Aside from no one buying your game, just make it a deck of cards consisting of boring activities like "You watch grass grow" and one "You Win" card. There's a die to roll to skip that many cards in the deck. No one holds any cards in their hands. It's just a card flipping game where everyone sees the You Win card appear in the discard pile and wonder how much longer the game is going to drag on.
I find it interesting that ancient boardgames like Pachisi (Ludo) and Moksha Patam (Snakes and Ladders) had a philosophical aspect to them. With the danger of oversimplifying, they intended to show that man is ruled by Fate, you cannot change your Fate, but you can try to make the best of it. In our age, this idea has fallen out of favour, and modern man now believes that he is the master of his own destiny within the constraints of his circumstance - something that is reflected in what boardgame mechanism we prefer today.
To be fair are there also plenty of purely skill based ancient boardgames like Chess and Hnefatafl. The Romans had both kinds of games. Hnefatafl was actually used to teach warriors basic strategy besides being a fun game to kill some time. I heard the same thing said about Chess but I am less certain that is actually true.
Snakes abd ladders isn’t about fate it’s about vices and virtues tge reasons the snakes are so plentiful and extreme compared to the ladders is because it’s a lot easier to fall from grace than to reach enlightenment
I was thinking that too. If we see games like this as one of many tools for educating children about our world then frustration teaches us that progress isn't always linked with merit, it teaches us about the randomness of statistics, honestly if I think about it I could list these for ages. And as soon as he said that bit about how a game should be leading to a conclusion, I had a giggle, because if you're a parent trying to get 5 minutes peace, you want them sat popping that frustration bubble for hours if possible lol.
@@Quincy_Morris Nah, more like it gives kids the lesson: "Life sucks". And yeah, life might not always be super easy today but back when those games were made, it was a lot harder. But to be honest, that is just a hypothesis. We don't really know what the persons who invented them really thought. Another hypothesis is just that they wanted an easy enough game to produce that could keep the kids distracted for a few hours back when no one had a telly. Those games were indeed likely to have been designed for kids, games for adults tended to both be a bit more complex but still taking shorter time for a round. I think any parent can tell you that having the kids distracted for a couple of hours now and then are priceless and humanity are not really that different today even if we have fancier toys.
Excellent advice. I have twins. One loves the luck of dice rolls and card flips. The other cannot stand losing because of something completely out of their control (and not necessarily the opponent’s doing). It makes for very good play testing feedback. 😅
This makes me wonder if growing up one of the twins got a string of board game luck, creating a positive reinforcement loop for luck based games, while simultaneously creating a negative reinforcement loop for the other twin.
Games for children serve the purpose: learning turn-taking, good sportsmanship, numbers, cause and effect, social skills, fine motor skills, all manner of things. Not to mention imagination-my friends and I would play Life all night long on sleepovers, even after outgrowing the basic game structure, telling stories about our tiny peg families while (for better or worse) subconsciously learning about how a bit of luck will change a life’s path. We learned the fundamentals of game playing and learned to enjoy them! Upward and onward from there 🙂
I LOVE games for children :) I made a whole video about them: How to design a board game for CHILDREN *Top 10 Mechanisms* ruclips.net/video/LN0aEU1a9fI/видео.html Advances have been made in designing for children, just as they have for adult designs. Like you, I loved playing Game of Life as a kid. I’d have no worries about my child playing it today if they wanted to. There are MANY better children’s games out there though. Perhaps none have done this theme as well as Game of Life though, and it is an appealing theme to kids/families for sure.
The lack of agency and/or randomness mitigation in games , as well as lack of compensation for when randomness favors certain players, can make one appreciate the agency and silver linings in life better
Randomness is good, when you have some control over the randomness, there is a reason mtg is releasing a box of cards for 270 bucks, card games are inherently random, but you make decisions that impact if your happy with your deck to make curves with payoffs and tutors and resources to use all of them, randomness just needs to not be the only deciding factor, unless that randomness is a tie breaker, (in which case rock paper scissors works way better because of mind games) or that randomness is something you actively chose to engange in because a highrole was your only chance to win, and on average it's not going to win you the game
@@calebbarnhouse496 that's why I love random setup and self-balancing mechanics on midgame random stuff (closed drafting, auction, century/smallworld market, last diminisher, I Cut You Choose)
I think a lot of people miss when talking bad mechanics that seem to never die is the gambling aspect. Most skill destroying mechanics that make games bad can scratch the same dopamine itch as gambling. It can be perplexing to warch from the outside, but many people genuinely enjoy the rush of winning a game by illusion of control while still being able to dismiss defeat as bad luck.
So... If it's fun, why is it bad? I think having a modest amount of luck/gambling can be very good (like you said: something to blame, excitement, new players have a reason to play with better players, easy way to provide variety) (edit: also luck provides more comeback possibilities)
@@metawarp7446 "i had fun when i won by chance" dosnt really give any insight into how fun the entire game is. plenty people will sit through a bad experience just for the chance to win something.....
@@metawarp7446 Some people dislike losing based on a mechanic that feels outside of their control. That is, if they can't trace their loss to either their own mistakes or opponent(s) outplaying them they dislike the game/mechanics in question. Of course, this is a matter of preference, based on what aspects of games one finds valuable. Not every type of game is for everyone.
@benjaminmiddaugh2729 it's not just for the audience. Its the place or occasion. I may not like tournaments or serious sessions with more luck based games but they tend to be better and more fun to play with friends. Skill games tend to be far more one sided. I like games that throw wrenches in that give anyone a chance to win. Not entirely devoid of skill but games that require more adjustment on the fly, lending to people making more mistakes or occasionally being unusually unlucky.
i know a lot of people who genuinly enjoy uno (or similar) to the fullest and barely play anything else. They take it as a "good" thing they do not have to make decisions and can just play along. They don't understand i find this boring the same way i don't undertstand how they find it enganging.
You can use event decks as a manually triggered thing. For instance, a player can choose to pay some amount of resources to draw the top card of the event deck. It's an optional decision to take a risk at that point, which makes it more fun. It can essentially function as a hail mary.
Or make its contents come entirely* from player choice, like Through the Ages does *well players do randomly draw the options they can place, but they're fully aware of which cards they put in, and they always have options
It's a shame that you show Dominion when discussing 'take that' mechanisms while Dominion is one of the few games that does attacks right. I consider 'take that' mechanisms as ways to hit one player hard, often the player in the lead. For example, stealing a keeper in Fluxx, or a card from someone's hand. None of the attacks in Dominion target a specific player, they all hit all other players equally (though the net effect might differ depending on their deck).
I intended to show it as an example of doing it right - while talking about not setting players back too much, and not undoing their whole strategy etc. Clumsy editing on my part :)
Attacking certain players feels weak compared to attacking everyone else at the table anyway. If there are targeted effects, I'd rather have them be positive mutualisms since they can lead to interesting decisions and alliances, as well as working as a secret comeback mechanic, compared to targeted take-that which often devolves to "bash the leader" without any decision space
@@revimfadli4666 the thing is it can work in games that are complex enough like MTG commander, because it becomes a mechanic of "who is the leader" and hiding your lead by making bad plays so you don't get targeted. and it is a self balancing mechanic, if a player gets a big lead, it can turn into a 2-3 vs 1 and make the game less snowbally. a good example imo is mario kart. leaders get defensive items, and people in the back get catch up items, most of which can slow down the ones in front. and depending on the track leading the whole game can be risky, because of the blue shell that brings the first place to a stop.
@@satibel Mario Kart's blue shell is a poor catch-up mechanic! If you're in a position too get it, it rarely helps you get ahead. It's a kingmaker mechanic. The same can be true for Commander (EDH - never forget! ^^) Often the player who is perceived as being in the lead early get's knocked back so hard, that they rarely end up winning. You're right about complexity though: Skilled commander players are good at resource management and playing to the political aspects of the game to avoid such a fate.
I think one very important aspect of mechanical design, especially in games with player elimination, is progressive destabilization. Your game should begin with lots of catch up mechanics and positive sum interactions so losing players can remain in the game with some hope of winning, and end with lots of snowball mechanics and zero or negative sum interactions to finish off losing players quickly and humanely and pick a winner in fairly rapid succession so that the game can be over
Clank is a good example of a great player elimimation mechanic. There's a bag with lits of cubes, players add cubes of their colour as the game progresses, and every so often there's an event to take X cubes from the bag. If your cubes come out, you take that much damge, eventually you may die. When you are dead, on your turn this event triggers and you take out more cubes every time. On the 4th time that happens (on a dead player's turn) everyone still playing dies too.
@@stevieinselby I'm currently considering a mechanism for a game I'm working on where player elimination is technically possible, but has a heavy disincentive. That being the eliminated player's character curses yours and that player gets to spend the rest of the game making your life hell as the curse takes effect. In game of course.
Exactly, and monopoly, which gets slammed in this video, is actually pretty good at this if you follow the rules and are free with trading properties amongst the players
Catan's biggest flaw, in my opinion, is runaway leaders. It's a game where, after a few turns, you can point at whoever is likely to win, and worse yet, whoever has no chance to win. It's actually a game that might have benefited from player elimination...
@@Darkprosper Yeah but at least trade embargoes and robber targeting can give a perception of catchup opportunity. Not my favorite kind of catchup, but still... It's often said that "perception of X is more important than actual X" in game design (although eventually the real X becomes the perceived X once the game is famous enough)
Adam, your video is mostly about the luck factor being undesirable, comparing to strategy, etc. However, I think you should consider why so many games where the luck factor exists, are successful and prefered by some gamers. 1 - luck is a LEVELLING factor. Consider a game where strategy is the main factor. You can´t play with kids. If kids get angry with bad luck, they get even angrier when they feel incapable of winning. A parent must thus play BADLY to allow the kid to win and keep playing. A luck factor game LEVELS out the cognitive differences between an adult and a kid. Or even between kids of different ages. When we are kids, 2-3 years difference is a BIG difference in cognitive abilities. Luck based games may reduce that difference or even eliminate them 2 - even between adults, cognitive differences for certain types of games will mean some players will simply give up on that game. A first time Catan player (and Catan HAS some luck involved) may give up the game if he plays against some experienced player that knows all the tricks and best strategies. No beginner will keep playing against someone very good at chess. Luck based games may allow a beginner the change to win as much as an experienced player. Even in the world of tabletop boardgame afficcionados, someone might give up on a game they keep losing. Even if they do well in other games dependent on strategy, constantly doing bad in a game may be a turn off for some players, irritating or even a do harm to self esteem. Some degree of luck involved may give players a better chance. 3 - luck PLAYS a factor in real life. You may have the best coach in the world, the best players, but there are some days you simply can´t score a goal, pure bad luck, while the other team, suffering the entire match, scores by a luck a goal at 89 minutes. It's exactly what makes football so unique compared to other sports, how it can SUDDENLY change and create unlikely upsets, many times based on luck.
Some very useful thoughts here, thanks. I do think you’ve overstated how much I emphasised strategy over luck though. I am a huge fan of games with luck in them. I have many videos declaring my love of very simple dice games, card games, and a massive deep-dive into the roll and move genre. But luck should be handled carefully to prevent it becoming overwhelming. There is always a balance to be struck. I think for very young players, a totally luck-dependent game is acceptable. But even at a young age, some degree of decision making is always going to make a game more engaging. The depth of those decisions will scale with age and complexity. And some players (the majority) will never want a super-deep, complex, deterministic experience. But as a craft, designers ought to be trying to introduce agency into their games to keep the players involved, even when the gameplay is simple, accessible, and features a hefty dose of chance. Practically every designer in 2024 is already doing this so I’m hardly saying something controversial. Even the simplest games coming out of wonderful children’s publishers like HABA, Blue Orange, and Ravensburger are full of interesting choices for the players. That’s just what publishers are looking for in 2024. The majority of purchasers in the gaming industry are parents buying for their kids. Their decisions are based on nostalgia, familiarity, and availability. So inevitably, the traditional classics remain the highest sellers. But these titles don’t always offer up the most engaging gameplay. A game designer in 2024 would be ill-advised to try to replicate the experiences offered by these games, when modern games tend to offer so much more.
A friend of mine loves the DC superheroes Deck Building game. So much so that he would constantly pester me to try it (me being a big fan of deckbuilders ordinarily). For three games, during the other players turns, I would be forced to discard more and more cards, so that when my turn came around, the only option I would have...is to draw cards and end my turn. He still doesnt understand why I dont like that game, and wont play it.
Ah yes my favourite kind of card games to hate, the ones where the optimal way to play is to force your opponent out of options (and enjoyment). Only one player is supposed to have fun! Looking at you, Yugioh!
DC Deck Builder is a favourite of mine when you are playing a cooperative Crisis expansion. It’s surprisingly very fun and addictive when you are all working together to take down super villains and the theming works better as a cooperative in my opinion.
I love deckbuilders where the first guy that moves gets to stunlock the other player with no hope of recovery. It's basically a coin toss with an extended cutscene afterwards. Oh wait, I actually hate deckbuilders. I wonder why that is...
If it's the deck builder I'm thinking of, it's a coop DC game against the mastermind. It's great. Sad thing is, there are some builds in the game with toxic "hurt your allies to get ahead" mechanics and it sounds like your friend might be into that style. It's a small totally avoidable part of the game
28:55 restrictive player counts. most so called 2-6 player games aren’t anyway. For example we only play Battlestar Galactica with 5 players. It is a so much better experience than any other player count. And that is true for many many games.
There's a lot that theoretically go to 6 but in practice really don't, a fair number that are supposedly 2-4 but if you're not playing with 3 you're just making everything worse, and similar at any player count. Games that are good with both 2 players and 5 players are Very rare. It's noticeable that many games need extra rules that change how the entire thing plays in order to function at two players (and one player even more so unless it can introduce an 'AI' player (not just a neutral dummy player like Risk)... which some have!) Not to say there aren't some that are genuinly good with 1 to 6 or 7 players, but they're solidly in the minority.
Or on the other side of the spectrum, you have games like King of Tokyo which is listed as 2-6, but really works much better as a 4-6 player game- I absolutely refuse to play it at 2 players; and this is speaking as someone that normally prefers smaller player counts! Similarly, One Night Ultimate Werewolf says 3-10, but I'd say that it really doesn't get good until you have at least 5 players, and can comfortably play up to 12.
Yes: a LOT of games from nice to great have a limited player count (4 at most, with some that stretch to 5), above that number there are quite few good games and all the others are trash or party games.
I played a game of Caverna at a convention and can attest to this. That game is advertised as 1-7, and the game was set up for 7 players. We barely got half way done in the 4 hour time slot as turns took forever. Now, I do admit that a couple of the people were new to the game, but that game still has issues even for experienced players at that count. I would never play beyond 4 people.
Yeah, almost lost interest before that. Weird how many presenters spend so much time saying obvious or unrelated things, when they could just be getting to their points.
