Brandon the Game Dev

Perfect board game pacing is one of the most underrated aspects of board game design. Somewhere between overwhelm and ennui, there lies a middle ground where a game is perfectly paced. A great board game feels challenging and interesting throughout. So often, when we’re balancing our designs, it’s because we’re trying to nail down board game pacing.

But how do you do that?

Many of you know that our Kickstarter campaign, Tasty Humans, has just debuted on Kickstarter! Both to celebrate the launch and to share knowledge, I’d like to share the thoughts of Ryan Langewisch, designer of Tasty Humans. After all, he created the pattern building game that we call Tasty Humans, so it makes for a great case study!

His unedited original post can be found here. Below, I have lightly edited the original work from his blog. In some cases, I have also replaced images with ones from the production copy of Tasty Humans. Enjoy!

In each of the design diaries that I have written so far, I have focused on a specific game mechanic or isolated portion of the game. Now I want to zoom out a bit and look at the design as a whole. I am putting more focus on the arch of the game of Tasty Humans and some of the decisions that were made. I made these decisions in an effort to improve game flow and the overall player experience. Early in development,  I realized that the game would be best if I could fit the experience into a 30-60 minute time frame.  This became a design beacon when making decisions around the flow of the game.

 

Game Progression and Board Game Pacing

The progression in a game of Tasty Humans comes from the gradual filling of each monster’s stomach. There is also an escalation in strategy as the players fill up their boards by acquiring more and more Leader tiles. Each Leader tile provides an additional goal for how to maximize the “satisfaction” of their monster. At the beginning of the game, a player’s objective is simple. They have just a single Leader tile and their monster’s unique “personal craving.” Acquiring more Leader tiles gives the player more to try to balance. I have found this gives a satisfying feeling of progression from the beginning of the game to the end.

However, there were several possible implementations that would maintain this sense of progression. An early design question became, “what should dictate the pacing of players receiving new Leader tiles?”

In my first prototype, I had special “Draft Leaders” cards shuffled into segments of the Adventurer deck. This led to uncertainty in when players would get their next Leader tile. This proved to be awkward because it caused sudden interruptions of the rounds. These interruptions required players to put their tactical planning on hold to make an unforeseen decision about their next Leader tile. Also, it caused me to lose control of my own design. The random nature of the cards could lead to suboptimal player experiences if the cards came up too early or too late. A simple solution turned out to be the most effective. Leader tiles are always drafted on the same cadence, after each round. This not only allows players to plan for it, but also gives the game a much better rhythm.

Leader Tiles & Board Game Pacing

The original design for the Leader tiles was to wait and reveal them right before the draft was going to start. I initially liked the idea of it being a surprise. However, in hindsight, the decision trivialized the “crown” mechanic that I had included to determine the drafting order. How can players evaluate taking crowns to improve their order in the draft if they have no idea what their options will be? This question led to the decision of revealing the upcoming Leader tiles at the beginning of the round. Thereby, giving players the opportunity to better estimate how important it will be for them to secure an early pick in the draft.

Because of the desired pacing for the game, I decided that a Leader tile draft should occur after each player has selected (and eaten) two adventurers. However, this ended up feeling a little clunky. It required players to remember if they were on their first time around the table, or their second. Rather than having a natural pattern to each round, it felt like the round was “repeat the same thing twice, but remember if it is the second time.”

Snake Draft & Board Game Pacing

Striving for a more elegant solution, I played with the idea of making it a snake draft; that is, going around the table, but then reversing the turn order back and finishing with the first player. Searching for a better solution, I played with the idea of making it a snake draft.  A snake draft goes around the table only to reverse the turn order back and finish with the first player.

With this approach, each player would still pick two adventurers. However, the end of the round would be more clearly defined when play moved back to the start player.  I found this to work well in testing. While making the rounds feel much more natural, it also had some interesting side effects. The player that gets back-to-back turns in a round has some opportunities to be clever in how they manipulate the adventurer grid to their advantage. Even so, the decision wasn’t without its downsides.  The main one being that the first player has to wait twice as long for it to be their turn again. While not ideal (especially if some of the players are struggling with analysis paralysis), I deemed that the advantages tipped the scale in favor of the snake draft. In playtesting, the time between turns has rarely been an issue.

