General Planning
Welcome to our process post! We, Justice Andersen and Anjana Vishnubhotla, are creating a board game with card slinging and some light politicking with some treasure-nabbing theming to tie it all together. We call it Off The Deck.
When we first met to start brainstorming ideas for our game, we both had taken inspiration from some simpler (but fun!) card games that we had played in the past – games like Sushi, Go!, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza, and Bang!. Our original idea was to have a card game in this vein, but we had a preconceived idea for the theme – pirates and the high seas. We took inspiration both from the aspects of pop culture pirates that we could remember as well as movies like Pirates of the Caribbean.
We started from this theme and then worked the playable part of the game around it. We decided that the game should be part board and part card game, so why not have the board shaped like an X (i.e. X marks the spot)? This idea persisted throughout the design process, with some of the mechanics and cards being created and then themed, and something on theme being thought of and a card being created to fit that idea.
During our session of spitballing ideas, we found the game to be more interesting if the players were allowed to interact with each other in more ways. We found it fun when cards allowed two or more players the opportunity to benefit rather than just strictly benefitting one player and so we adjusted some of our cards to not just be able to be played on yourself, but also on other players. This in turn means that although it might be optimal to play a beneficial card on yourself, you might instead make a deal with a player that has been targeting you to avoid you instead in exchange for playing the card on them, which opens up more opportunities for social interaction.
Mechanics Planning
We originally planned for the players in the game to have a starting hand of cards which would then be either fully or partially replenished each turn. The issue we ran into was that players would sometimes take too long on their turns, and because our initial rule was that players were allowed to play any amount of cards on their turn, there would sometimes be situations where a player with a lucky draw was able to dominate from the outset of the game because they got so far ahead before any other player. We tried to adjust this by limiting the hand size of players to only 3 cards, and also limiting the number of cards playable each turn to just 1 per player.
Although this might seem like a serious drawback to the level of fun the game is able to provide, we instead substituted it with additional guidance for the players: the game is meant to be played fast, and no turn should take more than 10-15 seconds. We considered implementing a timer as a mechanic to enforce this but instead trusted the player to understand that the game is meant to be played quickly, without thinking about it too hard (because how many pirates are also master strategists?).
Above is an image that shows the basic cards we made in the first iteration. We started with only the most basic movements, and decided that around ½ of the deck would be composed of these. After playing with only these, however, we started creating new cards which remixed these basic mechanics in slightly more complex ways which create an element of strategy to decide which card will be played.
The things we are still testing currently are mostly the endings of the game: how long should the board be so that the game plays for the correct-feeling length (currently 20 spaces)? Should the players be allowed to win in some other way than being the last one standing (making it back to the beginning maybe? Or some interaction with other players?)? In addition, the balance of how many of each card should be in the deck is something we’ve been tinkering with frequently. For example, there used to be equal numbers of move forward and back cards, and now move back cards significantly outweigh move forward cards because the game stalled out somewhat when players were able to move up too frequently.
We hope you enjoy our game and would love to hear any and all feedback about it! (Below are some additional pics taken while we were prototyping)