Considering that Battletech is almost exclusively "roll 2d6 and consult one of a billion tables," and it's currently the most popular it's been since the 1980s, I've gotta strongly disagree with the notion that tables are some outdated relic that nobody wants to use.
Good point, there is solid amaunt of popular games that uses tables for stuff (especially for automatic enemy actions), and there is board games cousin tabletop wargaming(games like batletech, bolt or most of warhamer brand) wich are bild around consulting tables
I would argue this is very much the subject matter itself, and successful licensed product increasing the awareness, rather than "amazing game design". Consider the amount of chit and counter games that use tables for resolution that aren't getting attention from these same folks... there's no wild Crimson Skies resurgence. More than anything it feels like "mechs + 3d printer go brrrt + screw games workshop" all aligning with public awareness caused by video games or just walls of new plastic mechs in many hobby shops, and the old guard were there to shepherd new dudes over. Though with only a handful of charts that are mostly embedded into the record sheets, it's far from the worst example of charts in an old school hex and counter wargame.
I haven't played the game, but almost all games are more popular now than they have ever been, so it makes sense that games would have lots of players playing nowadays, even if they use bad game design.
This sounds like exactly what he's talking about. There are communities that still play older style games - but it's not likely die-hard battletech players, or players who don't already love battletech for that matter - are on the hunt for a new lifestyle game using 2d6 table lookups. That said, while I think it is USUALLY going to be a mistep to use outdated styles, sometimes innovation can still come from refreshing something from the past.
I love the idea of the video but after 10 minutes you've almost exclusively mentioned games designed and marketed specifically for kids. Game of Life was one of my daughters favourite games until very recently, we have very happy memories of a giant Snakes and Ladders game they had at a local park, a couple of years ago we had to ask friends to go to Mcdonalds because she loved the Top Trumps cards they had in their happy meals so much! I used to love Battleship as a kid and played it against my Nanna on trains all the time, you said yourself you used to love Wrasslin' although I haven't heard of it before. You're talking about children's games and their mechanisms as if they're adult hobbyist style board games but they are totally different things with different purposes and audiences. Very young children don't care at all about things like player agency or randomness, if anything these things are perfect for bridging huge skill gaps that exist when a 6 year-old plays with their Dad.
I played all these games and enjoyed them as a kid, but we rarely finished a game (not that we cared!!) But even as a kid, I had favourites - and they tended to be games which were “better designed”. Scotland Yard was the pinnacle. There are a vast number of excellent kids games these days which provide an outstanding experience for children far surpassing the games we played as youths. In this video I am talking about mechanisms which I see presented to me in prototype games designed for adults, on a regular basis. Inexperienced designers take inspiration from the games they know - and too often it’s the stuff discussed in the video. The intent of the video is to persuade new designers to play modern games and avoid some of these features which are either “unfun” or likely to put off publishers.
the problem is that kids don't know of a better game, they only know what they're brought up with, once they get a taste of actually good games they never would want to turn back.
@@AdaminWales If one likes the type of decisions in Top Trumps is one thing. But there sure are decisions. And they are not that uninteresting. You need to card count in order to have full information. You need to remember the stats of all cards, or at least which stats resemble a strong or weak stat. Of course knowing which numbers are the nuts and which are at least tied nuts. If you did the memory work you're ready for the decisions. Aside from the nuts approximating the winning percentages of your stats, based on your opponents remaining cards in stack, can be anything but easy at times. One "issue" with Top Trumps is how good it is at teaching the memory tests, since you only have a chance for a swingless game if you know all the cards, otherwise it's likely that both sides will see the full stacks multiple times. So your memory will have the advantage of multiple well timed repetitions.
Honestly I love mechanics that disrupt strategy like the Community Chest in monopoly. Honestly that's the only part of monopoly i like. I like knowing that no matter how far ahead someone is, no one is immune to bad luck.
Battleship is not as bad as you suggest. Sure the FIRST turn is a blind guess but after that you should have some kind of strategy or prediction of your opponents habits
@@Plunder_Boy wrong but most of the strategy is in your search patterns not ship placement. Unless youre simpleminded but you CAN play any game without a strategy if you dont bother thinking
When it comes to "exact rolls", I'd like to nominate the Finnish game "Afrikan tähti" ("Star of Africa") from 1951 as a surprisingly modern take (every single Norwegian who reads this is going to go "Wait, that game is Finnish?", just like I did a few years back). You run around in Africa using a single die throw each turn, and each big city has one secret tile you can reveal when you land there. Usually it's a gem that gives you money, but some are blank, some have bandits that take all your cash, and exactly one triggers the end of the game. These cities are also fast travel hubs. So landing on them is good even when there are no tiles on them. When there are tiles on them, you can stop when you reach it, but when there isn't you have to throw exact distance. Which means that for the most important part of game progression the game is lenient on your throws, but when you want to use just the fast travel network for convenience you have to decide whether you want to try for several turns to get into the closest city, or just book it to your goal the hard way. It's a good balance IMO.
Let's be honest, the lack of player agency in those really old (as in 3000 year old) games, was probably so that you could win against the prince and keep your head... most of the times.
The idea of a monarch getting violent over losing a game is overblown. Sure, there were plenty of them who were crazy, but most would've taken a loss with grace.
@@jakel2837 I imagine it's more the underage princes that cause problems than the adult monarchs. Just imagine the most spoiled brat you've ever known with legal immunity and a free license to punish anybody he feels like... Not that all princes were like that, but it was definitely a roll of the dice whether one was that kind of brat.
@@AdaminWales You're just wrong about Battleship, but the strategies are too subtle for the target audience of kids, and adults rarely return to consider the game. With the right strategy, you can bring the average number of moves needed to win down from the mid 60s to the low 40s. Like chess optimal play is too hard for humans to do reliably and is something for computers, but humans can do a lot better than the naive approach.
@@SkorjOlafsen Right, but the point here is that you're still making "obvious" choices. Algorithmically dissecting a game is fun, don't get me wrong, but then the enjoyment is placed more on the mathematical side of the game than the game itself. If I were looking at a shelf of 2 player games, would my first thought be to pull out Battleship when I own Watergate, Onitama, Air Land and Sea, or Kelp? Not particularly. I think the point about "informed decisions" is the main selling point here. When playing Battleship with a more rigorous attitude, you will make a few informed decisions. However, will those differ very much from game to game? Is there an obvious path that you should take at any point? Of the games I mentioned, Kelp probably is the worst offender for informed decisions vs obvious decisions after the Octopus is revealed, but there's still some element of informed choice when it comes to the dice drawn for the Shark, the abilities that can be bought, and the cards added to the Octopus's deck.
@@mathmaniac3033 I don't get your point. Battleship is a hidden information, high-randomness, high skill ceiling strategy game. Mechanically, none of that seems to be a problem. None of those elements are inherently bad in a game. I think the lack of appeal to adults is subtle: it's a hidden information game, but you're not trying to guess and counter your opponent's strategy. It's the overlap between Eurogame-style "we each execute our strategy in isolation, and we'll see who gets there first" and the randomness /imperfect information elements that I think doesn't sit well. You have a very abstract problem to solve, and very little feedback about how well your strategy is working, no sense of "ah ha, _this_ _time_ I'm nailing it" that you can get from Eurogames or chess. But my original point was: Battleship is a game with a very complex, non-obvious strategy that requires much thought to play well. The game's flaw(s) lie elsewhere.
I feel like Jail in Monopoly is kind of a bad example when it comes to negative, skip-turn mechanisms, because you can always pay $50 to leave, and the recontextualization of it in the late game where you want to stay in.
The core of my objection to it is that it puts one player in the position of “not playing the game”. Whether that’s for a positive reason, or negative reason, it’s not usually a great design choice to have one player sitting out.
Monopoly has so many flaws ... one of them is that the optimal strategy is often counter-intuitive, and Jail epitomises this. Most players want to get out of jail as quickly as possible, because jail has so many bad connotations and it feels like you aren't taking part ... but in many cases, players are better off staying in jail as long as they can, especially in the later stages of the game, at least they are if people play by the official rules which many don't (eg, I had always played that you couldn't collect rent when in jail, and it was only much more recently that I found out that isn't a rule, which turns it on its head). While the optimal strategy shouldn't be so blindingly obvious that no-one would do anything else, equally it shouldn't be so counter-intuitive that you have to really geek out on RUclips to find it.
@@stevieinselby Monopoly was designed as a Georgist teaching tool demonstrating why landlords are bad. With that in mind, all its flaws make sense. Still sucks to play tho.
One reason player elimination works in King of Tokyo is that it plays very quickly. If you get knocked out you don't have long to wait before it's time for a new round. Same with Bang!: The Dice Game. If you get shot out, it won't be long before someone wins, and then its time for a new round.
In general: yes. Still I've had a couple of games of King of Tokyo were an early knockout was followed by up to an hour of gameplay between the players left in the game. That is where the comment in the video about it being okay for "one or two rounds" rings very true.
Tbh the only time i've played KOT it did seem like an unessasary flaw. That meant we rushed along after someone got eliminated for being too keen. You'd be better off keeping someone in the game but restricting them if their health depletes, like you can only move into the centre if you have x health or more. and/or your if you get knocked out you can;t attack someone occupying the centre.
A lack of a catch-up mechanism can be extremely detrimental to a game, because there is a risk of that player becoming "destructive" or "seemingly non-compliant" (not helping another player to win the game). I see this in online games of Settlers of Catan, another pre-2000 game...
21:43 Yup, in the BG cafe I go Citadels was a relatively played game a few years ago, but I refused to play without houseruling the assasin. Every time I played it "as is" someone would not be able to play because they would get killed every turn. Sometimes it was me, other times it was other players, but in the end whoever got the short stick didn't get to play and more than once someone just stood up and went to play somewhere else. It still baffles me the popularity of such a modern game with a rule that, by default, keeps out one player per round from playing the game.
Thank you for interesting video, keep it up! However: 8 (tables) are common for wargames (and they are selling pretty good now, it's a golden age in wargaming). 9 (player count) - is doubtful. Yes, you can make a game for 1 to 8 players, but quantity of components for 8 players is basicly doubled as of 4 players (and production costs), and will it scale well for 8 players? I think it's better to make strongly tested 2-4 player game, than loosely 1-8 player. 10 (components) - as far as I know, 1) designer do not make a final decision about components, and 2) publishers will think twice if there "must be very unique" components in a designed game.
Thanks for commenting - I’m glad you found the video interesting. I don’t play wargames, but I rarely see tables in the games I play these days. I saw them used much more when I used to play miniatures games. I’m sure wargames make effective use of them. And from the little I know of wargames, I understand simulation and historical accuracy are really important factors - so tables probably allow for a lot of complex interwoven situations and scenarios. Player count - I said in the video that the default now is probably 2-5 (with solo mode and 6 player being desirable). I would agree that 1-8 is very unlikely to be satisfying at all counts. Components absolutely should be a consideration for designers. They are central to the identity of the final product. The publisher has the ultimate say on how they realise the designer’s vision, but the publisher is limited by the components used by the designer in their initial prototype. For example, my game Pikoko required a card holder for each player. The game Potion Explosion is built around a marble dispenser (which the designer will have devised). Some publishers love unique components - they’re a hook in certain markets. Other publishers will want simple components which they can get for a low price.
There was a recent video interview with Cole Wehrle where he defended results tables as the simplest way to cram a lot of historical/tactical detail into a battle resolution, as opposed to bespoke rules that have to be considered simultaneously (looking up different cards, adding modifiers, etc). And to a degree that is true. But then the question is whether that detail is necessary - for a wargame, yes, for a more casual game, no. But some complex minis games could definitely be simplified (turns take less time) with an old school table instead of adding up lots of modifiers.
Nice, you more o less said what I wanted to say (except for wargames: I'm not familiar with those). =) I completely agree with most of the video, except for 9 and 10. For 9 - Player Count, like I said in another answer: a LOT of games from nice to great have a limited player count (4 at most, with some that stretch to 5), above that number there are quite few good games and all the others are trash or party games. For 10 - Components: I'm not so sure, actually many games in their most recent iteration either went from wooden pieces to plastic ones (that are more detailed and, it seems, people like them more) like Catan or expanded the number of plastic miniatures present (mostly dungeon crawlers); while I don't know any game that did the opposite (go from plastic to wood or reduce miniatures). Cardboard constructions are a must where there are complex and big scenery components, but that's more of a space and weight issue (and cost, too) rather than environment. There are still many modern games with carboards/wooden only components, tho. And in both points I'm talking about modern (or modern-ish) games only.
Great video! I see many of these “game designer sins” as part of gaming evolution- game play has “evolved” From simple basics like “roll and move” to modern player agency - have you considered doing a video when “game design goes too far”? Some modern games are more complicated than doing your taxes- require hours of rule reading- and sometimes require more rules references than an encyclopedia- love your work! Very inspirational!
It does almost seem like game design CAN’T go too far… however complex a game gets, there seems to be a market for it and players pushing for even more! 😂 The important thing is that a complex game is appropriate for that specific market - if the theme is wrong, or the mechanisms don’t mesh well (or add too much randomness) super-complex games will always flop. I don’t play enough of these games to make a video about them! I’m impressed by the skill and dedication of these designers (and players) but it’s not anything I aspire to get involved in.
I have had good results implementing "Random Events", in educational games or Game Experience for training purposes. There is an important caveat: When I implement "Random Events," they are meant for the players to negotiate and build agreements since such challenges require the majority of the players' collaboration to solve. In a way, I use this mechanism as a "United we stand, divided we fall" resource.
Top Trumps is not completely random. In theory, card memorizing will give you an enormous advantage. If you memorize the card order during the first deck traversal, you know when the opponent's strong cards come up - and you also know their particular weak stats (a well-designed Top Trumps has cards with weak points). This gives you an enormous advantage.
The plastic segment unlocked a memory for me of the Steve Irwin Croc Hunter board game. It had a wind up toy croc that would move around the board and if your piece got knocked over by it, you had to restart
I've never played tank battle, but as you describe it it sounds like an interesting game. Sounds like a game about reading your opponent/bluffing, which i wouldn't say is the same as making an uninformed decision. Which resonnate with you saying that the game can be fixed.
Yeah, it sounds more interesting than it is to actually play. There’s no real bluffing, and you can’t read your opponent - you just know they have a selection of possible moves… and take a guess. It’s not TOTALLY uninformed. But you might have ~20 possible moves at any given time and ~10 of them will result in your tank being destroyed. You really can’t tell which move is the hazardous one, so even though the traps were placed by your opponent, it essentially feels like random chance. That said, the mix of different elements and types of confrontations, along with nice components, does make for an enjoyable game - if you accept it for what it is. I’d love to see Restoration Games take a look at bringing Tank Battle back like they did for Thunder Road.