The Race to the Finish

From the beginning, it was clear to me that filling the monster’s stomach should trigger the end of the game. It is not only satisfying for the players to completely fill their grid, but it is also thematic for monsters that are appeasing their hunger. Yet, I quickly learned that it was not a good approach for the game to end immediately after a player fills their board. Technically, other players should have the awareness to see what is about to happen.

Nonetheless, this approach almost always left the other players disgruntled at not being able to finish what they were planning. In a game like Tasty Humans, each player is primarily lost in their own world of puzzle-solving. As a result, I found that I needed to let players follow through on their plans without any sudden interruptions. The simple solution was to always finish out the current round (i.e. snake draft) once one monster filled their stomach. It is funny how often the simple solution is the best one.

Simplicity Sometimes Leaves Questions Unanswered

I still had one unanswered question. Should the player that filled their stomach first receive any kind of reward? Initially, I was a little hesitant to give the fastest player points.  I did not want a “rush” strategy to be the most effective way to play.  Ultimately, I wanted winning to come down to who best maximized their scoring conditions.  This was accomplished by how they had arranged the tiles in their monster’s stomach.

However, there was another design incentive in rewarding a player for triggering the end of the game. That incentive was shortening the play time. The design goal of keeping the game length within the 30-60 minute range was important. Basically, my end game condition meant that the fastest player would determine the game length.  I encourage players to push to the finish instead of stalling for more points. This aligns their goal of winning with my design goal of keeping the game from running too long.

In the end, I made filling your monster’s stomach first worth a modest (but not insignificant) 2 points. I then ran some specific tests to ensure that a “rush” strategy was not dominant. Fortunately, due to how points are scored and how detrimental damage can be, the “rush” strategy wasn’t dominant.  In fact, the strategy proved to be far inferior to a slower and more precise approach.

Board Game Pacing for Different Player Counts

Another hindrance to a consistent 30-60 minute playtime was scaling based on the number of players. Obviously, if it takes two players a certain amount of time for one of them to fill their board, it is going to take even longer with four players. To achieve my design goal, I needed something to change that would compensate for the slower filling of the board in games with more players.

The only obvious solution scared me a bit.  That option was using a smaller grid with higher player counts. I was concerned because much of the satisfaction of the game comes from filling your board.  That satisfaction meant having a lot of space to work with and score points. I was afraid that if I reduced the rows in the grid, players would feel stunted. I did not want them to feel as though they were just getting a teaser of the “full game”.

This is an example of how simple playtesting of a change can trump what you, as the designer, “thinks” will be the effect. Despite my skepticism, scaling the number of rows in the grid based on player count worked flawlessly. Even at the highest player count (4 players), every game still felt like players had the full experience. Players have left frequent feedback stating their surprise at how much they felt like they accomplished in such a short playing time.  This is one of the best indicators that the game pacing is on the right track.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into Ryan’s creative process. By sharing our experiences in the development of Tasty Humans, we hope to help you create games that you are proud of, too 

One of the hallmarks of good board game design is being able to create hard choices. Particularly when hard choices come from simple mechanics.

Sounds easy enough to do, but it’s actually really tough from the designer’s perspective! Let’s talk about how you can create hard choices in your board game.

Many of you know that our Kickstarter campaign, Tasty Humans, has just debuted on Kickstarter! Both to celebrate the launch and to share knowledge, I’d like to share the thoughts of Ryan Langewisch, designer of Tasty Humans. He, after all, created the pattern building game that we call Tasty Humans, so it makes for a great case study!

His unedited original post can be found here. Below, I have lightly edited the original work from his blog and – in some cases – replaced images with ones from the production copy of Tasty Humans. Enjoy!

In my Tasty Humans Designer Diary posts so far, I have focused on the puzzle aspect of the game.  That aspect being players dropping pieces into the monsters’ stomachs and strategically arranging them to maximize their overall “satisfaction”. Monsters are eating adventurers with their stomachs being some kind of puzzle that you drop the adventurers into was the initial concept. The design process really started with the puzzle. Later, I tackled the question of how players select which adventurers they will eat.  In this post, I will explain the approach I used for that part of the design.  I will also address whether my eventual approach met the necessary criteria.

