Now that I’ve had sufficient time to recover from Gen Con and shoot some videos of me killing skeletons, I have finally returned my gaze to the latest project, lovingly titled “Nameless Factory Game, except not actually about building factories.”
Last time on our intrepid adventure, I had just gotten back from a failed play test session in which my carefully thought-out plans to stop players from being complete dicks to each other had totally failed. The main fix had been to move from a square grid to a hex grid so that each space had more connections to other spaces (six as opposed to four), but that turned out to not be enough, so I ended up going back to a square grid, but counting diagonals as adjacent, which give us eight total connections instead of six.
In addition, I took a page from Blokus and added a rule that none of a player’s buildings could be adjacent to each other. At first, this might seem like overkill since the added diagonal connects do an incredible amount to open up the board, but what the Blokus rule does is force players to build roads between their buildings instead of just next to their buildings. This turns walls into paths, which is vital.
With the board opened up, something still needed to be done about the lack of communal building in the game. Not only did the first play test fall flat because people were blocking each other off intentionally, it also didn’t work because the board got congested with redundant buildings, leaving no room for the end-game buildings. Of course, one solution is just to make the board bigger, which I did, but there is still a fundamental problem when someone builds a library, and then another player, instead of using that library, just builds another library of his own right next to it. That’s certainly not communal building.
So first I limited the building placements. There are three sections of the map, and only one of each type of building can be placed in each section. This increases the necessity of being the first to build a specific building type, but I also implemented a point system that sort of gives a consolation prize to those who lose the race, which also serves as incentive to use a building even if you aren’t the one who built it.
Remember that the central concept of communal building is that each player only has access to limited resources. Maybe I have “metal,” and you have “knowledge,” and if we want to build “machinery,” we’ve got to work together; either I use your knowledge or you use my metal. The trick is that there’s sort of a “trickle down” point system at work, so that whoever ends up building the machinery, they’ll get three points any time it is used, but they will also have to pay one point to the other player for the use of their basic resource. So really they’re only getting two points, and the other player is getting one. There’s still an advantage for being the one who builds the machinery, but it’s not a complete loss for the other player.
So with those changes in hand, I ran some more play tests and the whole thing turned out surprisingly well. Of course, there are still lots of problems, but they are manageable. After that first play test, I was concerned that the new direction I had headed in wasn’t going to lead anywhere and I was going to have to go back to the old model without any other ideas on how to fix it. But I persevered and I can see the path through now. Once again, I have confidence that the game could be pretty great with enough work put into it.
It’s a little disheartening to hear my friend say he enjoyed the old version of the game better, but I can understand his sentiment. In a way, I did too. It was a really interesting single-player puzzle, but it had no player interaction. Injecting the player interaction took out some of the puzzle-y nature of it, unfortunately, because it was too easy for other players to come in and make the puzzle unsolvable. I’m sad to see that version go, but I’m excited to see where the game goes next.
Next I’m going to work on simplifying some elements of the game play, work on getting players to focus on the right things, and do some tuning to the pacing of the game, so that it still doesn’t take too long to play, but feels like a complete game when it’s over. Then I might think about some variable player powers. Who knows?
Love the Rogue Legacy picture. Such a fun game!
Cool to hear how you’ve tweaked some concepts in the game to match the vision for your game. One thing to consider as you explore the concepts of regions is whether they should be physical separate sections, or simply ‘rings’. For instance, you might have a core/downtown district that’s primarily commercial, followed by a residential one, and then an industrial one, all radiating out from the center or one side of a map. It would be cool if the map layout could vary for this somehow. And if you really wanted to get fancy, you could introduce some rules that allow you to “break” some of the existing rules, like building an industrial building in a residential district or something, but at some sort of penalty rather than just a hard-and-fast rule of “you can only build this here”.
It sounds like this is shaping up to be a nice semi-cooperative game. Kinda like how Between Two Cities has you working with your neighbors even though you’re competing against each other. I’m not sure how much of that kind of a vibe it’s giving or you’re designing toward, but it’s a neat game style and seems to jive with your profile you posted on Twitter recently.
Out of curiosity, is there a certain number of players you’re targeting with this game? I ask because I’m a dad in a family of 5. There are lots of games for 1-4 players, so games that work for more than 4 are always an unexpected (and appreciated) delight, as long as the down time between turns isn’t too great.
Hey Todd! Since, I’m trying to theme it on the concept of building Gloomhaven, I’m working with a fairly immutable map layout that isn’t circular. PLayers aren’t limited so much in what can be built in each section, but just that they can’t duplicate buildings in each section. There are some other building limitations, in that the map is color-coded and each point building has to be placed on a specific color, but each section of the map contains most of the available colors.
Regarding player count, it was a goal early on to make a game that plays with more than four. I see one of my main failings thus far is that my two games only go up to four players, so I want to work on that. So far, most of the testing has been done with four players, but there are rules for up to six. Time will tell if that player count works at all.
Thanks for the explanations, Isaac, both on the layout as well as # of players. That’s really great to hear you’re designing for more than 4. With a game like this, I can easily see how it would scale well with more people, though you’ll likely need some adjustment rules as player counts increase.
I was thinking more about your ideas/concepts and another game you may want to look at for ideas/inspiration is Key to the City- London. It sounds like a streamlined variant of Keyflower. I’ve never played Keyflower, but have heard great things. Anyway, one major component to the game is building up boroughs, which involves tile laying. That’s not the same as your game, but it might give you some mechanics to explore/consider:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/205507/key-city-london
The rules have been uploaded so you can read those. I always find it fun to explore new games and see their various mechanics and ways of implementing strategy.
Congrats on reaching another milestone in the yet-unnamed-but-likely-awesome game you’re developing! If you ever want to mock up the game in Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia and want a playtester, I’d be happy to help.
As I read the past couple posts about this factory game that isn’t a factory game it seems to me that the core of the game is the building of the supply chain and not necessarily the placement of the buildings. So it may make sense to look to abstract out the building part and create a system or process by which a Gloomhaven City Council is looking to build x buildings per round and the materials provided for the effort. So a player scores points based on being able to contribute to the buildings, sort of like the shipping aspect of Puerto Rico, completion of buildings, etc. And as the buildings are completed it changes point values or game mechanics or something for subsequent building areas. Then the focus can be on the efficiency of the supply chain and competing there instead of spatially blocking each other in the building piece, which seems to be where the fun is. Since I don’t know anything about the game other than what you have written so I may be off. But thank you for giving insight about the game design process. It is interesting to follow.
Hi,
Any chance of either solo play or cooperative (which can be solo anyhow)? I only play solo and I supported Forgewar and Gloomhaven for those reasons. While not every game is meant to be solo or cooperative, I’ll be very bummed if I have to pass on one of your games if it’s competitive only.
While it’s not the focus at the moment, I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to come up with a compelling solo mode.
Alright! That sounds awesome! I’ll keep an eye out for the upcoming Kickstarter.
Thanks!!