I worked on a roll and move as a developer a year or two back, and it opened my eyes to how completely valid, and potentially very enjoyable roll and move can be in a modern game. It was called Damnation: The Gothic Game. I was happy with how it turned out, the 'bumbling' nature of roll to move could be very tense since you can be stood behind someone with an axe in your hand ready to strike, having setup your cards and position so any roll from 1 to 5 grants the kill, then you roll a 6 and decie to steam off after another character. I think it works really well.
Aren't a lot of contemporary cooperative games basically just "event deck: the game"? Everything from Pandemic to Spirit Island is just a bunch of random (or semi-random) negative things happening that the players then have to deal with while traversing to their goal.
Haha. That’s a hot take. I like it. That’s exactly what a lot of coop games feel like to me too! (Maybe that’s why I’m not a huge fan)…. I might use that description if I make a future video about coops if I may?
@@AdaminWales You certainly may. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to describe it that way, although I would be chuffed to receive a hat tip for the description later.
I often enjoy Event Deck: The Game. 😁 But the art and storytelling have to be top notch-and I admit, at some point it could become more like reading a graphic novel than gaming.
I guess the more well-built effects are "Here's something that you have to deal with this turn / in X turns or you suffer a negative effect" (input randomness) instead of "You suffer an unavoidable negative effect instantly" (output randomness). For example, Leviathan Wilds does this well and you can always escape a bad event. But it is true that, in trying to make those event decks thick, many co-ops do have questionable and unfun event cards... ;)
that's probably a bit reductionist, but not entirely unfair. Those games and Arkham Horror LCG sprang immediately sprang to mind when he was discussing random events. I think the distinction to be made is Random Consequences (lose 10 money, go back a space etc.) vs. Random Events (spawn x enemies, add 3 virus tokens to the board)
"if you allow your players to make a decision, it should be an informed decision" - this was definitely one of the big flaws with my first game. Hopefully not with any of the subsequent ones...
That was a very good point. Something I dislike in a game is where I am hit with some random penalty or just making blind choices. I need to work on this is the game I am designing. Sounds like you have taken this to heart as well.
I haven't finished the video, but I'll make a small defense of something like event decks: You're correct that random chance shouldn't determine the outcome of a game by itself, but I'd argue a bit of unpredictability can serve a strategy game. For example, they can make the game simply less static, or they can offer a hail-mary to a player that's losing (or conversely, make a nearly-winning player's victory less assured). And sometimes your game doesn't need to be *perfectly* fair. I would say that the balance is vaguely that random chance should call for player reaction and flexibility. IE: • If a player loses due to a single die roll or card, it should be because they made poor decisions that made a single die roll or card the deciding factor. • If a player has an event that gets in the way of their current strategy, they should feel like a plan B is/was possible or that they still have a chance to maneuver around the problem. A good strategist has a plan B and is able to adjust their strategy to unexpected and changing conditions. • It should require skill to press an advantage given to you by random chance. You don't get to choose the hand you're dealt, but you do get to choose how to play it.
A good video but I would disagree with point #9. I would say that before 1995 games which played 2-6 or 3-6 were relatively common but between 1995 and somewhere around 2005 or 2010 the common range was 2-5 or 3-5. But from then until about 5 years ago games that played 5 became rare with player ranges narrowing to 2-4 or 3-4. So if there are 5 of us looking for a game we are looking at pre-2010 games, and for 6 players an even more limited range of games. You are right that In the last 5 years, we have seen many more games that play 1-4 (and possibly 1-5), either by having a special solo mode or by having so little player interaction that that game can play solo with no significant changes to the rules. Party games are of course an exception to the usual limitation on numbers.
Yeah, this one is very fluid and has changed a lot over the years. In general right now though, the publishers I’m speaking to want wide player counts.
Screaming Eagles, a fighter jet game released in 1987, is actually pretty good about this! It has roll-to-move, but you choose the direction. The best attacks are the long-range missiles, but you only have two of those per plane, and your enemy has two flares. Your guns can't be countered, but have the lowest range and a limited firing arc. There is a look-up table for damage, but it's _really_ well integrated.
Whenever I play Trouble I always found the needing to roll a specific number to win led to vary tense end games with other players also trying or not far behind, I definitely agree with the start being clunky though
I wasn't sure I would even be interested in this stuff before I clicked, but now I'm hooked. I didn't know that "exact roll" had such a common distaste, so it looks like I've found my people.
I remember hating games that have a square that say "wait here until someone rolls a 7" or "wait here until someone of a higher rank passes you". Basically will be sitting there doing nothing for a long time.
I like how you bring up the value of certain childrens games. There is learning value, either general skills like memory or facts, or game-based skills like combos and planning is definately a thing. I think the big thing about hidden information vs memory games, is that in hidden information games working out what you cant see is a skill element that you can ignore, whereas in memory games you have to engage with it.
Great distinction - I’m researching memory games at the moment for one of my own designs (and also a possible future video). But this is something I’ll give more thought because I think you’re right - you don’t HAVE to remember stuff to play a trick taking game, or Tigris & Euphrates. It’s an additional layer.
With all this in mind, how do trading card games succeed? Is it because the level of chance is expectable with your start of turn draw? Is it in the deck building process?
I think most CCGs offer up loads of interesting choices, both during the game and before the game starts. They have randomness for sure, and that adds some tension, but it’s well balanced with meaningful decisions. That’s the recipe for a fun game. Not to mention the addictive quality of blind purchases.
@@AdaminWales Yeah, the booster pack experience is so much more important to the game than a lot of people realize. It's why those boxed card games often get solved and lose flare. And as controversial as it may be, there is merit in having cards of varying value. It adds an interesting deck building choice around finding "budget" alternatives to expensive cards.
We've been playing Sequence as if it's Uno. The card you can play must match the suit or symbol of the last card. This changes the game from being able to hang onto the Wild Jack to win, and changing the suit if someone is close to a sequence. If you can't make a play, you just draw a card, falling behind on pieces, but giving you more cards to play with, especially at the end when the deck is depleted (3 player game, of course). It's a lot more fun than the house rule of "Can't win on a Jack." While it may make the game feel more fair, all it really does is make nobody play jacks, until someone else does, resulting in decking out, and a stalemate.
Top Trumps can offer a little extra strategy if you can keep track somewhat of what your opponent/s have, say if you know someone else has the fastest car probably coming up soon, it might be a good idea to avoid that stat, even if your speed's the best stat on your card, maybe go with the 2nd highest, 0-60 for example.
I think its really hard to have a good balance, because outside of game that are pure strategy (like chess or go) I feel like that some game doesnt offer any chance to someone that doesnt know the game well enough compare to someone that knows, like back then even with 3-4 plays game for me and 2 other players it was near impossible to win against someone with 50 plays of Russian Railroad. Where is the fun if you have no chance to win unless you played the game 25+ times really? there is a reason I dont play chess, its not fun since its just purely raw strategy
I definitely never meant to suggest that there should be no chance!! I love games of chance. The important thing is that the player gets to make choices (and that the choices mean something). At the end of the video I talk about “roll & move” games, and how I wish there were more of them! Most really good games balance chance against strategic choices :)
Chess has some excellent examples of things not to design. 1. Limited comeback mechanics. The losing player has very few asymmetric advantages and it's easy to be in a completely losing position 10 moves into a 60 move game. 2. Limited finish off mechanics. Yes, checkmate is a finish off mechanic. The issue is that it isn't a strong enough finish off mechanic to be reliable at high skill levels. A skilled player can defend down a piece even though the game is clearly over. Tricky tactical checkmates in the middlegame are cool but they don't happen much under skilled play. 3. Rote memorization is encouraged. Openings and endgames can be played without strategy until someone deviates from a memorized optimal line. Only the middlegame is truly pure strategy. 4. Lack of randomness means the actually plausible game tree expands rather slowly, especially since the most forcing line is usually also a pretty good line. It does make the game strategic but it also incentivizes overanalyzing positions and almost necessitates the use of a timer, which comes with its own set of issues. To be fair, this isn't so much bad design as an unavoidable issue with hardline determinism and pure strategy, but is a timer really better than a deck or dice? I don't know. 5. Stalemate is the wrong kind of comeback mechanic. It's much easier to accidentally stalemate your opponent when winning than intentionally stalemate yourself when losing, and in either case it revolves around degenerate gameplay in completely lost endgame positions where the game should be over, and probably has been for half an hour, but then the winning side blunders the game to a draw while the losing side has no agency. 6. The strength of the king means that for top level competitive play, draws are a bit too common. Chess isn't that drawish for non-masters, but you can still feel the effects of the king being a bit too hard to checkmate at lower levels. 7. En Passant and castling are kind of strange rules that really don't operate by the same logic as the rest of the game, adding substantial complexity for a questionable improvement in gameplay.
Not to be that guy, but all these are skill issues. As long as you play someone about your own strength, these are all mitigated. You blunder in the opening and are objectively worse now? Keep playing, your opponentis probaboy going to blunder right back. The other issue here is that we've had 1300 years to find the best strategies for the game, which is not going to be the case with any game designed today. The special moves (en pessant, double move for pawns on rank 2, castling, promotion) were later additions to improve the game. Yes, it improved the game. Especially the double move for pawns, it's usually a crucial equalizong respurce for black in most openings. Perfect information games with no variance are not a thing anymore, so I don't really see what prompts your comment anyway.
I find chess to be a game that is quite distinct from most other games as, fundamentally, it's a game about stamina is what I've come to realize... What I mean is that it's a game about who can make the least amount of mistakes (at least, for most people most of the time). Do you know your opening or do you mess it up, weakening your position? Did you see the incoming fork? Do you move your queen to a position targeted by a bishop accidentally? Sure, it's a little more nuanced, especially at high level play. For example, choosing a "weaker" opening that your opponent is less familiar with might give you more of an advantage than going for a "stronger" opening. There's also positional gameplay which targets the overall balance on the board. And if you're playing a more skilled opponent, they'll be able to carry out more subtle attacks, and/or attacks that span more moves than what you're able to "see". However, moves that weaken your position can still be conceptualized as mistakes. So, effectively, I'd still argue that chess is a game where you try to minimize your mistakes and spot and capitalize on your opponents mistakes. And, as pariot01 points out, if you're playing with someone at a similar skill level, you'll be making roughly the same amount of mistakes. If you accidentally blunder early on, just do your best to hold on - chances are your opponent will blunder at some point and it would allow you to equalize the playing field (unless you blunder such that your opponent gains a significant advantage, like losing your queen early on). However, I also agree that this isn't a catchup mechanic either... Hence why I feel like chess (and maybe similar games like Go) is in a category of its own...
I really liked how Tokaido used its random encounters deck. You can play just to get the most of them (which alone scores points) But also you really are playing for a collection of potential scoring opportunities and the boost from an encounter can nudge you towards collecting a particular panorama for the rest of the game. There is only like two cards in the whole deck that purely grant victory points.
30:18 Also known as BUGs (Big Useless Garbage) by the guy making Chemicards (formerly titled as the UNO Amalgam), which is a deliberately-unwisely designed card game that combines the rules of all 800+ variants of UNO into one. A lot of UNO variants have that Mattel money, so they can get away with plastic battery-powered gimmicks. Turns out, a lot of the gimmicks can be accurately simulated with dice and maybe a counting system.
Very informative. I have been struggling with the concept of event cards in a game I have been working on for several years off and on. I am close to a workable design but was struggling with the mechanism of events. Your insights helped me to be able to revisit this and not have it slam one player over the others. Thank you.
A glaring omission. Event decks have a very strong use case in cooperative games, where players are reacting to the information together. Sentinels of the Multiverse uses event decks as one of the main mechanics - the villain's actions are determined by a mix of the things on their character card and the cards played out of the deck during the villain turn. They also mix it up by having the deck have a mix of different things in it - cards with a one-time effect, cards that stay out until you find a way to deal with them, enemies you can deal damage to. You can also learn the ins and outs of each deck, and have options that can allow you to react to the deck. Some heroes have options that prevent cards from being played, with each having its own caveats. Others let you peak at and/or discard cards from the deck. If you're experienced, you can build your team around the villain, and plan your turns accordingly as well. You also have control of which event decks you have in play - one villain, one environment, and you can choose how punishing the game is by mixing and matching. There's also such games as Pandemic or Forbidden Desert/Island/Sky that also use these decks as a source of challenge the players must react to. I generally agree that event decks shouldn't be used in competitive gaming, but cooperative games break a lot of the conventions of those games anyway.
Another bad game mechanic: Games with a limited number of times that it can be played before players run out of the specialized paper it comes with. In terms of app-linked games, those are the games that really should have apps associated with them. That way players can "write" on a digitized version of the paper and not waste the 25 sheets that the game comes with. Also, the sheets should really be coated with a material that can handle something like a dry-erase marker that easily wipes off so they can be reused over and over again. Or the sheets are where chips/markers are placed to indicate what would have been written.
The game mechanism doesn't require limited sheets and a pencil any more than it requires laminated sheets and a wet erase marker. That's entirely part of product design and does not impact the game rules. And of course you're welcome to laminate the last sheets or even the first ones if you never want to throw any in the recycling bin.
Games that require an app have an inherent expiry date. When (not if) the app stops working, the game is unplayable. When you get to the last sheet of paper, you can just make copies of it.
@@Andystuff800 IKR: how much in the future the app'll be updated to avoid the "this app seems to be made for a previous version, so it's not guaranteed it'll work properly" message?
A good game that got around that was sonar, its a grid based submarine game that you write your course and try to figure out where your opponent is, using plastic covers for both over sheets of paper, works great and doesn't need much, only real shame I'd say is they didn't include an eraser that is made to look like a submarine
@14:03 Another disadvantage of this game is that if players do not cooperate in exchanging/buying individual streets (to get a complete city), there is always someone who does not have complete cities or a very small one that slowly bleeds to death.
If you want a game that feels like a modernized version of Tank Battle, look for a copy of "Final Act" by (the now sadly defunct) tyto games. It has similar mechanics but leans a lot more into the "guess what your opponent will do and plan accordingly" side of things. Tank movement is limited by facing and terrain and shot placement is limited by the position of your tanks, so you have a lot of information at all times about what the other guy might do, but you usually need to put your own tanks at risk to get a clear shot at him. The closer combat gets, the more options you have for interdicting your opponent, but you can only do so by also restricting your own movements. So it becomes a very tight game of trying to anticipate your foe while sneaking into position to flank them or hemming them in so you can charge past them to the objective, etc.
