the Pegasus edition is the wooden dice.
The board sits on top of a box that holds the dice, six chariot boards, and a drawer that contains the pegs and caltrops for up to six players to play. It all packs up all nice and tight.
The drawer holds pegs for six players plus all the caltrops you’d ever need.
Everything tucked away
The chariot pegboards
The drawer and chariot boards all pull from the same side of the box.
On the reverse, the dice sit in their own compartment.
Pulling the walnut slider open grants access to the dice.
Each chariot pegboard has a unique combination of cherry, maple, and/or poplar. This is the cherry/poplar combination.
Here are the box pieces laid out. The interior is made of baltic birch and I used maple laminate for the top and each side. I inlaid cherry for the corners and starting spaces and used walnut for the caltrops and for the door to the dice compartment. The track itself is cut from basswood as I liked how uniform the color was and how easily it took the pegs and caltrops.
All the components
Top view of the track
I’ve finally scratched this itch now that I have my own wooden set. I just have to remind myself how much work this was every time I’m tempted to make another one. (I don’t have any current plans on creating these for sale!) If you are a crafter though, and would like a copy of the .svg plans (for personal use only) drop me a line.
Here’s my machine, right before I plugged it in for the first time last March.
I can’t say enough good things about the Glowforge. It’s well designed and easy to use – to the point where it’s nearly as simple as sending a job to your desktop printer. It sets up quickly and requires very little maintenance. Cutting components on it has become an integral part of my prototyping workflow. It’s wonderful for anything round or irregular (think: round, chipboard tokens) and is precise enough that I can use it to cut stickers (but not the backing!) from sticker sheets with hairline precision.
They’re not cheap, coming in between $2,400 (for the Basic) and $6,000 (for the Pro). I picked up the Plus which currently sells for about $4,000. I recommend it as a great midrange product.
If you do decide to take the plunge, you can save some cash ($100–$500) by using this referral link: https://glowforge.us/r/kUGE8V. (Disclosure: they’ll kick back the same amount to me in credits that I can spend on materials.) The one thing that can be a bit tricky is that you have to vent them outside. They offer an air filter for another $1000 (so you don’t need to vent) but the filters have been backordered for over a year now. I’ve been venting mine out the mail slot of my garage until my filter arrives.
In a future post, I’ll share images of the ERA: Medieval Age prototype that I created on the machine. It’s hard for me to imagine creating, developing, and testing the final version of that game without this cutter.
I’m excited to announce Era: Medieval Age, a new dice game coming this summer from Eggertspiele.
I’ve been working on this game and other games in the Era line for the last few years and am really excited to start sharing more about them with you.
Read all about it here, or catch the 2-minute video announcement below.
Looking for one of my games but don’t know where to get started? This handy flowchart might help! Start in the circle in the upper-left corner and follow the arrows until you reach your perfect game. (Expansions not included.)
Click it for a larger view, or, if you’d like to print it out, the PDF version will save you a lot of ink.
With a nod to Mental Floss that shared their own chart (and cast a wider net) in 2015.
See my Games page for more information on all of these products and more.
Back in January of 2016, I posted an article on the growth of cooperative games. I wanted to check in to see what has happened in the last couple of years. Had things slowed down at all?
I hit one small snag – BGG searches cap out at 5,000 results and there were more than 5,000 products released in 2016 and 2017. So, I’ve had to re-do my queries based on the number of games (excluding expansions) instead of total products released each year.
With that in mind, results are in: the growth of the category continues to skyrocket.
Excludes expansions. Total games each year accurate to the nearest 50 games per year; total number of games with cooperative games are based on the total count of those games each year.
Given the time it took to design and publish a game at the time, it appears that 2008 was a category-proving year. Pandemic, Battlestar Galactica, Ghost Stories, and Space Alert were all released in 2008, perhaps proving the category to future designers and publishers.
Happy to see that Z-man has announced the latest game in the Pandemic Survival Series, Pandemic: Fall of Rome!
In this game, you'll recruit legions and enlist barbarians with an ever-diminishing treasury (and increasing corruption) in your attempt to forge five alliances with invading tribes before the Empire falls.
This is a co-design with Paolo Mori and was a tremendous amount of fun to work on. And the artwork from Atha Kanaani and the Z-man team is top notch. Coming in Q4, 2018.
here's the Z-man announcement.
Headed to Gen Con? So am I! Here's what I'll be up to:
I'll be demoing Forbidden Sky and signing games at the Gamewright booth in the main exhibit hall.
Gamewright Booth
Thursday 2:00 PM
Friday 2:00 PM
Saturday 2:00 PM
I'll be demoing the game, Blank with a custom booster that my daughter and I designed. The event is ticketed, but feel free to swing by to have a look and say hello.
Hub Games Demo Tables
ICC : Hall C : Hub : HQ (Event Info)
Thursday 4:00 PM
Friday at 4:00 PM
Saturday at 12:00 PM
Rob Daviau and I will be running a private playtest session for an upcoming <cough>legacy game</cough> and are currently looking for some folks to help us out.
We're looking for a group who is…
If the above sounds good to you, please contact me and indicate:
If you have questions, either drop a comment or email me using the contact page above.
Thanks! We couldn't make the games we do without your help.
UPDATE: We've filled our playtest slot. Thanks everyone!
