A Refreshing Experience

During the last few weeks Andrei has shared some of what had transpired before Progress:The Evolution of Technology reached the first of its backers. Designing and developing the game was an experience NSKN Games is no stranger to. Crowdfunding it was a wholly different matter, both to spectate and be a part of.

The first time I played Progress was at a relatively late stage of its development. Some artwork had already been done, the card layouts looked a lot like what you get in the final game box. The working title was still different – it suggested a game about evolving species, which is why I had not been too keen to play it in the beginning. My interest was piqued however, when it was revealed to me, that I would be playing a civilization game.  

Every gamer seems to enjoy civilization games – myself included. The number one of my all time top ten games has been occupied by Through The Ages for several years now, and a civ-building theme is definitely enough to turn my head. However, for me to fall in love with a civilization game, it needs to... sing to me. Yes, well, I know it sounds tinfoil-hat crazy, but bear with me for just a moment longer.

Some civilization games capture me the moment I play them for the first time, with the theme, the scope and, most importantly, the potential to tell stories that spam through ages or even millennia. Sometimes the process is by far not instantaneous, it takes some time (I needed to expand Sid Meier’sCivilization to start really enjoying the game) and a big chunk of my spending money. Sometimes, the game just does not gel with me (I cannot believe everyone’s love for Clash of Cultures), and there is no way I can enjoy it despite the favoured theme. And sometimes, like with Through The Ages, everything clicks within a few turns. I look at the game and I hear its song – and the song is beautiful.

Progress was one of these games.

From the moment I looked at my first hand, from the time I played my first technology (Musical Instruments – the singing voice needed some company), understanding how I will be able to build upon it to move into an exciting future. As the game unfolded, it sang me a song of a technological civilization of poets and engineers, who finally came to rule the world (I won). My mind’s eye saw a magnificent gaming construct, a tree I was immediately ready to hang from for nine days just to see where the roots and branches fork, where they go, and where the beating heart of Progress was.

My first Progress game... in progress ;-)

Simply put, I fell in love with Progress and I got even more excited, when I heard of the plan to kickstart the game. In my heart I knew that with its solid gameplay, the gorgeous art and a most popular theme, Progress would be a great success on Kickstarter. My optimistic approach prevailed in the end, but Agnieszka and Andrei had been much more cautious about their plans before the campaign started – and during its first few hours.

It may be hard to believe, but repeatedly pressing F5 might become an activity that will keep you at your computer for hours – especially when you are following a Kickstarter campaign like the one Progress had. When it goes well – and it was going well for Progress – it validates the hard work put into the game and into its presentation. It clearly indicates that what you find interesting, what lures you into gaming, what makes you want to play a given game is shared by enough people to fund your idea. And the taste of this is sweet enough that, while not being a Kickstarter project creator, I could feel some of what is felt by those, who are directly involved. And by becoming invested I suddenly caught myself just sitting there, looking at my screen and pressing F5 from time to time to see a planted seed grow, much like a civilization during a game of Progress, before my very eyes.

A prototype wall on a prototype card.

But a Kickstarter campaign, even as successful as this one, is not something you just leave on its own, thinking of the benefits you will reap when it is over – and woe betides any project creator who thinks this to be true. It is an ongoing task, a job that needs to be performed almost 24/7, an effort common to both the creators and those backers who not only come on board, but also take it upon themselves to get more involved, actively helping to grow a sprawling sapling into an impressive tree. And as you press the F5 once again, you are not only watching the growth, but also the labours of those who tend to it on a daily basis.

Progress: The Evolution of Technology was a great crowdfunding success and from a personal perspective I am happy I could see the whole process – and even help a tiny bit to build the game’s initial success. Now, as the game reaches its backers, another chapter begins, and one we hope will be as fascinating as the previous one.

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Versailles - A paradigm shift in game design

It's time to talk about Versailles - the latest release from NSKN Games at Spiel '14 Essen - a game which came with a significant change in the way we make games.

Many of you do not know this, but initially Versailles was called... Exodus 2: Terranova and it was created as a sequel for Exodus: Proxima Centauri.

Maybe we should first go further back into history... When we created Exodus: Proxima Centauri, we started building a quite complex universe which would cover a trilogy of games following the evolution and struggles of humanity in a dystopian future, starting with the exodus from Earth to Proxima Centauri and then following the struggle for survival against a powerful, eclectic race called the Centaurians.