Hard Choices: Picking from a Selection of Delicious Adventurers

I knew I needed a mechanic that gave players a choice of one adventurer from several options. I already touched on how there is decent variety in how a single piece can be dropped into a monster’s stomach, but a key part of providing interesting decisions was going to depend on asking the player to determine the best piece for their situation. Immediately this pushed me into “drafting” territory. Drafting is probably the most common solution for having players pick from an array of options.

Drafting can come in a variety of forms. At the level of individual player choices, it simply requires the player to pick from several different options.  This usually results with their pick then being removed from consideration by other players. When selecting a game mechanic, it is the most familiar solution. That was the case here, as I visualized what a “7 Wonders/Sushi Go!” style drafting process might look like. In other words, each player has a hand of adventurers. After picking one, he then passes the rest clockwise around the table. There were really two reasons why I wasn’t a big fan of this solution:

1. It felt really derivative. The fact that it came to mind so easily was a little bit of a red flag. This was a warning that I might be taking the path of least resistance when picking a mechanic. Even when your first idea is great, it is always worth your time to brainstorm some alternatives. You may still end up going with the original idea. However, at least you make it earn its selection instead of defaulting its way into your design.
2. It didn’t feel right thematically. I liked the theme of adventurers coming to try and slay monsters, only to provide a nice buffet delivered straight to their doorstep. I wanted to lean into that wherever possible. Each player having a selection of adventurers and then passing them was purely a mechanical construct. This would force the theme even further into the background.

Fixing the Derivative Issue

As for the first point, I felt I had an opportunity to come up with a “twist” on drafting that might add some interest and differentiation from other games.  A simple drafting mechanic used by Bruno Cathala in Kingdomino inspired me. Cathala leveraged a simple twist. Players weren’t just drafting which tile they wanted most; they were also picking their turn order for the next round.

Is it worth taking that better tile at the expense of picking last next round? That is an interesting decision. It is much more interesting than if it was simply “which tile do you want most?” Not to mention it organically balances the game by attaching a cost to tiles that are strictly better. I wanted to try to come up with some ideas like that, where picking the “best” option was more nuanced than the inherent value of the adventurer.  (In this case, the piece that would be dropped into the monster’s stomach.)

Fixing the Thematic Mismatch

As for the second point, I tried to visualize it from the thematic standpoint of a group of adventurers marching towards the monsters. What if instead of hands of cards getting drafted, there was a grid of adventurers face-up in the middle of the table? The grid representing the “mob” making its way towards the players? Certainly not any breakthrough innovation in terms of mechanics, but it moved me back to the theme. It also pushed the mechanics into a different space that I could use as a starting point for additional brainstorming. At this point, I was picturing a 3 x 3 grid of adventurers. This concept would end up remaining true into the final design.

Hard Choices from the Player’s Perspective

I am looking at a 3 x 3 grid of adventurers, what will determine which one I should pick? The big opportunity I saw with drafting from a grid, was that there was now a spatial relationship among the cards. When drafting cards from a hand, there is no ordering or relationships based on position. (Although I may have just come up with a new game idea… Bohnanza meets Sushi Go?). I wanted the positioning of the cards in the grid to actually matter. I wanted it to influence which cards make sense to select on any given turn. The primary way I approached this was through the addition of damage.

At its most basic level, the idea for damage was to have certain cards that would hurt you if you picked other cards in the grid. For example, a swordsman might deal damage if you pick one of the cards that is orthogonally adjacent to it.  I definitely liked the thematic idea of the selected adventurer not dealing any damage. The nearby adventurers swiping at the monster emphasizes the helplessness of the adventurers. It was also a mechanics-driven decision.

By having the damage associated with a specific adventurer dictated by its surrounding cards, there are a lot of interesting combinations that can emerge based on how the cards are arranged in the grid. A specific adventurer could be eaten with no damage in one game; yet be positioned to come with three damage in another game.