As for roll & move, I think it's really well done in MLEM Space Agency. There's a clear path and some luck involved, but you get lots of choices as well (which dice to use nd how far to move, abandonding the ship or not, which astronaut to send etc.).
bold of you to assume I want my players to have a good time. I want them to suffer (!), like I do, designing the games in a way that they'll get published. =D but then again, that's why I watch these videos... so I don't suffer as much. thanks, Adam! =)
Initially, I'd typed out a much larger response to this video, detailing specific points and, some might say objections to the statements made in it. Turns out, I typed far more than RUclips allows, so here's the gist of it, though I'm not opposed to sharing my longer views some other way. - It seems, near the end, the perspective of the video abruptly shifts from "what will make your game FUN" to "what will get your game PUBLISHED" which, to me, are two vastly different things, and much of the statements in the video I objected to made much more sense in the scope of "getting a game published". I'd reccommend being more upfront about which angle you're coming from, because your statement at 1:00 left a direct impression on me that these were all objectively unfun mechanics - The video IS well-made, and was still both enjoyable to watch and informative, and I will be checking out your channel to view more of your content moving forward. The in-depth look at various mechanics, including several real-life examples being mentioned that I haven't heard of before, is highly appealing to me, and may very end up leading me to my next favourite tabletop game! - But... have you heard of the game Intercept? It hails from the late 70's, and boasts itself as an electronic board game... it's strikingly similar to Battleship, moreso the tank game you mentioned after it, but I can honestly say I've found it to be one of my favourite older games, even going so far as to call it a hidden gem. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, if you have the chance to play it physically.
Thanks for not including player elimination! Not only does it work in same games, it also works in some contexts. If you have a party/gathering/conference where only *some* attendees are playing the game, eliminated players can go do something else and aren't actually stuck watching the rest of the game.
In some of these contexts, the opposite of player elimination can be harmful. Many modern games offer no mechanism to deal with players who need to "eliminate" themselves from gameplay due to outside circumstances, and when one player leaves, all other players have to stop mid-game too because the game mechanisms require all players to remain engaged for the entire duration of the game. It would be good if more designers ensured a game could continue with fewer players than it started with...
And even for games that don't end quickly, it allows the eliminated player to get up and do something else without disturbing the game for the rest of the players. I'd argue that player elimination can indeed be a blessing in disguise for both the eliminated player and the others. I think it's an element that can be used badly, but it's preferable in many cases to the player being held at the game against their will.
I've always been that weirdo who, after getting eliminated, hangs around to watch the rest of the game with great interest. Never understood people who just get up and leave. I just have to know how it ends!
Thanks for the positive words on the roll and move concept. I have it in my game but I was thinking of taking it out because I was considering the idea of roll and move being way to overdone but I feel that it is needed at the same time. So hearing you say roll and move is good if it's used well was a relief.
Great! As long as it is utilised cleverly, I would say stick with it :) Here is my video overview of some clever Roll and Move systems: ruclips.net/video/Fflv2nCikrs/видео.html
I love the video. Especially the part where “players that don’t get to play”. I wish more designers understood this. Especially in card games. “Floodgates” (effects that prevent your opponent or both players from engaging with a fundamental mechanic of the game) are always unfun. Except when you choose to use them on yourself, and they have a positive trade-off that you may use to gain advantage. At least that’s what I’ve found out while testing my prototypes.
"If someone doesn't get to play, there's a problem with your design" I would agree with you, but I've seen games of the highly regarded Pandemic where the game was over before player 4 got to their first turn.
With random events it can also be made better if it's something you can mitigate, e.g. something that is drawn at the start of a round but only resolved at the end, and which one may protect against during the round, thus creating randomness but still giving players agency in choosing whether to focus on mitigation or taking the consequences and focusing on something else
Very cool ... you discussed Swords & Wizardy, which is Lewis Pulsipher's first game! (Famed designer of Britannia, which was nominated for the 1987 Charles S Roberts Award for Pre-WW2 Board Game).
It’s a really good game - he develops the Gunjin Shogi/Stratego mechanism with loads of great twists :) I talked about the game a lot more in my video about Stratego & related games: Hall of Fame: Stratego, L'Attaque & the Big Four ruclips.net/video/LQBB63Qy4Hw/видео.html
I would argue that event cards can be useful, if used right. Fate Decks in Villainous give a bit of push and pull in a game where players are largely playing their own games. Co-op and solo games like Spirit Island and Final girl often require them as either enemy behavior or random things happening, or even both. And in many competitive games, they can be used as a means of keeping a game fresh each playthrough and can keep players on their toes. But as I said, it needs to be utilized properly. Having cards that can either make a huge swing or push the current leader further ahead by leaps can make a game unenjoyable. But Events can have the opportunity to keep the person in the lead from leaning heavily into a single strategy, and thus keeping them from running away with the game.
I think that’s a fair comment. I’ve had commenters arguing that event decks can be good (especially in coop games), reference tables can be good (especially in wargames) and restricted player counts can be good (to reduce costs). I’m yet to see anyone putting forward a defence of “miss a turn” or “swap places”! 😂
@@AdaminWales Miss a turn can be viable for competitive card games, like Magic, but very restricted. I've only seen it in a couple of instances, and the costs to play those cards basically makes it a reward for pulling it off. Otherwise, the only game I think it works with is Uno, where everything is quick, and the objective is just to play the cards in your hand out. It might be possible in other quick games, but that is the only way I can think of to make it work. Not much of a defense, but there you go. 😄
There's another benefit to restricted player count. For some co-op games, having more than 4 players might sound like a good idea, but then the group decision making becomes too noisy and drawn out. I recently played pandemic with a couple of back seaters (totaling 6 people), and it wasn't nearly as fun as with 4 or less.
@@davidripplinger8904 Very true. Disney Villainous, for example, showcases a player count of up to 6. In practice, about 3-4 is usually the sweet spot for the game. Otherwise, there can be a lot of downtime, especially for newer players figuring out how they're going to play their turns.
@@AdaminWalesI think swapping places also has quite a bit of potential in cooperative games, due to its potential synergy with other strategies. Like switching places after doing some high risk, high reward play, putting all the risk onto a player that's much more suited to dealing with the risk.
Honestly, I’d disagree with number 9. Some of the best games I’ve ever played support at max 4 players (Clank! with no adventuring party expansion, Great Western Trail, Clank and Pandemic Legacy, Deal With The Devil takes exactly 4 players and it’s one of my personal favourites). I feel like games that have highly variable counts sacrifice the perfect balance that medium-heavy games require.
As a consumer, I would agree with you. One of my favourite games is Witness, which requires exactly 4 players. But that’s not what this video is about (Witness was critically acclaimed but appears to have been a commercial flop). The primary focus of this channel, and this video, is to offer advice to board game designers who are seeking to make commercially successful games. And from pitching to hundreds of publishers over the last few years, I can confidently state that broader player ranges are a distinct advantage when seeking publication. In 2024, a designer pitching a game for 2-4 (or worse 3-4) players is almost certain to be asked to stretch that player count. Not by every publisher, but by many. And my advice to designers is not to make a lack-lustre 2 player mode, or a weak 5 player mode. It’s to make a game which plays WELL at as many different player counts as possible. It’s not easy to achieve. But it’s a competitive market, and every advantage is worth pursuing.
17:00 The *ending* exact rolls I don't mind so much. It's not like there's any material agency in the first place, so the exact rolls at the end set up a "competition" for who can get that last 1 to move their piece in, and let the other players feel like they're catching up to the player in first. The reason I don't want to play it is because of the lack of agency, not because of the exact roll requirement. Totally agreed that your first marble should just start on the track, though.
Fire Tower makes the best use of player elimination by having the first player eliminated become the Spirit of the Wood, which operates with its own mechanics.
Event cards can be functional as long as they are fair, or you can only draw one of your own free will. Ways to make them fair can either be that they effect everyone when drawn, that they don't change the status quo too much (or that you're able to plan ahead to mitigated the effects of most event cards), that they are consistent (either always positive, always negative, etc.) so you know whether to go for them or avoid them, and possibly by making the one who drew the card (or those who drew it, if multiple players drew it together) to be able to choose between different choices (where each choice has the same positive or negative weight (example; "either: [gain gold but lose crystal] or [gain crystal and another player also gains crystal]") on the event card so that players still has control of what happenes. I haven't made a board-game myself, so I'm simply going over how a few board-games i enjoy handled the problems.
Hi Adam, This was fun. I started playing games in the 50s with my family, especially in those eternal summers. Scrabble, Spades, Chess and a few others. Now, retired to Mexico from the US. We play bilingual games with Scrabble or Boogle. Actually the game I enjoy the most is taking a long word and seeing how many other words one can make out of it. Having studied philosophy and languages I am fascinated how things work. All the Best Jim
Have you ever heard of Warhammer 40k the tabletop war game? I’m curious if you have a better example of interesting ranged combat, as opposed to the clunky table format system? I’m trying to design a more interesting and yet more streamlined version on a smaller board.
I played a lot of 40K around 15 years ago. I think the reference-table format is probably suited to this style of game where there are so many different potential interacting pieces - it’s a hugely complex game. So my advice to avoid reference tables in board games probably doesn’t extend to tabletop miniatures games. I don’t really play any combat-focused games these days. You could look at the Undaunted board games, or Memoir 44, as examples of fairly simple board games with a war theme. For more skirmish-style, the dungeon crawlers may have interesting systems for ranged combat. Many of them seem to use custom dice. This seems like a reasonable solution. The dice you roll depend on the weapon you’re using, or distance from target - with different shaped dice (D6,D8,D10 etc) and different results distribution on the sides. But I’m not an expert on this. I like the combat system in Star Wars Shatterpoint. That is very cinematic.
memory in gamesis tricky cause its one of those things that can be fun in some settings and leading to players optimizing the fun out of the game in others. For example, in Catan technically everyone knows what resources everyone else picked up and use at every moment, but I very much enjoy watching my friend struggling to remember whether I still had that piece wood in my hand to try and steal it or if I had used it already and he should go for someone else.
I actually really like the type of I have no idea of the strength of the opponent kind of games, there are still often ways of playing strategically, just no obvious ones, which mean making the wrong move isn’t such a hit for the ego
10:58 it seems like the anti-tank gun is not an anti-tank gun but rather tank itself is anti-anti-tank gun. 30:24 true, however it only gives an illusion of eco-friendly game, cards and other cardboard elements are almost always enhanced with a thick layer of polymer to make them last longer, look more glossy and be more resistant to moisture ( great video, thank you! )
One of my all time favorite catch-up mechanics is in the game Samurai & Katana - on the surface it looks like a Risk clone, but it's quite different. One way it's different is that you tally score through the game, and the players with the highest and lowest score gets a bonus. The Highest score is Shogun, and I don't recall what he gets. The lowest score though becomes Emperor, and the emperor dictates who goes in what order in each phase of a turn. There's several phases, and it's usually beneficial to go late since you can react to what other players are doing. It also leads to a lot of backstabbing and dealing as players try to convince the Emperor to help them.
That sounds great 😊 It reminds me of the Sheriff role in Dice Town, where whichever player currently has the Sheriff’s badge chooses who wins in any tied situation (whether they’re involved in the tie or not) … and they’re allowed to accept bribes!
I'm glad you didn't consign "roll and move" to the dustbin of history. There are ways of making roll and move not irritating, e.g.: - All roll results provide a similar benefit, for example a 6 allows you to move 6, a 1 can let you move 1 and gain a resource - Different move directions: Perhaps advancing 6 down one path lands you on a risky square, where a lower roll leaves you safe, so you decide to move down a different pathway which is less dangerous but leaves you further from the end goal - Having resources that allow you to mitigate bad rolls
I disagree, random events CAN make a game much more exciting, and a great story. the issue stems not from them being random, but from them deciding for you. Random events should offer choices the player can make. instead of "tough luck, you take 5 damage", a lot of modern games offer the *choice* of taking the damage for something valuable, such as a trinket or currency.
I would somewhat agree with your take. Random events can add an uncertainty which when visited upon the leading player can invoke joy in the other players. I am trying to work random events into the game I am working on so that the event is coming but players have up to a few turns to prepare for its arrival, if they can and if it is aimed at them. Hopefully that made sense.
19:19 (lightly paraphrased): 'Games should consist only of actions that move the player taking the action closer to winning. Actions that involve opposing one or more opponents should generally be avoided.' In that case, why have opponents at all? All games would either be cooperative (which i fine), or just be solitaire in parallel. And if it's solitaire in parallel, why have opponents instead of having random variation in the victory condition?
26:40 The only point I even remotely disagree with you on, not because I 'like' reference tables, but because I like more complex games that often need them. That said, they should be kept to a minimum when possible, or printed small enough for a player handout rather than a book - these are boardgames, not RPGs after all. But I do believe reference tables have a place. And like "Requires Companion App" I'd like them to be labeled as such.
Here's what I didn't see criticized that I expected: Catan and chess. With Catan, the game does several of these things, and I feel it would have been a good example of a slightly more recent game, being from the 90s. But hey, not everything can be listed, and I understand the focus on classic anglosphere games that anglosphere designers are likely to unfortunately imitate. With chess: There are a lot of chess wannabees from naive designers of the sort you're pointing at. And chess-a-likes are largely doomed in a similar way to monopoly-likes. Why is this? It's true that chess lacks a catch-up mechanic, but is that the heart of the matter? I think modern games avoid extreme skill curves, where the best player is in a different strategic galaxy than a beginner.
I did have chess variants in an earlier draft of this script - not because they’re bad design, but because they are of no interest to publishers or the vast majority of purchasers. I see many self-published chess variants at conventions and they’re pretty much always ignored. Abstract games which don’t directly reference chess still have a good chance in the market (though it’s tough).
Is it even true that chess lacks a catch-up mechanic? The pawn can promote and recover material deficits. I would say that, generously speaking, the catch-up mechanic in chess only moderates its skill curve rather insignificantly.
Catan is one of the most balanced games I have ever played. After playing for many years I have been amazed at how many games I have won or lost within one move of my opponents. I can only dream of making a game so fun and balanced. The first game I designed was kind of a chess like variant. It was a fun experience, however, it became too complex and often ended in either a stalemate or total domination by one player.
@@verdmooring2695 most chess variants only allow for different shuffles of the same pieces per player precisely because it is difficult to balance a game where each player can have a different army.
DOG, Partners, and Pegs & Jokers fix some of the issues behind Pacheesi by giving people access to a deck of cards instead of dice. You have choices; they're still random, but you can choose from your hand of cards, you're no longer totally at the mercy of the dice roll. Don't get me wrong, they still have a lot of the problems of Pacheesi (or Ludo as it's known on continental Europe). All your pieces start home and you need a specific card to bring a new piece out. But the cards add variety: splitting your movement between multiple pieces, moving backwards, and even swapping pieces. So it's better, but not perfect.
I now want to make a game that uses nothing other than all of these mechanisms together to see what happens :D
Well, Milton Bradley made an enormous success of that for a century! :)
Just play DnD then
@AdaminWales before they were absorbed by hasbros and drowned of all unique creativity in favour of consistant earnings.
Aside from no one buying your game, just make it a deck of cards consisting of boring activities like "You watch grass grow" and one "You Win" card. There's a die to roll to skip that many cards in the deck. No one holds any cards in their hands. It's just a card flipping game where everyone sees the You Win card appear in the discard pile and wonder how much longer the game is going to drag on.