While Exodus: Proxima Centauri - the first games of the series - is an empire building game, the second game was planned from the very beginning as a heavy euro, a game built around the worker placement mechanism, with several twists and a a lot of strategy to gain the scarce victory points.

Early prototype of Versailles

The first round of play testing was encouraging, it went on a little too well. You're probably thinking now "What is this guy talking about?... Is he crazy?" and in a way you're right, there should be no such thing as too good first impression when it comes to testing a board game. Let me explain...

Every game I made or contributed to had to have something special, unique, be it the theme or some mechanic. Agnieszka and I were... are very fond of the Exodus universe and I must admit that the games planned in this trilogy are targeting the heavy gamers, experienced players who like a tough challenge. 

As it turned out, the prototype we've shown was... too short. Many people, too many people liked the game as it was, found it not so difficult and while this was a great feeling for us as designers, it was not falling into our grand plan for a sci-fi epic.

Here comes "into play" Daniele Tascini - the designer of Tzolk'in - who we had the pleasure to meet in Cluj at the local convention TIG Con. We played together and - long story short - he liked the game and did not fully agree with the theme. He also suggested a few twists, some of which are now part of the final game.

Fast forward a few weeks... Agnieszka and I were talking during a long road trip and considering to actually change the theme into something which would appeal to a broader category of people, experienced games and newbies alike. But this is not like us, at NSKN Games we used to do things differently!

This is the shift in paradigm which I had mentioned earlier in the tiles of this article (and as a point of interest, I have been warned I should not be talking about this in public, warning which I carefully decided to ignore). As a designer you can afford to make the game you like, while as a publisher you have to make those game which sell, especially if your survival depends on it. 

As designers, both Agnieszka and I wanted to make the most interesting games possible, inventing themes (I had already strayed away from this principle with Praetor) and we always stayed away from the typical medieval theme - games named after a famous European city or a beautiful island which very few people can actually place on the map (a bit off topic,I offered some of my friends 10 euros if they could place Bora Bora on the world map in less than 10 seconds and I am just as reach as I was before the challenge).

Final box and game components

As publishers, we must listen to the gaming community, including the less loud voices. There is a reason for which so many games have "common" themes, they attract the casual gamers who are much less likely attracted by a science fiction or a fantasy universe, but they can picture themselves building a city or a castle... say... Versailles.

With the risk of stating the obvious, one cannot place any game in a familiar Euro-style universe, but if a game has the right mechanisms and interactions and this kind of theme is suitable, then why not?

I have personally accepted that for most of the board games, they game play is at least as important as the theme (the big exception here is represented by... thematic games) and even if there should be no compromise when creating either of the two, there is nothing wrong in walking the wide and well traveled path.

This shift in paradigm was the result of talking to many people, some with a lot more experience in board gaming than the whole NSKN team put together and some just casual gamers who happened to stumble upon one of our games. As many people, as many different opinions, but the majority shared a common point when it came to Versailles - a "normal" theme would make the game more attractive.

After all this ranting about the universe of Versailles and its evolution, maybe a few words about the game itself would bring the long awaited ray of clarity.

In Versailles, each player control several workers (between 4 and 7 , depending on the number of players). Every (very short) turn, the active player must move 1 or 2 workers to an adjacent location, thus activating it and taking the respective action. The locations form a network, being connected by one-way streets, thus generating a large but limited number of possibilities. Each location provides either resources or ways to spend them, with the ultimate goal to build the palace of Versailles and score victory points. 

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Designer Diary - Progress: Evolution of Technology

Civilization games… ask any heavy gamer what is their favorite genre and more often than not you’ll hear this answer: “civilization games, of course”. In today’s world, with everyone being busy – and this category includes the aforementioned heavy gamers – many people are looking for short, yet deep empire builders, games which offer the epic feeling and yet they last just a few hours. The civilization game playable in less than one hour has slowly become the fata morgana of the board games world.

As a designer – probably like many others – creating a civilization game is “the jewel of the crown”, the one achievement that I can be most proud of. So, there I was, about two years ago, with a pen in my hand and a piece of paper in front of me, thinking of the perfect civ, one game which would define my career as a designer. Now, let’s fast forward into the future. In November 2012, Agnieszka – my co-designer – and I were sitting on the couch, cutting and sleeving no less than 550 cards which made up the first playable prototype of the game we used to call Evolution (of Technology).

The idea

In 2012, everything and everyone at NSKN Games revolved around Exodus: Proxima Centauri. We brought it at several fairs and conventions and, curious as we are, we kept asking people “what do you like the most about this game?” and the most common answer was “the tech tree”.