An Example of Hard Choices

Consider the following grid of attacking adventurers:

When choosing to take a card, you must check for Swordsman and Archers to see if you take any damage. For example, taking the top left card in the grid would result in two damage. One damage comes from the Swordsman to the right (which hits adjacent cards).  The other one damages comes from the Archer two spaces below it (which hits cards two spaces away in a straight line). However, you could take the bottom-left Archer without taking any damage. This is because there are no other Swordsman or Archers that affect it. For each damage taken, you must drop a damage tile into your monster’s stomach. Damage tiles take up room where you could have been scoring points. They actually bring negative points if they end up adjacent to each other.

Adventurer Types to Create Hard Choices

In addition to the Swordsman and Archers that dictate damage, there are a few other special adventurer types:

1. General (banner with arrow) – When taken, the other adventurers in the same row or column (based on the arrow) flee, and are discarded. For example, taking the General in the top-right corner would cause the Archer and the Swordsman in that column to be discarded.
2. Wizard (magic wand) – After dropping the shape of the Wizard into your monster’s stomach, it causes a “magical burp”. This allows you to swap any two adjacent tiles in your monster’s stomach.
3. Cleric (heart bottle) – After selecting the Cleric and taking any damage (2 in the case of the Cleric shown above), you can remove one damage from your monster’s stomach.

Each of these abilities adds opportunities and variability to the decision of picking an adventurer from the grid. Additionally, you will notice that some of the cards have either one or two crown icons at the top. This connects back to the Kingdomino inspiration that I mentioned earlier.  Selecting a tile in that game also affects your turn order for the next round. In Tasty Humans, each player is going to end up selecting two adventurer cards each round. At the end of the round, the number of cumulative crowns from each player’s adventurers dictate the order in which they get to draft the available Leader Tiles. Seeing as Leader Tiles are the primary scoring mechanism in the game, the draft order for this phase could be crucial. This makes crowns very valuable depending on the situation.

Tough Questions for the Player

All of this comes together to provide the kind of “adventurer selection” decisions that I was hoping to achieve. I wanted each turn to present interesting tradeoffs and unique situations based on the arrangement of the “Attacking Adventurers” grid. Here is a list that summarizes the common considerations that a player must make before selecting a card:

Which shape do I want the most?

The tiles that you drop into your stomach are typically the most important factor. Arranging tiles to maximize the scoring from your Leader Tiles and monster’s “personal craving” are what will ultimately win you the game.

How much damage will I take?

You may see the perfect piece, only to find that you would receive two or three damage from selecting it. This then becomes an interesting decision, as you must decide whether the piece is worth it. Or, perhaps, you simply can’t afford to take that much damage.

How many crowns will I get?

The Leader Tiles for the upcoming draft are revealed before the round begins. Players will have to evaluate how important it is for them to choose before the other players. If it is crucial for you to get a specific Leader Tile, then choosing cards with crowns may trump picking adventurers that give you more desirable tiles. Additionally, you will need to pay attention to how many crowns other players have taken this round. This will help you to know where you stand in the draft order and the implications of taking cards with or without crowns.

Are there any attractive General/Wizard/Cleric opportunities?

Sometimes you will find yourself in a position where one of these special abilities is exactly what you need. Maybe you took a damage that was really bad for you, and a Cleric would be perfect to remove it. Perhaps swapping two tiles in your stomach would perfectly align them with your Leader Tiles. A Wizard would allow you to make it happen. Or maybe you are taking back-to-back turns (play moves in a snake draft, with the last player taking two turns in a row), and you want to select the General to clear out cards so that you can see more options for your second turn. You would need to weigh each of these scenarios against the other consideration that have been mentioned.

Final Thoughts

At this point, I have playtested Tasty Humans over fifty times. I still find myself intrigued at the decisions and tradeoffs that arise based on the arrangement of the adventurer cards in the grid. The considerations listed above combine to achieve my design goal of having interesting and meaningful decisions whenever picking an adventurer card. It is also an example of the power of grouping several elements into a single option in a draft. The player is constantly being asked to rank their priorities. Evaluating which combination of those factors is best for them at that moment. This is accomplished by grouping shape/tiles, damage, Leader Tile draft order and adventurer abilities into each possible card that can be taken.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into Ryan’s creative process. By sharing our experiences in the development of Tasty Humans, we hope to help you create games that you are proud of, too 

Of all the mechanics in the board game world, variable player powers remain a fan favorite. Games with this mechanic range from Gloomhaven to Terraforming Mars to 7 Wonders. Part of their popularity comes from the ease with which they add variety to games. Implemented well, variable player powers can drastically increase the shelf life of a game. So how do we implement them?

