Brandon the Game Dev

Creating a great scoring system in a board game can be a difficult process. Once you craft the basic concepts of your game and find the right mechanics to express them, you have to set rules. Scoring rules are among the most important, particularly in euro games. So how do you do it? How do you make an arbitrary point system feel fluid and connected to the underlying ideas in your 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 first Designer Diary post for Tasty Humans, I talked about the mechanics of dropping shapes (which represent the titular “Tasty Humans”) in order to fill up the stomach of the each player’s monster. Now I want to dive into the goals that players are actually trying to accomplish. Let’s talk about how those goals emerged during the design process.

Scoring on a Full Stomach

I decided that the basic gameplay was going to involve filling up a grid with tiles. Next, I needed to figure out what would work best as an objective. What determines how well that player did given a grid is filled with different tiles? What determines the satisfaction level of their monster? I needed some criteria that would score “satisfaction points”. It was clear that it would have something to do with pattern-building and positioning tiles in specific arrangements.

The first idea I had was for all players to have public scoring objectives that they are trying to achieve. Before every game, the objectives would be randomly selected. This would have likely worked fine. However, it didn’t feel like it captured the variety and interactions that I was looking for in the gameplay. I like the idea of having localized scoring conditions that could apply to different portions of the board. An example would be scoring for placing a certain tile type in a specific column. But how would the scoring objectives define what portion of the board they applied to?

So What Next?

This led to the following idea: what if the scoring conditions were actually inside of the grid? For example, maybe you have a special tile in your stomach that scores for being near a certain tile type. There would be a few implications to this approach.

One, the positioning of the objectives would matter. The positioning opens opportunities for a lot of interesting goals that deal with pattern-building relative to the tile’s own position. Two, it would allow each player to have entirely different objectives. This caused the goals among players to branch asymmetrically as the game went on. Lastly, based on the combinations of scoring tiles and their position relative to each other, it could lead to a varied interest based on the combinations of scoring tiles. This idea developed into what ultimately became the backbone for scoring in Tasty Humans. Players have the opportunity to draft “Leader Tiles” throughout the game.   Dropping the tiles into their monster’s stomach add to the definition of what “satisfaction” means for that monster.

Layering Scoring Interactions

Each time a player drops a new Leader Tile onto their board, it creates a new layer of scoring opportunity on top of the same grid of tiles. Every game these combinations are going to be different. Players will need to tactically drop adventurers into their monster’s stomach in an effort to maximize the cumulative satisfaction points. Consider the partially filled board shown below.

At this point in the game, the player has acquired three different leader tiles. The tiles are one that scores 3 points for every column that has each of the four tile types. Another that scores 2 points for hand tiles that are diagonal from it. And, finally, one that scores 2 points for each boot tile in the same row or column.

Examples of the Scoring System at Play

In Column 1, I should really try to place a hand next because it would actually serve two purposes. It would score 2 points for being diagonal from the hand leader tile. Since it would also be the first hand in the column, it is moving closer to scoring the 3 points for having each tile type.

Neither Column 3 nor 4 has spaces that apply to the hand and boot leader tiles. Therefore, they may be good candidates for dropping “collateral” tiles that come when I am trying to drop specific tiles into some of the neighboring columns. However, if possible, I should try to make that “collateral” move towards having each tile type in column 3 (whereas column 4 already has all the tile types).

All the spaces in Column 5 can score from boot tiles. However, I know that it is unlikely I will be able to find the right pieces to completely fill it with boots. The second empty space from the bottom could also score if it was a hand tile. Maybe I should target that as a one of my “non-boot” spaces. I also need to decide whether I want to try to get each tile type in that column. However, that directly conflicts with trying to fill it with boots. Maybe I will try to go mostly for boots. But when that isn’t possible, try to fill it in with the other tile types to keep that option available.

The Optimal vs. The Tactical: Scoring Decisions on the Fly

All of these observations stem from only looking at the player board. If you recall from my post on dropping shapes, there is also a lot of variation in how you can drop a new piece into your board. These elements combine to create the central puzzle of each turn in Tasty Humans. How do I rotate and position my piece in order to best work with my various Leader Tiles? You won’t be able to optimize everything perfectly. Therefore, you have to make tactical decisions about where to make sacrifices and where to focus your scoring efforts.

As I explored the design space created by these Leader Tiles, I found that they fell into two categories. The categories where the position of the tiles mattered, and where it didn’t. For example, in the board shown above, the boot and hand Leader Tiles both score spaces relative from their own position. For column variety, you can place the Leader Tile anywhere and it wouldn’t make any difference.  From a design standpoint, I definitely preferred the positional effects. I find it makes for a more interesting decision when you are placing them into your board. I realized that some cool effects only makes sense being universal. Column variety is one such example. In the end, I tried to strike a balance between having mostly positional scoring effects but including universal effects.  I included the universal effects where I felt that they added enough interest to justify their inclusion.

At this point in the development process, there are 30 total Leader Tiles. They are all unique (though many are the same effect for each tile type, e.g. scoring for tiles of a type in the same row or column). Let’s take a look at one more example that shows some of the more interesting effects that may come into play.

Breaking it All Down

Let’s break down these Leader Tiles from left to right:

In column 1, we have a Leader Tile that scores for the number of spaces to the nearest hand tile in each of the eight directions. So we want to place hand tiles in line with it. Ideally they would be separated by several non-hand tiles to maximize the distance.

In column 3, we have a Leader Tile that scores 2 points for each boot tile that is next to any Leader Tile. We will want to keep this in mind for the three Leader Tiles we have now, and also when we are placing any future Leader Tiles.

In column 5, we have a Leader Tile that scores 2 points for each tile in the longest chain of the same type, starting from the Leader Tile itself. For example, the three helmet tiles represent the longest chain on the board. This would score 6 points.

Profound Impacts of Subtle Scoring Rules

You can start to see how the considerations based on Leader Tiles are not always trivial. For example, which tile type should you pursue for the “snaking” Leader Tile? Right now the helmet tiles have the most. Nevertheless, there is potential to string the armor tiles together as well. Additionally, getting a string of armor tiles to move up the far left column would also pair well with waiting to place a hand tile until the very top. This would maximize the distance from the Leader Tile in the bottom-left corner.

On the right side of the board, it is clear that a hand tile would be best in the far right column. However, what is the best approach for the spaces above that? A boot would score next to the Leader Tile. However, a couple of helmets could also extend the chain of helmets to five tiles, while still keeping it “alive” for extension higher up in the board. The bottom-left Leader Tile also requires you to be careful not to prematurely drop a hand tile somewhere too close to it. For example, if you were to accidentally drop a hand tile in the second column while positioning other tiles, it would only score 1 point on that diagonal. If you could space the nearest hand all the way out to the rightmost column, you would score 5 points.

Of course, these questions can only be answered once the player considers what adventurers are available. This will dictate the shapes and tiles that they have to work with. But even before checking which shapes are available, a player can mentally prepare much of their approach from simply analyzing the current state of their board.

Final Thoughts

As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, the question posed by this design was, “how do you score a stomach (grid) full of tiles?” The desire for a high level of variability led me to these Leader Tiles; scoring objectives that are actually included in the grid itself. Hopefully the examples in this post give a taste of the decision space that these tiles create, and why I ultimately felt it was the right direction for the design. Leader Tiles didn’t solve all of my problems when it came to scoring though… In my next Designer Diary post, I will talk about how having Leader Tiles as the sole scoring objective often left many spaces in the board that had no scoring impact. This led to the addition of “personal cravings,” which are universal scoring conditions that are different for each monster in the game.

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 

Pattern building board games are really popular among the hobby board gaming crowd. Board Game Geek cites Azul, Sagrada, A Feast for Odin, and Quadropolis as pattern building board games. These titles earned – and keep – respect in the hobby gaming community. There are many, many more as well.

But how exactly would you make one? Like with all things in board game design, there is no linear path. You meander through the game design process, iterating and tweaking your work until you’re happy with it. There is no satisfactory “10 steps to create a pattern building board game” guide out there.

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!

Background of Tasty Humans

The original idea for Tasty Humans can be traced back to a single thought that I had twenty-four hours into Panjam, a 48-hour board game design contest with the theme “they tasted quite delicious.” I had been struggling to find the fun factor with my entry, which involved players taking control of fantasy monsters and managing resources to try and eat adventurers without taking too much damage. Out of nowhere, a thought popped into my head: “what if you were still monsters eating adventurers, but the game was all about dropping them into a puzzle that represented the monster’s stomach?” This proved to be a valuable idea, as the choice to pivot in the design at that moment ultimately led to Tasty Humans (previously Fantasy Feast) not only winning Panjam, but now being on track towards publication. In this post, I want to dive a little deeper into the design decisions that I made with the mechanics of this “stomach puzzle,” and some of the interest that has stemmed from those decisions.

How Pattern Building Arose from the Dropping Mechanic

From the start, I knew it made thematic sense to have pieces drop into the stomach from the top. This immediately drew strong parallels to Tetris, which certainly played a part in the original inspiration. However, I didn’t want the game to necessarily feel like Tetris. All I knew is I wanted some sort of spatial puzzle that ultimately determined the monster’s satisfaction. This raised the very important question: when filling the stomach with tiles, what is the player’s goal?