Player board - Exodus first edition

It was one regular evening, one of our many game nights, when it suddenly happened. After an epic game of Civilization which I lost miserably, I said out loud “I love this game…” and the natural question was “What? Why?”

Indeed, why did I like Civilization, along with many other civ games? Well, it was the tech tree.

Well, I am guessing that now it’s time to state the obvious. The will to design a civilization game was fitting perfectly with the new idea of making a game which is all about the tech tree. So there it was, sitting in front of the eye of the mind, the idea we were looking for, a game about researching technologies, following the path of mankind from the ancient times to the modern days, discovering technologies and shaping the things to come.

The first prototype and the secret plan of our friends

In the beginning it was all about research. We went through the history of technology, the history of inventions and of religious ideas and we selected what we believed to be the most important technological achievements in human history. I keep saying we because Progress: Evolution ofTechnology was not an undertaking suitable for one man. The amount of information to process was huge and it required team work and since Agnieszka and I had done it before for Exodus, it was supposed to be the perfect team. And it was…

First prototype

Back to November 2012… The first tech tree required the entire back side of a one square meter poster and it featured no less than 160 technologies divided into five types (Culture, Engineering, Science, Military and Government) and five ages, staring with the Antiquity and ending up with the creation of BoardGameGeek. This did not discourage us, so we went on to make the first prototype consisting of 550 cards which would all be used in a 5-player game. Agnieszka warned me that the game might be “a little too heavy” but I went on and tested it with a group of good friends.

The original tech tree

The first play was epic indeed. Advancing to the third age after 3 hours of play, the table was not large enough to keep almost one hundred technologies. So I decided to end the experiment and ask for feedback. To my surprise, they loved the game but they all said “do not do this to me ever again”. Back then I could still pretend it wasn’t my fault and blame Agnieszka, because for all they knew, it could have been her who insisted on allowing all those technologies in the game, not me.

The second group had a slightly different reaction. After a little more than five hours, when they had finally reached the end of the fifth age, I asked for feedback. One of them stood up and said to the others “it’s just the five of us here, no other witnesses, if we kill him now no one will ever know”. As it turns out, they didn't go through with it. On the contrary, they quite like the idea behind the game, the flow of technologies and how it all came together. Progress: Evolution of Technology had an epic feeling and the only major problem was the length of the game.

A friend of mine came with a simple yet enlightened idea. “What you’ve got here is a game with like… five expansions. Trim it down to… just one game” he said and so we did.

From five ages we cut it down to three, from five technology types we chose three of them which made up the core of the game and went back to review the mathematical model.

So, what is Progress: Evolution of Technology?

The rest of the story is neither that epic nor that funny. We went on playing, designing and revising until we and our testing groups could agree we have a good game in front of us. The final version of Progress:Evolution of Technology features less than 60 technologies and spread over almost 200 cards and the play time is now less than 90 minutes from the original 5+ hours.

The final stage was to dress up the game with illustrations and graphic design.

We think of Progress: Evolution of Technology as a light civilization game, focused solely on technologies and their impact on mankind. In terms of game play, Progress: Evolution of Technology revolves around hand management mechanisms. Each card represents a technology which comes with costs and prerequisites, while it is also the “currency” used to pay for other technologies. Each technology offers game play enhancers (such as larger hand size, extra actions, etc) and means to compete for victory points.

We did not give up on the rest of the original game ideas, the ones which we had to cut out. We kept optimizing and we split the universe into a base game plus several expansions, trying to separate both game mechanisms and historical ages. We went even further and made plan for additional two ages beyond the one already designed with the idea in mind that it’s better to be prepared that otherwise and on the plus side it’s an awesome feeling to play with your imagination and try to anticipate which technologies humanity may develop in the near future.

Second stage of development

Conclusions?

Is Progress: Evolution of Technology is the light civilization game I was talking about in the beginning? We think it is, but we created it, so you don’t have to take our word for it. All I know is that we have both learned a lot of history (and some physics, some anthropology, some… more of everything), we argued, we laughed and we met a lot of awesome people on the way. Designing Progress: Evolution of Technology was an amazing journey.

The final tech tree

Cards fresh out of print

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Every Game is Broken

Recently I have mentioned A Few Acres of Snow more than once, using it both as an example of an innovative design, as well as a tragically flawed one. Indeed, a specific, flawlessly executed strategy will win the game for the British pretty much every time. There seems to be no doubt that the game is broken – so broken in fact, that it has been given as a single example of a design that is beyond repair. Is it however as lonely in its misery as we grew to think?