Many of you know that our Kickstarter campaign, Tasty Humans, has just debuted on Kickstarter! Both to celebrate the launch and to share knowledge, I’d like to share the thoughts of Ryan Langewisch, designer of Tasty Humans. He, after all, created the pattern building game that we call Tasty Humans, so it makes for a great case study!

His unedited original post can be found here. Below, I have lightly edited the original work from his blog and – in some cases – replaced images with ones from the production copy of Tasty Humans. Enjoy!

Using Variable Player Powers to Establish Secondary Objectives

In my last Designer Diary for Tasty Humans, I talked about how I approached scoring based on the arrangement of tiles in each of the monster’s stomachs. The Leader Tiles provided a lot of variety in the tactical decisions while trying to maximize your score. However, my initial testing indicated that it was not a perfect solution on its own.

One of the main problems I found was how easy it was to have sections of the board that were “unconstrained”. Regardless of what tile I placed there, it had no implication on scoring. I realized that it was inevitable that some squares wouldn’t impact scoring due to how the Leader Tiles were arranged. Nonetheless, I wanted to make sure that the player always felt like they had goals they could work to accomplish. I never wanted players to encounter a turn that had no meaning simply because the squares they needed to fill didn’t match up with any Leader Tiles. My solution was to give each monster board a unique “personal craving”. This would be a scoring condition that applied to the whole board.

Personal Cravings as Variable Player Powers

I introduced the unique scoring conditions for each monster board to provide a universal scoring constraint. The constraint helps to cover squares in the grid that weren’t affect by any Leader Tiles. While I found that it achieved that goal, it also added more interest to the squares that were affected by Leader Tiles. The layered objectives lead to tradeoffs when a single square can score in multiple different ways. For example, consider the following board.

The Griffin’s personal craving rewards the player for creating patterns (either horizontally or vertically) that alternate between two different tile types. Looking at the space above the top helmet tile, you may notice that it could score in two different ways.

If you placed a Hand tile there, you would score 2 points from the Leader Tile. If you placed an Armor tile, completing another pattern for the Griffin ability, it would score 3 points.

It may seem obvious that 3 points is better than 2 points, and so an Armor tile makes the most sense. But depending on the situation, it may not be that straightforward.

What does this mean?

Perhaps the shapes available to you make it easier to work towards your other goals if you place a Hand tile in that position. In Tasty Humans, you never simply play a single tile. It is always part of a larger shape that is being dropped into the stomach. So if a player is considering two different shapes, one that would place either an Armor tile or a Hand tile in that space, they will also need to consider the tradeoff of the other pieces that come along with it.

Another option is to play a Hand tile in that space. If possible, have the Helmet and Hand tile be the start of a new pattern for the Griffin ability. For example, if the player has access to a shape that drops a Hand tile and Helmet tile in that column, then they are only one additional Hand tile away from completing a new pattern. Aligning the Hand tile with the Leader tile creates a pattern worth 2 points.

Merging the monster’s personal craving with a unique combination of Leader Tiles acquired over the course of the game allows for an interesting combination of scoring opportunities that will be different every time you play.

Improved Variable Setup

I really enjoy games that have variable setup.  When elements are randomized at the beginning of the game, I feel as though each time I play it is a new puzzle to solve. The addition of personal cravings for each monster board further improves the variable setup. It gives each player a unique starting point at the beginning of the game. Each player is already receiving a random starting Leader Tile. Now the player pairs the Leader Tile with the monster board of their choice. This multiplies the number of starting combinations that are possible.

That starting combination is enough to push the player in an entirely new direction. The Leader Tiles they select after that only further ensure that it is a unique experience. This post highlights the four “basic” monster boards. There is also an interesting design space to explore other more advanced abilities. I am currently developing six other more exotic boards. It has been really fun to play with them so far. Hopefully at some point, I will be ready to share them in a designer diary. Then I can talk about some of the challenges that I encountered in the design process.

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I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into Ryan’s creative process. By sharing our experiences in the development of Tasty Humans, we hope to help you create games that you are proud of, too