Congratulations, Battletech
I find it interesting that ancient boardgames like Pachisi (Ludo) and Moksha Patam (Snakes and Ladders) had a philosophical aspect to them. With the danger of oversimplifying, they intended to show that man is ruled by Fate, you cannot change your Fate, but you can try to make the best of it. In our age, this idea has fallen out of favour, and modern man now believes that he is the master of his own destiny within the constraints of his circumstance - something that is reflected in what boardgame mechanism we prefer today.
To be fair are there also plenty of purely skill based ancient boardgames like Chess and Hnefatafl. The Romans had both kinds of games.
Hnefatafl was actually used to teach warriors basic strategy besides being a fun game to kill some time. I heard the same thing said about Chess but I am less certain that is actually true.
Snakes abd ladders isn’t about fate it’s about vices and virtues tge reasons the snakes are so plentiful and extreme compared to the ladders is because it’s a lot easier to fall from grace than to reach enlightenment
I was thinking that too.
If we see games like this as one of many tools for educating children about our world then frustration teaches us that progress isn't always linked with merit, it teaches us about the randomness of statistics, honestly if I think about it I could list these for ages.
And as soon as he said that bit about how a game should be leading to a conclusion, I had a giggle, because if you're a parent trying to get 5 minutes peace, you want them sat popping that frustration bubble for hours if possible lol.
If by ‘philosophical’ you mean wrong
@@Quincy_Morris Nah, more like it gives kids the lesson: "Life sucks".
And yeah, life might not always be super easy today but back when those games were made, it was a lot harder.
But to be honest, that is just a hypothesis. We don't really know what the persons who invented them really thought. Another hypothesis is just that they wanted an easy enough game to produce that could keep the kids distracted for a few hours back when no one had a telly.
Those games were indeed likely to have been designed for kids, games for adults tended to both be a bit more complex but still taking shorter time for a round.
I think any parent can tell you that having the kids distracted for a couple of hours now and then are priceless and humanity are not really that different today even if we have fancier toys.
Excellent advice.
I have twins. One loves the luck of dice rolls and card flips. The other cannot stand losing because of something completely out of their control (and not necessarily the opponent’s doing). It makes for very good play testing feedback. 😅
You’re lucky to have your own little playtesting group right there!
This makes me wonder if growing up one of the twins got a string of board game luck, creating a positive reinforcement loop for luck based games, while simultaneously creating a negative reinforcement loop for the other twin.
Games for children serve the purpose: learning turn-taking, good sportsmanship, numbers, cause and effect, social skills, fine motor skills, all manner of things. Not to mention imagination-my friends and I would play Life all night long on sleepovers, even after outgrowing the basic game structure, telling stories about our tiny peg families while (for better or worse) subconsciously learning about how a bit of luck will change a life’s path. We learned the fundamentals of game playing and learned to enjoy them! Upward and onward from there 🙂
I LOVE games for children :) I made a whole video about them:
How to design a board game for CHILDREN *Top 10 Mechanisms*
ruclips.net/video/LN0aEU1a9fI/видео.html
Advances have been made in designing for children, just as they have for adult designs.
Like you, I loved playing Game of Life as a kid. I’d have no worries about my child playing it today if they wanted to. There are MANY better children’s games out there though. Perhaps none have done this theme as well as Game of Life though, and it is an appealing theme to kids/families for sure.
I’ll be sure to watch the video-I must have missed that one!
The lack of agency and/or randomness mitigation in games , as well as lack of compensation for when randomness favors certain players, can make one appreciate the agency and silver linings in life better
Randomness is good, when you have some control over the randomness, there is a reason mtg is releasing a box of cards for 270 bucks, card games are inherently random, but you make decisions that impact if your happy with your deck to make curves with payoffs and tutors and resources to use all of them, randomness just needs to not be the only deciding factor, unless that randomness is a tie breaker, (in which case rock paper scissors works way better because of mind games) or that randomness is something you actively chose to engange in because a highrole was your only chance to win, and on average it's not going to win you the game
@@calebbarnhouse496 that's why I love random setup and self-balancing mechanics on midgame random stuff (closed drafting, auction, century/smallworld market, last diminisher, I Cut You Choose)
I think a lot of people miss when talking bad mechanics that seem to never die is the gambling aspect.
Most skill destroying mechanics that make games bad can scratch the same dopamine itch as gambling. It can be perplexing to warch from the outside, but many people genuinely enjoy the rush of winning a game by illusion of control while still being able to dismiss defeat as bad luck.
So... If it's fun, why is it bad? I think having a modest amount of luck/gambling can be very good
(like you said: something to blame, excitement, new players have a reason to play with better players, easy way to provide variety)
(edit: also luck provides more comeback possibilities)
@@metawarp7446 "i had fun when i won by chance" dosnt really give any insight into how fun the entire game is. plenty people will sit through a bad experience just for the chance to win something.....
@@metawarp7446 Some people dislike losing based on a mechanic that feels outside of their control. That is, if they can't trace their loss to either their own mistakes or opponent(s) outplaying them they dislike the game/mechanics in question.
Of course, this is a matter of preference, based on what aspects of games one finds valuable. Not every type of game is for everyone.
@benjaminmiddaugh2729 it's not just for the audience. Its the place or occasion. I may not like tournaments or serious sessions with more luck based games but they tend to be better and more fun to play with friends. Skill games tend to be far more one sided. I like games that throw wrenches in that give anyone a chance to win. Not entirely devoid of skill but games that require more adjustment on the fly, lending to people making more mistakes or occasionally being unusually unlucky.
i know a lot of people who genuinly enjoy uno (or similar) to the fullest and barely play anything else. They take it as a "good" thing they do not have to make decisions and can just play along. They don't understand i find this boring the same way i don't undertstand how they find it enganging.
You can use event decks as a manually triggered thing. For instance, a player can choose to pay some amount of resources to draw the top card of the event deck. It's an optional decision to take a risk at that point, which makes it more fun. It can essentially function as a hail mary.
Potentially also from the other end as a risk factor for being too greedy. You can do X safely, or you can do more than X with a chance of doom.
Or make its contents come entirely* from player choice, like Through the Ages does
*well players do randomly draw the options they can place, but they're fully aware of which cards they put in, and they always have options
It's a shame that you show Dominion when discussing 'take that' mechanisms while Dominion is one of the few games that does attacks right. I consider 'take that' mechanisms as ways to hit one player hard, often the player in the lead. For example, stealing a keeper in Fluxx, or a card from someone's hand. None of the attacks in Dominion target a specific player, they all hit all other players equally (though the net effect might differ depending on their deck).
I intended to show it as an example of doing it right - while talking about not setting players back too much, and not undoing their whole strategy etc. Clumsy editing on my part :)
@@AdaminWales I understood it in the way you intended.
Attacking certain players feels weak compared to attacking everyone else at the table anyway.
If there are targeted effects, I'd rather have them be positive mutualisms since they can lead to interesting decisions and alliances, as well as working as a secret comeback mechanic, compared to targeted take-that which often devolves to "bash the leader" without any decision space
@@revimfadli4666 the thing is it can work in games that are complex enough like MTG commander, because it becomes a mechanic of "who is the leader" and hiding your lead by making bad plays so you don't get targeted.
and it is a self balancing mechanic, if a player gets a big lead, it can turn into a 2-3 vs 1 and make the game less snowbally.
a good example imo is mario kart.
leaders get defensive items, and people in the back get catch up items, most of which can slow down the ones in front.
and depending on the track leading the whole game can be risky, because of the blue shell that brings the first place to a stop.
@@satibel Mario Kart's blue shell is a poor catch-up mechanic! If you're in a position too get it, it rarely helps you get ahead. It's a kingmaker mechanic. The same can be true for Commander (EDH - never forget! ^^) Often the player who is perceived as being in the lead early get's knocked back so hard, that they rarely end up winning. You're right about complexity though: Skilled commander players are good at resource management and playing to the political aspects of the game to avoid such a fate.
I think one very important aspect of mechanical design, especially in games with player elimination, is progressive destabilization. Your game should begin with lots of catch up mechanics and positive sum interactions so losing players can remain in the game with some hope of winning, and end with lots of snowball mechanics and zero or negative sum interactions to finish off losing players quickly and humanely and pick a winner in fairly rapid succession so that the game can be over
Clank is a good example of a great player elimimation mechanic. There's a bag with lits of cubes, players add cubes of their colour as the game progresses, and every so often there's an event to take X cubes from the bag. If your cubes come out, you take that much damge, eventually you may die. When you are dead, on your turn this event triggers and you take out more cubes every time. On the 4th time that happens (on a dead player's turn) everyone still playing dies too.
Or just don't have player elimination 🤷🏻♂
@@stevieinselby
I'm currently considering a mechanism for a game I'm working on where player elimination is technically possible, but has a heavy disincentive. That being the eliminated player's character curses yours and that player gets to spend the rest of the game making your life hell as the curse takes effect. In game of course.
@@stevieinselby or shorten the game/round like Love Letter
Exactly, and monopoly, which gets slammed in this video, is actually pretty good at this if you follow the rules and are free with trading properties amongst the players
Catan is also a good example of a more modern game where there are many turns in which you can do nothing but roll dice for everyone else
Catan's biggest flaw, in my opinion, is runaway leaders. It's a game where, after a few turns, you can point at whoever is likely to win, and worse yet, whoever has no chance to win. It's actually a game that might have benefited from player elimination...
@@Darkprosper Yeah but at least trade embargoes and robber targeting can give a perception of catchup opportunity. Not my favorite kind of catchup, but still...
It's often said that "perception of X is more important than actual X" in game design (although eventually the real X becomes the perceived X once the game is famous enough)
Catan is 30 years old. I'm sorry you had to find out like this...
@@AshlingScott yeah but not monopoly old
@@Darkprosper hmm I often take the lead in Catan early only to lose because the other players ally against me
Adam, your video is mostly about the luck factor being undesirable, comparing to strategy, etc.
However, I think you should consider why so many games where the luck factor exists, are successful and prefered by some gamers.
1 - luck is a LEVELLING factor. Consider a game where strategy is the main factor. You can´t play with kids. If kids get angry with bad luck, they get even angrier when they feel incapable of winning. A parent must thus play BADLY to allow the kid to win and keep playing. A luck factor game LEVELS out the cognitive differences between an adult and a kid.
Or even between kids of different ages. When we are kids, 2-3 years difference is a BIG difference in cognitive abilities.
Luck based games may reduce that difference or even eliminate them
2 - even between adults, cognitive differences for certain types of games will mean some players will simply give up on that game. A first time Catan player (and Catan HAS some luck involved) may give up the game if he plays against some experienced player that knows all the tricks and best strategies.
No beginner will keep playing against someone very good at chess.
Luck based games may allow a beginner the change to win as much as an experienced player.
Even in the world of tabletop boardgame afficcionados, someone might give up on a game they keep losing. Even if they do well in other games dependent on strategy, constantly doing bad in a game may be a turn off for some players, irritating or even a do harm to self esteem.
Some degree of luck involved may give players a better chance.
3 - luck PLAYS a factor in real life. You may have the best coach in the world, the best players, but there are some days you simply can´t score a goal, pure bad luck, while the other team, suffering the entire match, scores by a luck a goal at 89 minutes.
It's exactly what makes football so unique compared to other sports, how it can SUDDENLY change and create unlikely upsets, many times based on luck.
Some very useful thoughts here, thanks. I do think you’ve overstated how much I emphasised strategy over luck though.
I am a huge fan of games with luck in them. I have many videos declaring my love of very simple dice games, card games, and a massive deep-dive into the roll and move genre. But luck should be handled carefully to prevent it becoming overwhelming. There is always a balance to be struck.
I think for very young players, a totally luck-dependent game is acceptable. But even at a young age, some degree of decision making is always going to make a game more engaging. The depth of those decisions will scale with age and complexity. And some players (the majority) will never want a super-deep, complex, deterministic experience. But as a craft, designers ought to be trying to introduce agency into their games to keep the players involved, even when the gameplay is simple, accessible, and features a hefty dose of chance.
Practically every designer in 2024 is already doing this so I’m hardly saying something controversial. Even the simplest games coming out of wonderful children’s publishers like HABA, Blue Orange, and Ravensburger are full of interesting choices for the players. That’s just what publishers are looking for in 2024.
The majority of purchasers in the gaming industry are parents buying for their kids. Their decisions are based on nostalgia, familiarity, and availability. So inevitably, the traditional classics remain the highest sellers. But these titles don’t always offer up the most engaging gameplay. A game designer in 2024 would be ill-advised to try to replicate the experiences offered by these games, when modern games tend to offer so much more.
A friend of mine loves the DC superheroes Deck Building game. So much so that he would constantly pester me to try it (me being a big fan of deckbuilders ordinarily). For three games, during the other players turns, I would be forced to discard more and more cards, so that when my turn came around, the only option I would have...is to draw cards and end my turn.
He still doesnt understand why I dont like that game, and wont play it.
Ah yes my favourite kind of card games to hate, the ones where the optimal way to play is to force your opponent out of options (and enjoyment). Only one player is supposed to have fun!
Looking at you, Yugioh!
DC Deck Builder is a favourite of mine when you are playing a cooperative Crisis expansion. It’s surprisingly very fun and addictive when you are all working together to take down super villains and the theming works better as a cooperative in my opinion.
I love deckbuilders where the first guy that moves gets to stunlock the other player with no hope of recovery. It's basically a coin toss with an extended cutscene afterwards.
Oh wait, I actually hate deckbuilders. I wonder why that is...
@@hereniho deckbuilders are fun when the opponent is an AI
If it's the deck builder I'm thinking of, it's a coop DC game against the mastermind. It's great. Sad thing is, there are some builds in the game with toxic "hurt your allies to get ahead" mechanics and it sounds like your friend might be into that style. It's a small totally avoidable part of the game
28:55 restrictive player counts. most so called 2-6 player games aren’t anyway. For example we only play Battlestar Galactica with 5 players. It is a so much better experience than any other player count. And that is true for many many games.
100%. It is a great game, but only works with 5 players
There's a lot that theoretically go to 6 but in practice really don't, a fair number that are supposedly 2-4 but if you're not playing with 3 you're just making everything worse, and similar at any player count. Games that are good with both 2 players and 5 players are Very rare. It's noticeable that many games need extra rules that change how the entire thing plays in order to function at two players (and one player even more so unless it can introduce an 'AI' player (not just a neutral dummy player like Risk)... which some have!)
Not to say there aren't some that are genuinly good with 1 to 6 or 7 players, but they're solidly in the minority.
Or on the other side of the spectrum, you have games like King of Tokyo which is listed as 2-6, but really works much better as a 4-6 player game- I absolutely refuse to play it at 2 players; and this is speaking as someone that normally prefers smaller player counts! Similarly, One Night Ultimate Werewolf says 3-10, but I'd say that it really doesn't get good until you have at least 5 players, and can comfortably play up to 12.
Yes: a LOT of games from nice to great have a limited player count (4 at most, with some that stretch to 5), above that number there are quite few good games and all the others are trash or party games.
I played a game of Caverna at a convention and can attest to this. That game is advertised as 1-7, and the game was set up for 7 players. We barely got half way done in the 4 hour time slot as turns took forever. Now, I do admit that a couple of the people were new to the game, but that game still has issues even for experienced players at that count. I would never play beyond 4 people.
For those who like to skip the excessively long intro, actual video starts at 4:05 your welcome.
Yeah, almost lost interest before that. Weird how many presenters spend so much time saying obvious or unrelated things, when they could just be getting to their points.
I honestly thought you must be exaggerating or skipping something, but no. That's genuinely how long it takes to get to the video.
@@RockstarRacc00n It's as if we can't read titles. STOP TREATING US LIKE IDIOTS!
@@AlixL96 yup...i sat through it so you didn't have to. I'm surprised i lived LOL
You don't use SponsorBlock yet?
Considering that Battletech is almost exclusively "roll 2d6 and consult one of a billion tables," and it's currently the most popular it's been since the 1980s, I've gotta strongly disagree with the notion that tables are some outdated relic that nobody wants to use.
Good point, there is solid amaunt of popular games that uses tables for stuff (especially for automatic enemy actions), and there is board games cousin tabletop wargaming(games like batletech, bolt or most of warhamer brand) wich are bild around consulting tables
I would argue this is very much the subject matter itself, and successful licensed product increasing the awareness, rather than "amazing game design". Consider the amount of chit and counter games that use tables for resolution that aren't getting attention from these same folks... there's no wild Crimson Skies resurgence. More than anything it feels like "mechs + 3d printer go brrrt + screw games workshop" all aligning with public awareness caused by video games or just walls of new plastic mechs in many hobby shops, and the old guard were there to shepherd new dudes over.
Though with only a handful of charts that are mostly embedded into the record sheets, it's far from the worst example of charts in an old school hex and counter wargame.
I haven't played the game, but almost all games are more popular now than they have ever been, so it makes sense that games would have lots of players playing nowadays, even if they use bad game design.
Except hex and chit games are unpopular
This sounds like exactly what he's talking about. There are communities that still play older style games - but it's not likely die-hard battletech players, or players who don't already love battletech for that matter - are on the hunt for a new lifestyle game using 2d6 table lookups.
That said, while I think it is USUALLY going to be a mistep to use outdated styles, sometimes innovation can still come from refreshing something from the past.
I love the idea of the video but after 10 minutes you've almost exclusively mentioned games designed and marketed specifically for kids. Game of Life was one of my daughters favourite games until very recently, we have very happy memories of a giant Snakes and Ladders game they had at a local park, a couple of years ago we had to ask friends to go to Mcdonalds because she loved the Top Trumps cards they had in their happy meals so much! I used to love Battleship as a kid and played it against my Nanna on trains all the time, you said yourself you used to love Wrasslin' although I haven't heard of it before.
You're talking about children's games and their mechanisms as if they're adult hobbyist style board games but they are totally different things with different purposes and audiences. Very young children don't care at all about things like player agency or randomness, if anything these things are perfect for bridging huge skill gaps that exist when a 6 year-old plays with their Dad.
I played all these games and enjoyed them as a kid, but we rarely finished a game (not that we cared!!) But even as a kid, I had favourites - and they tended to be games which were “better designed”. Scotland Yard was the pinnacle. There are a vast number of excellent kids games these days which provide an outstanding experience for children far surpassing the games we played as youths.
In this video I am talking about mechanisms which I see presented to me in prototype games designed for adults, on a regular basis. Inexperienced designers take inspiration from the games they know - and too often it’s the stuff discussed in the video. The intent of the video is to persuade new designers to play modern games and avoid some of these features which are either “unfun” or likely to put off publishers.
the problem is that kids don't know of a better game, they only know what they're brought up with, once they get a taste of actually good games they never would want to turn back.
@@Ghorda9yeah my dad is a big gamer so we hardly played monopoly or life once we got a taste of better stuff like catan
@@AdaminWales If one likes the type of decisions in Top Trumps is one thing.
But there sure are decisions. And they are not that uninteresting.
You need to card count in order to have full information.
You need to remember the stats of all cards, or at least which stats resemble a strong or weak stat. Of course knowing which numbers are the nuts and which are at least tied nuts.
If you did the memory work you're ready for the decisions.
Aside from the nuts approximating the winning percentages of your stats, based on your opponents remaining cards in stack, can be anything but easy at times.
One "issue" with Top Trumps is how good it is at teaching the memory tests, since you only have a chance for a swingless game if you know all the cards, otherwise it's likely that both sides will see the full stacks multiple times. So your memory will have the advantage of multiple well timed repetitions.
@@Ghorda9 old > new
Honestly I love mechanics that disrupt strategy like the Community Chest in monopoly. Honestly that's the only part of monopoly i like. I like knowing that no matter how far ahead someone is, no one is immune to bad luck.
Battleship is not as bad as you suggest. Sure the FIRST turn is a blind guess but after that you should have some kind of strategy or prediction of your opponents habits
It is literally all blind guessing because there's no tactical advantage/difference in placement of ships at all.
@@Plunder_Boy wrong but most of the strategy is in your search patterns not ship placement. Unless youre simpleminded but you CAN play any game without a strategy if you dont bother thinking
@@jeice13 just because there are optimal search patterns doesn't mean it's any better, there's still too much rng
@@Ghorda9 literally contains zero rng. I dont know what else to say, you could not be more wrong
@@jeice13 how is there no rng? the whole game is just educated guesses with the first being completely blind
When it comes to "exact rolls", I'd like to nominate the Finnish game "Afrikan tähti" ("Star of Africa") from 1951 as a surprisingly modern take (every single Norwegian who reads this is going to go "Wait, that game is Finnish?", just like I did a few years back). You run around in Africa using a single die throw each turn, and each big city has one secret tile you can reveal when you land there. Usually it's a gem that gives you money, but some are blank, some have bandits that take all your cash, and exactly one triggers the end of the game.
These cities are also fast travel hubs. So landing on them is good even when there are no tiles on them. When there are tiles on them, you can stop when you reach it, but when there isn't you have to throw exact distance. Which means that for the most important part of game progression the game is lenient on your throws, but when you want to use just the fast travel network for convenience you have to decide whether you want to try for several turns to get into the closest city, or just book it to your goal the hard way. It's a good balance IMO.
Sometimes bad game design is best used for having friendly conversations, when you need an idle distraction to keep socializing active
100% agree! I play a lot of games to have a good time with friends - some people would not touch the chosen games for those days.
Let's be honest, the lack of player agency in those really old (as in 3000 year old) games, was probably so that you could win against the prince and keep your head... most of the times.
The idea of a monarch getting violent over losing a game is overblown. Sure, there were plenty of them who were crazy, but most would've taken a loss with grace.
@@jakel2837 I don't think you can really know either way. So much has been lost to time and yet more remains than one person could learn about.
More like, those games were viewed in a different philosophical frame. Lack of player agency in certain games represented the whims of gods or fate.
@@jakel2837 I imagine it's more the underage princes that cause problems than the adult monarchs. Just imagine the most spoiled brat you've ever known with legal immunity and a free license to punish anybody he feels like...
Not that all princes were like that, but it was definitely a roll of the dice whether one was that kind of brat.
It is also important that games were often not "games", but gambling. The game doesn't have to be that engaging if the stakes are.
@10:20 As Battleship progresses, you learn more about your opponent's layout, making later choices more significant.
That’s true. But you sort of shift from a random choice to an obvious choice. At no point is there a very interesting decision to be made.
@@AdaminWales You're just wrong about Battleship, but the strategies are too subtle for the target audience of kids, and adults rarely return to consider the game. With the right strategy, you can bring the average number of moves needed to win down from the mid 60s to the low 40s. Like chess optimal play is too hard for humans to do reliably and is something for computers, but humans can do a lot better than the naive approach.
@@SkorjOlafsen Right, but the point here is that you're still making "obvious" choices. Algorithmically dissecting a game is fun, don't get me wrong, but then the enjoyment is placed more on the mathematical side of the game than the game itself. If I were looking at a shelf of 2 player games, would my first thought be to pull out Battleship when I own Watergate, Onitama, Air Land and Sea, or Kelp? Not particularly.
I think the point about "informed decisions" is the main selling point here. When playing Battleship with a more rigorous attitude, you will make a few informed decisions. However, will those differ very much from game to game? Is there an obvious path that you should take at any point? Of the games I mentioned, Kelp probably is the worst offender for informed decisions vs obvious decisions after the Octopus is revealed, but there's still some element of informed choice when it comes to the dice drawn for the Shark, the abilities that can be bought, and the cards added to the Octopus's deck.
@@mathmaniac3033 I don't get your point.
Battleship is a hidden information, high-randomness, high skill ceiling strategy game. Mechanically, none of that seems to be a problem. None of those elements are inherently bad in a game.
I think the lack of appeal to adults is subtle: it's a hidden information game, but you're not trying to guess and counter your opponent's strategy. It's the overlap between Eurogame-style "we each execute our strategy in isolation, and we'll see who gets there first" and the randomness /imperfect information elements that I think doesn't sit well. You have a very abstract problem to solve, and very little feedback about how well your strategy is working, no sense of "ah ha, _this_ _time_ I'm nailing it" that you can get from Eurogames or chess.
But my original point was: Battleship is a game with a very complex, non-obvious strategy that requires much thought to play well. The game's flaw(s) lie elsewhere.
I feel like Jail in Monopoly is kind of a bad example when it comes to negative, skip-turn mechanisms, because you can always pay $50 to leave, and the recontextualization of it in the late game where you want to stay in.
The core of my objection to it is that it puts one player in the position of “not playing the game”. Whether that’s for a positive reason, or negative reason, it’s not usually a great design choice to have one player sitting out.
I've always played the (house?) rule that you can't collect rent whilst in jail
@@tombrandisitisw more realistic today anyway.
Monopoly has so many flaws ... one of them is that the optimal strategy is often counter-intuitive, and Jail epitomises this. Most players want to get out of jail as quickly as possible, because jail has so many bad connotations and it feels like you aren't taking part ... but in many cases, players are better off staying in jail as long as they can, especially in the later stages of the game, at least they are if people play by the official rules which many don't (eg, I had always played that you couldn't collect rent when in jail, and it was only much more recently that I found out that isn't a rule, which turns it on its head). While the optimal strategy shouldn't be so blindingly obvious that no-one would do anything else, equally it shouldn't be so counter-intuitive that you have to really geek out on RUclips to find it.
@@stevieinselby Monopoly was designed as a Georgist teaching tool demonstrating why landlords are bad. With that in mind, all its flaws make sense.
Still sucks to play tho.
One reason player elimination works in King of Tokyo is that it plays very quickly. If you get knocked out you don't have long to wait before it's time for a new round. Same with Bang!: The Dice Game. If you get shot out, it won't be long before someone wins, and then its time for a new round.
In general: yes. Still I've had a couple of games of King of Tokyo were an early knockout was followed by up to an hour of gameplay between the players left in the game. That is where the comment in the video about it being okay for "one or two rounds" rings very true.
Tbh the only time i've played KOT it did seem like an unessasary flaw. That meant we rushed along after someone got eliminated for being too keen. You'd be better off keeping someone in the game but restricting them if their health depletes, like you can only move into the centre if you have x health or more. and/or your if you get knocked out you can;t attack someone occupying the centre.
That opening monologue sounds like a challenge to put this stuff in a game
A lack of a catch-up mechanism can be extremely detrimental to a game, because there is a risk of that player becoming "destructive" or "seemingly non-compliant" (not helping another player to win the game). I see this in online games of Settlers of Catan, another pre-2000 game...
21:43 Yup, in the BG cafe I go Citadels was a relatively played game a few years ago, but I refused to play without houseruling the assasin. Every time I played it "as is" someone would not be able to play because they would get killed every turn. Sometimes it was me, other times it was other players, but in the end whoever got the short stick didn't get to play and more than once someone just stood up and went to play somewhere else.
It still baffles me the popularity of such a modern game with a rule that, by default, keeps out one player per round from playing the game.
Yes, this game has never worked for me either.
Thank you for interesting video, keep it up!
However:
8 (tables) are common for wargames (and they are selling pretty good now, it's a golden age in wargaming).
9 (player count) - is doubtful. Yes, you can make a game for 1 to 8 players, but quantity of components for 8 players is basicly doubled as of 4 players (and production costs), and will it scale well for 8 players? I think it's better to make strongly tested 2-4 player game, than loosely 1-8 player.
10 (components) - as far as I know, 1) designer do not make a final decision about components, and 2) publishers will think twice if there "must be very unique" components in a designed game.
Thanks for commenting - I’m glad you found the video interesting.
I don’t play wargames, but I rarely see tables in the games I play these days. I saw them used much more when I used to play miniatures games. I’m sure wargames make effective use of them. And from the little I know of wargames, I understand simulation and historical accuracy are really important factors - so tables probably allow for a lot of complex interwoven situations and scenarios.
Player count - I said in the video that the default now is probably 2-5 (with solo mode and 6 player being desirable). I would agree that 1-8 is very unlikely to be satisfying at all counts.
Components absolutely should be a consideration for designers. They are central to the identity of the final product. The publisher has the ultimate say on how they realise the designer’s vision, but the publisher is limited by the components used by the designer in their initial prototype. For example, my game Pikoko required a card holder for each player. The game Potion Explosion is built around a marble dispenser (which the designer will have devised). Some publishers love unique components - they’re a hook in certain markets. Other publishers will want simple components which they can get for a low price.
There was a recent video interview with Cole Wehrle where he defended results tables as the simplest way to cram a lot of historical/tactical detail into a battle resolution, as opposed to bespoke rules that have to be considered simultaneously (looking up different cards, adding modifiers, etc). And to a degree that is true.
But then the question is whether that detail is necessary - for a wargame, yes, for a more casual game, no. But some complex minis games could definitely be simplified (turns take less time) with an old school table instead of adding up lots of modifiers.
Nice, you more o less said what I wanted to say (except for wargames: I'm not familiar with those). =)
I completely agree with most of the video, except for 9 and 10.
For 9 - Player Count, like I said in another answer: a LOT of games from nice to great have a limited player count (4 at most, with some that stretch to 5), above that number there are quite few good games and all the others are trash or party games.
For 10 - Components: I'm not so sure, actually many games in their most recent iteration either went from wooden pieces to plastic ones (that are more detailed and, it seems, people like them more) like Catan or expanded the number of plastic miniatures present (mostly dungeon crawlers); while I don't know any game that did the opposite (go from plastic to wood or reduce miniatures).
Cardboard constructions are a must where there are complex and big scenery components, but that's more of a space and weight issue (and cost, too) rather than environment.
There are still many modern games with carboards/wooden only components, tho.
And in both points I'm talking about modern (or modern-ish) games only.
"You don't spend your weekends besting your mates at Pong." Clearly you've never been to my house on Sunday.
I don't think he was talking beer pong.
@@blakenelson4158 Neither was I.
@@zonx87 O I see carry on then
Great video! I see many of these “game designer sins” as part of gaming evolution- game play has “evolved”
From simple basics like “roll and move” to modern player agency - have you considered doing a video when “game design goes too far”? Some modern games are more complicated than doing your taxes- require hours of rule reading- and sometimes require more rules references than an encyclopedia- love your work! Very inspirational!
It does almost seem like game design CAN’T go too far… however complex a game gets, there seems to be a market for it and players pushing for even more! 😂
The important thing is that a complex game is appropriate for that specific market - if the theme is wrong, or the mechanisms don’t mesh well (or add too much randomness) super-complex games will always flop. I don’t play enough of these games to make a video about them!
I’m impressed by the skill and dedication of these designers (and players) but it’s not anything I aspire to get involved in.
War for South Africa enters the chat!
I LOVE complex rules personally but I get not everyone does.
I have had good results implementing "Random Events", in educational games or Game Experience for training purposes.
There is an important caveat: When I implement "Random Events," they are meant for the players to negotiate and build agreements since such challenges require the majority of the players' collaboration to solve.
In a way, I use this mechanism as a "United we stand, divided we fall" resource.
Top Trumps is not completely random. In theory, card memorizing will give you an enormous advantage. If you memorize the card order during the first deck traversal, you know when the opponent's strong cards come up - and you also know their particular weak stats (a well-designed Top Trumps has cards with weak points). This gives you an enormous advantage.
The plastic segment unlocked a memory for me of the Steve Irwin Croc Hunter board game. It had a wind up toy croc that would move around the board and if your piece got knocked over by it, you had to restart
The design philosophy in these games was “this will look fun in a TV advert” rather than “this will be fun to play”.
I've never played tank battle, but as you describe it it sounds like an interesting game. Sounds like a game about reading your opponent/bluffing, which i wouldn't say is the same as making an uninformed decision.
Which resonnate with you saying that the game can be fixed.
Yeah, it sounds more interesting than it is to actually play. There’s no real bluffing, and you can’t read your opponent - you just know they have a selection of possible moves… and take a guess. It’s not TOTALLY uninformed. But you might have ~20 possible moves at any given time and ~10 of them will result in your tank being destroyed. You really can’t tell which move is the hazardous one, so even though the traps were placed by your opponent, it essentially feels like random chance.
That said, the mix of different elements and types of confrontations, along with nice components, does make for an enjoyable game - if you accept it for what it is.
I’d love to see Restoration Games take a look at bringing Tank Battle back like they did for Thunder Road.
I worked on a roll and move as a developer a year or two back, and it opened my eyes to how completely valid, and potentially very enjoyable roll and move can be in a modern game. It was called Damnation: The Gothic Game. I was happy with how it turned out, the 'bumbling' nature of roll to move could be very tense since you can be stood behind someone with an axe in your hand ready to strike, having setup your cards and position so any roll from 1 to 5 grants the kill, then you roll a 6 and decie to steam off after another character. I think it works really well.
I agree - when it’s done well, it can be really tense and exciting :)
Shadows of Brimstone uses the roll to move in pretty meaningful way too.
Aren't a lot of contemporary cooperative games basically just "event deck: the game"? Everything from Pandemic to Spirit Island is just a bunch of random (or semi-random) negative things happening that the players then have to deal with while traversing to their goal.
Haha. That’s a hot take. I like it. That’s exactly what a lot of coop games feel like to me too! (Maybe that’s why I’m not a huge fan)…. I might use that description if I make a future video about coops if I may?
@@AdaminWales You certainly may. I'm pretty sure I'm not the first person to describe it that way, although I would be chuffed to receive a hat tip for the description later.
I often enjoy Event Deck: The Game. 😁 But the art and storytelling have to be top notch-and I admit, at some point it could become more like reading a graphic novel than gaming.
I guess the more well-built effects are "Here's something that you have to deal with this turn / in X turns or you suffer a negative effect" (input randomness) instead of "You suffer an unavoidable negative effect instantly" (output randomness). For example, Leviathan Wilds does this well and you can always escape a bad event.
But it is true that, in trying to make those event decks thick, many co-ops do have questionable and unfun event cards... ;)
that's probably a bit reductionist, but not entirely unfair. Those games and Arkham Horror LCG sprang immediately sprang to mind when he was discussing random events.
I think the distinction to be made is Random Consequences (lose 10 money, go back a space etc.) vs. Random Events (spawn x enemies, add 3 virus tokens to the board)
"if you allow your players to make a decision, it should be an informed decision" - this was definitely one of the big flaws with my first game. Hopefully not with any of the subsequent ones...
That was a very good point. Something I dislike in a game is where I am hit with some random penalty or just making blind choices. I need to work on this is the game I am designing. Sounds like you have taken this to heart as well.
I haven't finished the video, but I'll make a small defense of something like event decks:
You're correct that random chance shouldn't determine the outcome of a game by itself, but I'd argue a bit of unpredictability can serve a strategy game. For example, they can make the game simply less static, or they can offer a hail-mary to a player that's losing (or conversely, make a nearly-winning player's victory less assured). And sometimes your game doesn't need to be *perfectly* fair.
I would say that the balance is vaguely that random chance should call for player reaction and flexibility. IE:
• If a player loses due to a single die roll or card, it should be because they made poor decisions that made a single die roll or card the deciding factor.
• If a player has an event that gets in the way of their current strategy, they should feel like a plan B is/was possible or that they still have a chance to maneuver around the problem. A good strategist has a plan B and is able to adjust their strategy to unexpected and changing conditions.
• It should require skill to press an advantage given to you by random chance. You don't get to choose the hand you're dealt, but you do get to choose how to play it.
I don’t disagree with any of that :) Most “bad” mechanisms can be effective if used thoughtfully.
A good video but I would disagree with point #9. I would say that before 1995 games which played 2-6 or 3-6 were relatively common but between 1995 and somewhere around 2005 or 2010 the common range was 2-5 or 3-5. But from then until about 5 years ago games that played 5 became rare with player ranges narrowing to 2-4 or 3-4. So if there are 5 of us looking for a game we are looking at pre-2010 games, and for 6 players an even more limited range of games.
You are right that In the last 5 years, we have seen many more games that play 1-4 (and possibly 1-5), either by having a special solo mode or by having so little player interaction that that game can play solo with no significant changes to the rules.
Party games are of course an exception to the usual limitation on numbers.
Yeah, this one is very fluid and has changed a lot over the years. In general right now though, the publishers I’m speaking to want wide player counts.
@@AdaminWales I'll look out for it among the 2023 and 2024 releases I come across.
10:08 ackshully there is strategy to battleship, as there are ways to find you enemies ships faster.
Well done, Adam. One of your best videos to date.
Much appreciated. Glad you enjoyed it :)
Excellent!
I'm currently working on a board game and had some questions. This was very helpful in answering them!
Screaming Eagles, a fighter jet game released in 1987, is actually pretty good about this!
It has roll-to-move, but you choose the direction. The best attacks are the long-range missiles, but you only have two of those per plane, and your enemy has two flares. Your guns can't be countered, but have the lowest range and a limited firing arc. There is a look-up table for damage, but it's _really_ well integrated.
Sounds great! I really enjoy a lot of these older games even when they have a few rough edges (Tank Battle for example is a lot of fun!)
I'm glad you added the last segment. It's important to know why these mechanisms are less common, not to just follow the trends.
Whenever I play Trouble I always found the needing to roll a specific number to win led to vary tense end games with other players also trying or not far behind, I definitely agree with the start being clunky though
I wasn't sure I would even be interested in this stuff before I clicked, but now I'm hooked. I didn't know that "exact roll" had such a common distaste, so it looks like I've found my people.
I remember hating games that have a square that say "wait here until someone rolls a 7" or "wait here until someone of a higher rank passes you".
Basically will be sitting there doing nothing for a long time.
I like how you bring up the value of certain childrens games. There is learning value, either general skills like memory or facts, or game-based skills like combos and planning is definately a thing.
I think the big thing about hidden information vs memory games, is that in hidden information games working out what you cant see is a skill element that you can ignore, whereas in memory games you have to engage with it.
Great distinction - I’m researching memory games at the moment for one of my own designs (and also a possible future video). But this is something I’ll give more thought because I think you’re right - you don’t HAVE to remember stuff to play a trick taking game, or Tigris & Euphrates. It’s an additional layer.
With all this in mind, how do trading card games succeed? Is it because the level of chance is expectable with your start of turn draw? Is it in the deck building process?
I think most CCGs offer up loads of interesting choices, both during the game and before the game starts. They have randomness for sure, and that adds some tension, but it’s well balanced with meaningful decisions. That’s the recipe for a fun game.
Not to mention the addictive quality of blind purchases.
@@AdaminWales Yeah, the booster pack experience is so much more important to the game than a lot of people realize. It's why those boxed card games often get solved and lose flare.
And as controversial as it may be, there is merit in having cards of varying value. It adds an interesting deck building choice around finding "budget" alternatives to expensive cards.
Randomness is minimised in deckbuilding, and games are played as best of 3 or best of 5 to reduce the punishment of a loss due to randomness.
We've been playing Sequence as if it's Uno. The card you can play must match the suit or symbol of the last card. This changes the game from being able to hang onto the Wild Jack to win, and changing the suit if someone is close to a sequence. If you can't make a play, you just draw a card, falling behind on pieces, but giving you more cards to play with, especially at the end when the deck is depleted (3 player game, of course).
It's a lot more fun than the house rule of "Can't win on a Jack." While it may make the game feel more fair, all it really does is make nobody play jacks, until someone else does, resulting in decking out, and a stalemate.
Top Trumps can offer a little extra strategy if you can keep track somewhat of what your opponent/s have, say if you know someone else has the fastest car probably coming up soon, it might be a good idea to avoid that stat, even if your speed's the best stat on your card, maybe go with the 2nd highest, 0-60 for example.
I think its really hard to have a good balance, because outside of game that are pure strategy (like chess or go) I feel like that some game doesnt offer any chance to someone that doesnt know the game well enough compare to someone that knows, like back then even with 3-4 plays game for me and 2 other players it was near impossible to win against someone with 50 plays of Russian Railroad.
Where is the fun if you have no chance to win unless you played the game 25+ times really? there is a reason I dont play chess, its not fun since its just purely raw strategy
I definitely never meant to suggest that there should be no chance!! I love games of chance. The important thing is that the player gets to make choices (and that the choices mean something). At the end of the video I talk about “roll & move” games, and how I wish there were more of them! Most really good games balance chance against strategic choices :)
Chess has some excellent examples of things not to design.
1. Limited comeback mechanics. The losing player has very few asymmetric advantages and it's easy to be in a completely losing position 10 moves into a 60 move game.
2. Limited finish off mechanics. Yes, checkmate is a finish off mechanic. The issue is that it isn't a strong enough finish off mechanic to be reliable at high skill levels. A skilled player can defend down a piece even though the game is clearly over. Tricky tactical checkmates in the middlegame are cool but they don't happen much under skilled play.
3. Rote memorization is encouraged. Openings and endgames can be played without strategy until someone deviates from a memorized optimal line. Only the middlegame is truly pure strategy.
4. Lack of randomness means the actually plausible game tree expands rather slowly, especially since the most forcing line is usually also a pretty good line. It does make the game strategic but it also incentivizes overanalyzing positions and almost necessitates the use of a timer, which comes with its own set of issues. To be fair, this isn't so much bad design as an unavoidable issue with hardline determinism and pure strategy, but is a timer really better than a deck or dice? I don't know.
5. Stalemate is the wrong kind of comeback mechanic. It's much easier to accidentally stalemate your opponent when winning than intentionally stalemate yourself when losing, and in either case it revolves around degenerate gameplay in completely lost endgame positions where the game should be over, and probably has been for half an hour, but then the winning side blunders the game to a draw while the losing side has no agency.
6. The strength of the king means that for top level competitive play, draws are a bit too common. Chess isn't that drawish for non-masters, but you can still feel the effects of the king being a bit too hard to checkmate at lower levels.
7. En Passant and castling are kind of strange rules that really don't operate by the same logic as the rest of the game, adding substantial complexity for a questionable improvement in gameplay.
Not to be that guy, but all these are skill issues.
As long as you play someone about your own strength, these are all mitigated. You blunder in the opening and are objectively worse now? Keep playing, your opponentis probaboy going to blunder right back.
The other issue here is that we've had 1300 years to find the best strategies for the game, which is not going to be the case with any game designed today.
The special moves (en pessant, double move for pawns on rank 2, castling, promotion) were later additions to improve the game. Yes, it improved the game. Especially the double move for pawns, it's usually a crucial equalizong respurce for black in most openings.
Perfect information games with no variance are not a thing anymore, so I don't really see what prompts your comment anyway.
@@pairot01 you are being that guy yes
@@pairot01just relying on your opponent to make a mistake isnt exactly a comeback mechanic
I find chess to be a game that is quite distinct from most other games as, fundamentally, it's a game about stamina is what I've come to realize... What I mean is that it's a game about who can make the least amount of mistakes (at least, for most people most of the time). Do you know your opening or do you mess it up, weakening your position? Did you see the incoming fork? Do you move your queen to a position targeted by a bishop accidentally?
Sure, it's a little more nuanced, especially at high level play. For example, choosing a "weaker" opening that your opponent is less familiar with might give you more of an advantage than going for a "stronger" opening. There's also positional gameplay which targets the overall balance on the board. And if you're playing a more skilled opponent, they'll be able to carry out more subtle attacks, and/or attacks that span more moves than what you're able to "see".
However, moves that weaken your position can still be conceptualized as mistakes. So, effectively, I'd still argue that chess is a game where you try to minimize your mistakes and spot and capitalize on your opponents mistakes. And, as pariot01 points out, if you're playing with someone at a similar skill level, you'll be making roughly the same amount of mistakes. If you accidentally blunder early on, just do your best to hold on - chances are your opponent will blunder at some point and it would allow you to equalize the playing field (unless you blunder such that your opponent gains a significant advantage, like losing your queen early on).
However, I also agree that this isn't a catchup mechanic either... Hence why I feel like chess (and maybe similar games like Go) is in a category of its own...
@@aleksaa24 chess doesn't have "mechanics". Stop looking at it with modern game design in mind, chess is 1300 years old.
I really liked how Tokaido used its random encounters deck. You can play just to get the most of them (which alone scores points) But also you really are playing for a collection of potential scoring opportunities and the boost from an encounter can nudge you towards collecting a particular panorama for the rest of the game. There is only like two cards in the whole deck that purely grant victory points.