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

The answer is simple: it is not. There are many games from less known designers that would also quickly turn out to be subpar, with either a single strategy being prevalent, or a specific swing of luck being the force that is most influential when tallying the final scores. Nobody seems really surprised when an unbalanced game published by a smaller company hits the shelves. We do seem to expect, however, that the biggest and brightest will always deliver a product we will not be able to break.

The truth is that deeming a game broken is a somewhat fuzzy process, dependant on a variety of different factors. Is Munchkin broken? Is Fluxx unplayable? Many people might say that they are, but what they are in fact expressing is their dislike of the genre those games represent. Those games were never meant to be balanced, the design goal was not to give all players equal chances, to provide them with a catch-up mechanism or to ensure there is more than one way to victory.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

The problem gets even more complicated when we take a look at some of the German style games, especially those simpler, family oriented ones. Take Coal Baron for example – a rather light game with a simple and straightforward path to victory and a few interesting mechanisms, that can still be taken apart by a player able to optimize their every movement. How about Russian Railroads? It is a seemingly more complicated design that can still be played according to a very simple algorithm that, if used by one player, will make them the victor every time or, if executed by more than one person, will hand the victory to whoever made the first move.

The problem is that the same may be basically said about chess. It is a perfect example of a game that, when played by opponents perfectly executing the best strategies, will always end in white’s victory. Does it mean that chess is broken? Again, based on their dislikes, some people would probably say that it is, but it is not true.

Now, the problem with A Few Acres of Snow is a slightly different one. Due to its asymmetry, the design favours only one side of the conflict. It still requires perfect or near-perfect execution of the winning strategy, but with two equally skilled, experienced opponents, winning the game might as well be determined at the stage of randomly assigning who gets to play the British. This, again, is not a very unique problem.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

A similar one is easily found in the previous editions of Twilight Struggle, which seemed to favour the Soviets (and, by some accounts, still favours them, regardless of the fix offered in an early errata and then incorporated into the deluxe edition). Some wargame designers are even conscious enough to offer a simple balancing mechanism, with opponents bidding to play a specific side of the conflict. The last game I came upon this in was Red Winter – and nobody even suggests that it might be broken.

Again, A Few Acres of Snow seems to be further down the path of broken, as its structure makes the bidding pointless. The winning strategy is not based on victory points, so the players would just be buying a victory before the game starts, provided they know what to do exactly to win the game. But to know that means to either find out by visiting the game’s BGG profile or to be smart and determined enough to actually discover the strategy and perfect its execution, so that any semblance of game balance is irrevocably lost. Still, if you do not simply use other people’s experiences, there is usually a lot of game to be had before you are able to deem A Few Acres of Snow broken. And for most players that will mean playing the game about as many times as one plays any other game in their collection – especially if the collection is at least fifty to a hundred boxes strong.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

The amusing conclusion here is that games are not broken by finding an outstanding design flaw – they are broken because people who are too smart or too determined play them. If not for the great following, A Few Acres of Snow would probably still be considered a flawless design. If not for a disturbingly inquisitive presence at my gaming table, I would probably still be able to enjoy Russian Railroads, oblivious of the way it can be played to win every time.

It may, thus, seem that the biggest plight of designer board games are the people who seem the best gamers: the smart, analytical minds, able to pull a design apart and utterly annihilate the illusion that there are many equally viable strategies to play and win. And it may also seem that there is no game that is not broken – and that it is more a matter of how broken any given design really is than if it is breakable at all.

From a design standpoint, however, the player that is much smarter than average is not as dangerous as the average player that, for whatever reason, decides to assume the mantle of the village idiot. This, however, I will analyze next time – for there is even more to consider here, as not all of us gamers can be exceptionally smart all the time, but we can sure act like half-wits whenever we damn please. And we do, more often than we would like to admit.

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Perfect to a Fault

Last time I talked about how most games can be at least partially broken by exceptionally smart players. And although it may seem that it is the geniuses game designers should aim to please the most, the truth is that they are not the biggest threat to how we perceive games. On the contrary, it is the idiots that should be feared.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

Let me start by saying that I really do not mean to offend anyone – at least not without offending myself as well. The truth is each of us may become a boardgaming idiot from time to time due to various circumstances. In my case, I managed to come through as a complete dumbbell during my first game of Agricola.

