July 08th, 2023

Berrymandering: Pirates vs. Merfolk

As a kid that grew up with lots of wooden toys, we've been looking at ways of making a retro version of Berrymandering. Think of it as the "Tavern Version", what you'd expect to see if you wandered into a tavern 200 + years ago and saw a dusty well-worn game sitting on a corner table. We've been thinking of new themes for this set: Dragons vs. Unicorns, Zombies vs. Vampires, Cats vs. Yarn, Dragons vs. Leprecons, Bondfire vs. Marshmellows, and other such sillyness. One that has risen to the top is Pirates vs. Merfolk. And we went as far as to laser cut, paint, sand, and finish a giant version of this that we're showing off at GenCon and Origins this year.

This version turned out pretty giant. Each tile is 3.5 x 3.5 x 0.5 inches. It's great for a giant version for cons but not as practical for something you'd actually want to put on a table at home or in a boardgame bar. We're looking at sizing this down a bit and then reaching out to manufacturers to get quotes on production. I'd love to see this game in every board game bar in the US. Easy to play over a beer, nice pieces to handle. I doubt we could afford to do it as a laser cut piece. Most likely the designs would still need to be printed on top of the wood. 

Obelisk: A new way to path

We're working on some new games but we keep coming back to how to make our older games better. Obelisk has a bit of a cult following since we started showing it to people at Origins back in 2017 or so. Since that time we've had a few ideas on how we could improve the player experience.

Changing how "rotating tiles" aka "making a path" works in the game is one of the key things we're thinking about right now. It's one of the most complex concepts in the game and explaining it to new players is a task. So we're looking at ways to streamline that part of the game playing experience. On of the ways we think we can simplify it is by not printing arrows on each of the player tiles and instead allow players to place arrows on the board. With the caveat being that each tile can only have at most one entrance and one exit. We've been using our Prusa Mini to prototype this to great effect.

If you want to test this out on your game then:
1)  Print out 24 little arrows or cut some from cardboard
2) During game setup don't place out rotation tokens (green disks)
3) Anytime you take the "rotate" action, place arrows instead. You get to place #rotates +1 arrows. So if you were playing the 3-player game and you get 3 rotations, instead you get to place 4 arrows. 
4) If monsters ever reach the end of the path monsters win.

Mostly Habitable: New Game Development

Over the past year we've been working on a new competitive 4-player game that explores colonizing a new world and the resulting interplay of growing cities, industry manufacturing, resource extraction, and pollution. Players compete to be the planetary ruler in a euro-style victory point challenge. With all the games we design we try and investigate interesting things that are relevant to real world experiences. In this case, we're trying to help people understand the complexities of surviving on a planet with finite resources. The game was inspired based on the World3 computer model of Earth and it's inhabitants. With each player trying to maximize their own victory points, overall the planets final habitability score should suffer, leaving the final victor the king of the ashes. Whereas if the players worked together, they should be able to have a much more pros prosperous planet that they would actually want to live in.

The game is in a rough shape right now. I feel like there's too much information on the player boards and I need to cut that down. Players are allowed to upgrade their industries at time goes. However after upgrading all the old information is still kept on the board. From a game design perspective I don't like that very much. I want players only to see relevant information. I think that's a general challenge of all game design. We still have a ways to go on this one.