In Tetris, you complete rows of blocks, so they can clear and prevent the grid from filling to the top. While we (my brother Daniel was also there for the inception of the design) briefly considered the humorous approach of having completed rows “clear” and leave the monster’s digestive system, it didn’t seem like the right objective for the game. Additionally, a video game like Tetris can handle upkeep automatically when rows clear. A board game would end up being really fiddly.

Theming the Abstract Gameplay

Thematically, the game is about a fantasy monster enjoying a feast. It seemed appropriate that players should try to completely fill their monster’s stomachs. But what constitutes the stomach being “filled?” The Tetris approach naturally leaves many gaps where the pieces did not fit perfectly; would filling the stomach just mean the player is unable to fit any more pieces in? This didn’t seem ideal, and I felt that it was more thematic if the final board ended up being completely filled. If I wanted to achieve this, I needed to find a way to eliminate gaps between the shapes.

The solution to this problem ended up being one of the key components of the final design. Instead of having the Tetris-like pieces stack rigidly and leave gaps, each tile of the shape would always collapse to the bottom. Shapes that dropped into the stomach could be broken apart.  (I love the visual of the pieces “settling” in the monster’s stomach). What I didn’t realize at the time, was that the ability to break pieces apart by dropping them in certain orientations would end up being one of the primary sources of strategic/tactical interest in the game.

Collapsing Pieces to Make Pattern Building More Challenging

The design shifted to players trying to completely fill their monster’s stomachs. Thus, the objective shifted to involve forming certain patterns in that completed grid of tiles. It made more sense that way. In a future Designer Diary post, I will talk a bit about how the game handles scoring through pattern-building, but for now I want to look at some of the implications of the shape-dropping mechanic I have been describing.

The first side-effect of the tiles collapsing, instead of holding their shape, is that different rotations of the same shape can have very different results. Consider dropping an “S”-shaped piece made of four tiles:

Rotating the shape significantly changes how tiles settle, even when the grid is empty. When a player is trying to decide which shape to select, they not only need to visualize how each shape can be rotated, but also the implications of how those rotations would collapse and fit into the current state of their grid. Things get significantly more interesting once the grid has already been filled up partially. Consider dropping a 3 x 1 shape into the following board:

Simple Decisions Create Immense Variety

These are just four of the many ways that you could choose to rotate and drop that particular shape. You can see how different each of the results are. In many cases, the tiles that make up a single shape won’t even end up close to each other! This only really becomes interesting once you consider that the goal of the game centers around pattern building. If I want to place a specific tile in a space to maximize my points, I consider two things. One, how will I get that specific tile to fall into that space? Two, what side effects will the shape’s other tiles cause?

The best moves in Tasty Humans are often the ones that find a way to have multiple parts of the shape contribute to different goals simultaneously. The following image shows an example of a shape dropping into a board. The board has a Leader Tile that scores points for having Hand tiles in the spaces diagonal from it, at any range:

Before reading on, go ahead and think about how you might choose to drop the shape!

There are several ways to drop the shape to get one of the hands to score on the diagonal. If understand how the tiles will collapse, you can even get both Hand tiles into scoring position. The following image shows the most effective placement:

This is a simple example. Still, imagine how things would change with a board full of additional tiles and several scoring tiles in play. All things considered, I am happy with how the mechanics came from the theme. It creates emergent tactics that keep the stomach puzzle varied and compelling.

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 🙂

The latest game from Pangea Games is launching on Kickstarter. Tasty Humans is a 30-60 minute, tile-laying, pattern-building game for 1-4 players.

Needless to say, all of us at Pangea HQ are pretty amped about this campaign. To celebrate the launch, I’ll be releasing a five-part case study on the development of the game every week for the next five weeks.

I didn’t write these articles – Ryan Langewisch did. He is the designer of Tasty Humans. His writing provides an excellent analysis of all the important decisions he made when designing the game. These articles will provide you with tremendous insight into what it’s like to make board games from the designer’s perspective.

Another reason I wanted to share these articles is to push Ryan’s work. This guy is a freaking legend. He won Panjam, a 48-hour board game design contest that Pangea ran in 2018. That is how we found out about him. In his retrospective on the contest, he said that he basically made the game in 24 hours. He scrapped a bad idea mid-contest and started fresh!

I didn’t intend to publish another game at the time that I ran the contest. In fact, it was only when I noticed that his game ranked head and shoulders over the rest that I paid attention. Tyson Mertlich, game developer and member of the GameSmiths, insisted that we publish the game. After playing, I agreed. It would have been a crime to leave this game unpublished.