It was a few years ago, during a convention, right in the middle of a graveyard shift I was assigned to staff the games room. We started the game around 4.30 and by the time it came to an end, roughly three quarters of my brain bailed on me, deciding that whatever usually governs breathing can hold the fort, while all the other little grey cells will go to sleep. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I scored way below zero, with a single pasture, three bags of wheat and a (probably extremely underfed) pig to show for all my heroic struggles.

I do not remember all of the mistakes I made, but I can easily recall the guy who taught me the game, as he gazed at me triumphantly, counting his precious points, thinking that I was probably somebody’s brother, who (by the looks of him) is a drummer in a thrash metal band nobody listens to, duped into doing a job no sane convention attendee would ever want to just do out of their own volition. So, in short, I was the designated idiot for that game.

So, you're the idiot that ruined that other guy's game.

The real problem with us idiots is that we are also able to break a game – as I clearly broke Agricola for one other player at the table on that faithful night. My erratic movements made it impossible for him to form a consistent strategy and between me doing random things and the game teacher performing at the peak of his abilities, that other player felt that the game structure gave him no chance to do anything significant, thus deeming it vastly underwhelming, if not outright broken.

All of that meant that by performing erratically, making really silly moves, doing what no intelligent player would ever do I transformed the game (for one player) into an excruciating experience, either by testing the mechanisms until they finally give way, or by making the game underperform severely due to my inconsistency and counter productiveness. And although it should be easy to differentiate between an experience of suffering through a game diminished by poor player decisions, and a broken design, the reality is that often it simply is not. And I am pretty certain of that, being a few times on the business end of such an unpleasant experience.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

This is exactly what happened to me with Mag*Blast, a light card game about shooting lasers and making silly noises, right after it was played with two people who decided to make it a full on strategy game, killing the fun for everyone else and proving that there was one clear way of winning the game. A similar thing happened to my wife, as she played Garden Dice with someone who decided to adapt a strategy as aggressive as humanly possible, which meant that, while having no chance at achieving victory, he made the whole game a painful slog for everyone else at the table.

Now, I would lie if I said that there is no space between the idiots and the geniuses. There is and most of us actually inhabit it on a daily basis. It is full of people smart enough to understand and play board games proficiently, but either not quite as bright as the brightest, or just never bothered to calculate and optimize everything, choosing to go with their gut for the sake of what they perceive as fun. And it is this exact group most designs should probably be aimed at.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that dumbing down is the way to go, as this is not what gamers expect and, for obvious reasons, appreciate. What I am saying is that a game should strive to be fun even if not all moves are optimized, because it will mostly work in an imperfect environment. It will never be idiot-proof, as destroying a game is sometimes as simple as swapping the original objectives for a set of few arbitrary ones (like becoming “the master of all wizards” in Lords of Waterdeep, or deciding to never trade in Settlers of Catan) or just being dead tired. But a design should be able to withstand some sub-optimal play without immediately handing over the victory to whoever uses a strategy that can be countered only with a very specific response, executed flawlessly and perfectly timed.

Image source: 
BoardGameGeek

What I am also not saying is that games for the exceptionally smart should be immediately discarded. However, we need to remember that they have a tendency to be misjudged by gamers not willing to delve deep enough. A prime example of such a misunderstood game is The Great Zimbabwe, which has an amusing feature of becoming longer with every subsequent play. The first games will usually be surprisingly short, won by a player who manages to seemingly break the game by introducing a strategy that seems unbeatable. That might earn the game a “broken” status right out of the gate and move it from the shelf to the trade pile, without giving it a second chance.

It is only later that players discover that there is a counter for every possible approach and that the first victories are usually a matter of other players’ negligence rather than anyone’s superior performance. But that requires everyone to be willing to play The Great Zimbabwe again, and that, as my own experience clearly indicates, is by far not a given.

So what should a designer do in order to make a game that would satisfy the most people? In a perfect world, he or she should aim at the brightest, hoping the rest will see how solid their design really is. In the real world, aiming for the smartest gamer should also be acknowledged, just as much as remembering that a game should be attractive to all others – even some of the idiots. After all, we learn, we become smarter, we sleep off the wear and tear of pulling an all-nighter at a convention or we are told to stop acting like a jerk – and we become the masters of the games we enjoy the most. But for this to happen, we also need a chance to enjoy the game right from the start, even if we err on our way.

__________________

FIND OUT MORE NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames