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LEAP OF FAITH

By January 18, 2024No Comments

Welcome to the prototype report of LEAP OF FAITH, an amphibious, ambitious game that dares to ask, “Oh my Frog, can we talk about the economic state of the world right now?”

PHASE I: CONCEPT

Ren loves frogs. I love frogs. As amphibians, they are icons of versatility: they run and jump and swim and poison their enemies with as much prowess as Super Mario. (Not to mention just how gosh-darned adorable they are…engagement for the win!) At our first brainstorming session on Sunday, January 14th, Ren pitched a board-card hybrid game where players masquerade as—you guessed it—”frogs,” hopping around a lily-padded board in pursuit of the finish line. However, I must now remind you of how multifaceted the humble frog is—and how layered its goals are. It doesn’t just want to reach the finish line. It wants to gain as many victory points ($$$) as possible; cards are the way how.

Skipping stones won’t break my bones, but a low roll could definitely hurt me. Image from Ars Technica


PHASE II: RULES & MECHANICS

  • How do players move across the board? Ren explains it best. Instead of rolling a die, players “skip pebbles [i.e. a bouncy ball] to land on a number, which determines how many spaces (lily pads on the board) they can go.” The moment Ren introduced this mechanic was the moment I realized I wanted to, with 100% certainty, help her bring Leap of Faith to life.
    • (We have yet to try out the skip pebble mechanic because we couldn’t find any bouncy balls to use as pebbles in time for our play test!)
  • Tell me about the different types of cards and how they affect my point total. After a player moves whatever number of spaces the Supreme Pebble dictates for them, they pull one of four types of cards from the deck: Battle, Upgrade, Challenge, and Miscellaneous.
    • Battle cards pit you against another player in a Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock inspired showdown: the winner reaps awards such as surging forward on the board or garnering a huge number of victory points. The loser falls into the pond. (You can ALSO battle another player if y’all land on the same lily pad/space. Oooh, a confrontation!)
    • Pulling a challenge card is a great way to (forcibly) bond with other players: perhaps you’ll play a game of Charades with them or hear about their deepest, darkest secrets—after all, performing these actions successfully nets you many a victory point! (Wow, capitalism is a good motivator…)
    • Falling behind? An upgrade card might save you from the depths of froggy, groggy despair: maybe they’ll allow you to automatically win a battle. Maybe they’ll double the number of victory points you earn in a round. As with all things economics, an upgrade card comes with a cost—and could send you into considerable victory point debt if you don’t pass up an upgrade opportunity every once in a while.
    • Not spicy enough for you? Try your hand at a miscellaneous card. They are instruments of pure chaos.
Canva business on the front
Desmos party on the back


PHASE III: PLAYTESTING & REVISING

SANAIYA: Don’t you think there should be some sort of debt ceiling for our game?
REN: No. [With this game], I want to make people suffer.
An actual exchange we had during our Wednesday playtest of “Leap of Faith”

Here are some photos documenting my playtest experience. (Spoiler: I lost a game I helped design. The margin? ONE point.) Special thanks to Ren’s friend Andrew for playtesting with us!

Playtesting meant taking the leap of faith, crossing over from the theoretical to the practical, just as an amphibian evolves from tadpole to frog. We did not have the time/resources to tinker around with EVERY single theoretical aspect of our game (most notably the pebble mechanic or Ren’s 5 board designs), but I felt a smidge of success in the air. We need YOU to assist us in sorting out the technical difficulties we ran into during playtesting: what happens if Player A draws a battle card AND lands on the same space as Player B? What happens if Player C joins the lily pad party, too—must the trio engage in an epic 1v1v1 battle? What happens if players lose track of the turn order (as we did, several times, due to the engaging yet distracting nature of carrying out all the card actions after each and every turn)? Is there a debt ceiling? A debt floor? Can players start out with a certain nonzero number of points—so they don’t fall into debt immediately? Does rolling a “9” actually mean you get to move 9 spaces? And, perhaps most importantly, is the game froggy enough?

We’ll leave these questions for you to “pond”-er (forgive me). THANK YOU FOR READING! 🐸