30:18 Also known as BUGs (Big Useless Garbage) by the guy making Chemicards (formerly titled as the UNO Amalgam), which is a deliberately-unwisely designed card game that combines the rules of all 800+ variants of UNO into one. A lot of UNO variants have that Mattel money, so they can get away with plastic battery-powered gimmicks. Turns out, a lot of the gimmicks can be accurately simulated with dice and maybe a counting system.
Very informative. I have been struggling with the concept of event cards in a game I have been working on for several years off and on. I am close to a workable design but was struggling with the mechanism of events. Your insights helped me to be able to revisit this and not have it slam one player over the others. Thank you.
A glaring omission. Event decks have a very strong use case in cooperative games, where players are reacting to the information together. Sentinels of the Multiverse uses event decks as one of the main mechanics - the villain's actions are determined by a mix of the things on their character card and the cards played out of the deck during the villain turn. They also mix it up by having the deck have a mix of different things in it - cards with a one-time effect, cards that stay out until you find a way to deal with them, enemies you can deal damage to. You can also learn the ins and outs of each deck, and have options that can allow you to react to the deck. Some heroes have options that prevent cards from being played, with each having its own caveats. Others let you peak at and/or discard cards from the deck. If you're experienced, you can build your team around the villain, and plan your turns accordingly as well. You also have control of which event decks you have in play - one villain, one environment, and you can choose how punishing the game is by mixing and matching.
There's also such games as Pandemic or Forbidden Desert/Island/Sky that also use these decks as a source of challenge the players must react to.
I generally agree that event decks shouldn't be used in competitive gaming, but cooperative games break a lot of the conventions of those games anyway.
Yes. This is a fair comment - event decks are often used in cooperative games. I like the way they’re handled in Robinson Crusoe for example.
Another bad game mechanic: Games with a limited number of times that it can be played before players run out of the specialized paper it comes with. In terms of app-linked games, those are the games that really should have apps associated with them. That way players can "write" on a digitized version of the paper and not waste the 25 sheets that the game comes with. Also, the sheets should really be coated with a material that can handle something like a dry-erase marker that easily wipes off so they can be reused over and over again. Or the sheets are where chips/markers are placed to indicate what would have been written.
The game mechanism doesn't require limited sheets and a pencil any more than it requires laminated sheets and a wet erase marker. That's entirely part of product design and does not impact the game rules. And of course you're welcome to laminate the last sheets or even the first ones if you never want to throw any in the recycling bin.
photocopy or printable files for the sheets would be nice
Games that require an app have an inherent expiry date. When (not if) the app stops working, the game is unplayable. When you get to the last sheet of paper, you can just make copies of it.
@@Andystuff800 IKR: how much in the future the app'll be updated to avoid the "this app seems to be made for a previous version, so it's not guaranteed it'll work properly" message?
A good game that got around that was sonar, its a grid based submarine game that you write your course and try to figure out where your opponent is, using plastic covers for both over sheets of paper, works great and doesn't need much, only real shame I'd say is they didn't include an eraser that is made to look like a submarine
Incredible quality video. Well done! I'm going to use some of these ideas for some videos I'm planning on making about tabletop sport simulations.
Awesome - great topic for a deep dive! :)
@14:03 Another disadvantage of this game is that if players do not cooperate in exchanging/buying individual streets (to get a complete city), there is always someone who does not have complete cities or a very small one that slowly bleeds to death.
If you want a game that feels like a modernized version of Tank Battle, look for a copy of "Final Act" by (the now sadly defunct) tyto games. It has similar mechanics but leans a lot more into the "guess what your opponent will do and plan accordingly" side of things. Tank movement is limited by facing and terrain and shot placement is limited by the position of your tanks, so you have a lot of information at all times about what the other guy might do, but you usually need to put your own tanks at risk to get a clear shot at him. The closer combat gets, the more options you have for interdicting your opponent, but you can only do so by also restricting your own movements. So it becomes a very tight game of trying to anticipate your foe while sneaking into position to flank them or hemming them in so you can charge past them to the objective, etc.
As for roll & move, I think it's really well done in MLEM Space Agency. There's a clear path and some luck involved, but you get lots of choices as well (which dice to use nd how far to move, abandonding the ship or not, which astronaut to send etc.).
I’m always up for a Knizia dice game! :)
bold of you to assume I want my players to have a good time. I want them to suffer (!), like I do, designing the games in a way that they'll get published. =D but then again, that's why I watch these videos... so I don't suffer as much. thanks, Adam! =)
With most of my prototype games, the players absolutely do suffer…. Haha.
Hopefully with my published games, less so :)
Initially, I'd typed out a much larger response to this video, detailing specific points and, some might say objections to the statements made in it. Turns out, I typed far more than RUclips allows, so here's the gist of it, though I'm not opposed to sharing my longer views some other way.
- It seems, near the end, the perspective of the video abruptly shifts from "what will make your game FUN" to "what will get your game PUBLISHED" which, to me, are two vastly different things, and much of the statements in the video I objected to made much more sense in the scope of "getting a game published". I'd reccommend being more upfront about which angle you're coming from, because your statement at 1:00 left a direct impression on me that these were all objectively unfun mechanics
- The video IS well-made, and was still both enjoyable to watch and informative, and I will be checking out your channel to view more of your content moving forward. The in-depth look at various mechanics, including several real-life examples being mentioned that I haven't heard of before, is highly appealing to me, and may very end up leading me to my next favourite tabletop game!
- But... have you heard of the game Intercept? It hails from the late 70's, and boasts itself as an electronic board game... it's strikingly similar to Battleship, moreso the tank game you mentioned after it, but I can honestly say I've found it to be one of my favourite older games, even going so far as to call it a hidden gem. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it, if you have the chance to play it physically.
Thanks for your videos. They are great, informative, well referenced, inspiring. Never give up!
Thanks for not including player elimination! Not only does it work in same games, it also works in some contexts. If you have a party/gathering/conference where only *some* attendees are playing the game, eliminated players can go do something else and aren't actually stuck watching the rest of the game.
In some of these contexts, the opposite of player elimination can be harmful. Many modern games offer no mechanism to deal with players who need to "eliminate" themselves from gameplay due to outside circumstances, and when one player leaves, all other players have to stop mid-game too because the game mechanisms require all players to remain engaged for the entire duration of the game. It would be good if more designers ensured a game could continue with fewer players than it started with...
And even for games that don't end quickly, it allows the eliminated player to get up and do something else without disturbing the game for the rest of the players. I'd argue that player elimination can indeed be a blessing in disguise for both the eliminated player and the others. I think it's an element that can be used badly, but it's preferable in many cases to the player being held at the game against their will.
though when the game's more fun to watch then to play, something's probably wrong
Werewolf can be an example of this
I've always been that weirdo who, after getting eliminated, hangs around to watch the rest of the game with great interest. Never understood people who just get up and leave. I just have to know how it ends!
I love reference tables. They feel fun and it makes it possible to do really interesting things
Thunder road vendetta is a great example of player elimination working
Thanks for the positive words on the roll and move concept. I have it in my game but I was thinking of taking it out because I was considering the idea of roll and move being way to overdone but I feel that it is needed at the same time. So hearing you say roll and move is good if it's used well was a relief.
Great! As long as it is utilised cleverly, I would say stick with it :) Here is my video overview of some clever Roll and Move systems: ruclips.net/video/Fflv2nCikrs/видео.html
I love the video. Especially the part where “players that don’t get to play”. I wish more designers understood this. Especially in card games. “Floodgates” (effects that prevent your opponent or both players from engaging with a fundamental mechanic of the game) are always unfun. Except when you choose to use them on yourself, and they have a positive trade-off that you may use to gain advantage. At least that’s what I’ve found out while testing my prototypes.
If someone uses a floodgate on themselves, their opponent are likely in for a wild ride.
some of those "bad mechanics" are suppose to be educational, teach young kids to not get frustrated and be patient.
"If someone doesn't get to play, there's a problem with your design"
I would agree with you, but I've seen games of the highly regarded Pandemic where the game was over before player 4 got to their first turn.
With random events it can also be made better if it's something you can mitigate, e.g. something that is drawn at the start of a round but only resolved at the end, and which one may protect against during the round, thus creating randomness but still giving players agency in choosing whether to focus on mitigation or taking the consequences and focusing on something else
Very cool ... you discussed Swords & Wizardy, which is Lewis Pulsipher's first game! (Famed designer of Britannia, which was nominated for the 1987 Charles S Roberts Award for Pre-WW2 Board Game).
It’s a really good game - he develops the Gunjin Shogi/Stratego mechanism with loads of great twists :)
I talked about the game a lot more in my video about Stratego & related games:
Hall of Fame: Stratego, L'Attaque & the Big Four
ruclips.net/video/LQBB63Qy4Hw/видео.html
Yep board game design docs is what I need
I would argue that event cards can be useful, if used right. Fate Decks in Villainous give a bit of push and pull in a game where players are largely playing their own games. Co-op and solo games like Spirit Island and Final girl often require them as either enemy behavior or random things happening, or even both. And in many competitive games, they can be used as a means of keeping a game fresh each playthrough and can keep players on their toes. But as I said, it needs to be utilized properly. Having cards that can either make a huge swing or push the current leader further ahead by leaps can make a game unenjoyable. But Events can have the opportunity to keep the person in the lead from leaning heavily into a single strategy, and thus keeping them from running away with the game.
I think that’s a fair comment.
I’ve had commenters arguing that event decks can be good (especially in coop games), reference tables can be good (especially in wargames) and restricted player counts can be good (to reduce costs). I’m yet to see anyone putting forward a defence of “miss a turn” or “swap places”! 😂
@@AdaminWales Miss a turn can be viable for competitive card games, like Magic, but very restricted. I've only seen it in a couple of instances, and the costs to play those cards basically makes it a reward for pulling it off.
Otherwise, the only game I think it works with is Uno, where everything is quick, and the objective is just to play the cards in your hand out. It might be possible in other quick games, but that is the only way I can think of to make it work.
Not much of a defense, but there you go. 😄
There's another benefit to restricted player count. For some co-op games, having more than 4 players might sound like a good idea, but then the group decision making becomes too noisy and drawn out. I recently played pandemic with a couple of back seaters (totaling 6 people), and it wasn't nearly as fun as with 4 or less.
@@davidripplinger8904 Very true. Disney Villainous, for example, showcases a player count of up to 6. In practice, about 3-4 is usually the sweet spot for the game. Otherwise, there can be a lot of downtime, especially for newer players figuring out how they're going to play their turns.
@@AdaminWalesI think swapping places also has quite a bit of potential in cooperative games, due to its potential synergy with other strategies. Like switching places after doing some high risk, high reward play, putting all the risk onto a player that's much more suited to dealing with the risk.
Honestly, I’d disagree with number 9. Some of the best games I’ve ever played support at max 4 players (Clank! with no adventuring party expansion, Great Western Trail, Clank and Pandemic Legacy, Deal With The Devil takes exactly 4 players and it’s one of my personal favourites). I feel like games that have highly variable counts sacrifice the perfect balance that medium-heavy games require.
As a consumer, I would agree with you. One of my favourite games is Witness, which requires exactly 4 players. But that’s not what this video is about (Witness was critically acclaimed but appears to have been a commercial flop). The primary focus of this channel, and this video, is to offer advice to board game designers who are seeking to make commercially successful games. And from pitching to hundreds of publishers over the last few years, I can confidently state that broader player ranges are a distinct advantage when seeking publication. In 2024, a designer pitching a game for 2-4 (or worse 3-4) players is almost certain to be asked to stretch that player count. Not by every publisher, but by many.
And my advice to designers is not to make a lack-lustre 2 player mode, or a weak 5 player mode. It’s to make a game which plays WELL at as many different player counts as possible. It’s not easy to achieve. But it’s a competitive market, and every advantage is worth pursuing.
17:00 The *ending* exact rolls I don't mind so much. It's not like there's any material agency in the first place, so the exact rolls at the end set up a "competition" for who can get that last 1 to move their piece in, and let the other players feel like they're catching up to the player in first. The reason I don't want to play it is because of the lack of agency, not because of the exact roll requirement.
Totally agreed that your first marble should just start on the track, though.
4:49 1. Player Agency
13:02 2. Event Decks
16:45 3. Exact Rolls
18:12 4. Move Backwards
19:41 5. Swap Places
21:09 6. Miss a Turn
23:07 7. Runaway Leaders
25:56 8. Reference Tables
28:25 9. Limited Player Count
29:38 10. Component Quality
31:19 Notable Exceptions (Roll and Move, Take That, Memory, Player Elimination)
Fire Tower makes the best use of player elimination by having the first player eliminated become the Spirit of the Wood, which operates with its own mechanics.
Event cards can be functional as long as they are fair, or you can only draw one of your own free will. Ways to make them fair can either be that they effect everyone when drawn, that they don't change the status quo too much (or that you're able to plan ahead to mitigated the effects of most event cards), that they are consistent (either always positive, always negative, etc.) so you know whether to go for them or avoid them, and possibly by making the one who drew the card (or those who drew it, if multiple players drew it together) to be able to choose between different choices (where each choice has the same positive or negative weight (example; "either: [gain gold but lose crystal] or [gain crystal and another player also gains crystal]") on the event card so that players still has control of what happenes.
I haven't made a board-game myself, so I'm simply going over how a few board-games i enjoy handled the problems.
The video actually begins at 4:04
Time not found?
Hi Adam, This was fun. I started playing games in the 50s with my family, especially in those eternal summers. Scrabble, Spades, Chess and a few others. Now, retired to Mexico from the US. We play bilingual games with Scrabble or Boogle. Actually the game I enjoy the most is taking a long word and seeing how many other words one can make out of it. Having studied philosophy and languages I am fascinated how things work. All the Best Jim
Have you ever heard of Warhammer 40k the tabletop war game? I’m curious if you have a better example of interesting ranged combat, as opposed to the clunky table format system? I’m trying to design a more interesting and yet more streamlined version on a smaller board.
I played a lot of 40K around 15 years ago. I think the reference-table format is probably suited to this style of game where there are so many different potential interacting pieces - it’s a hugely complex game. So my advice to avoid reference tables in board games probably doesn’t extend to tabletop miniatures games.
I don’t really play any combat-focused games these days. You could look at the Undaunted board games, or Memoir 44, as examples of fairly simple board games with a war theme. For more skirmish-style, the dungeon crawlers may have interesting systems for ranged combat. Many of them seem to use custom dice. This seems like a reasonable solution. The dice you roll depend on the weapon you’re using, or distance from target - with different shaped dice (D6,D8,D10 etc) and different results distribution on the sides.
But I’m not an expert on this.
I like the combat system in Star Wars Shatterpoint. That is very cinematic.
@@AdaminWales Thanks I really appreciate your comment and your insights on the industry. I'll have to check out Shatterpoint.
You’re a really excellent presenter Adam, fantastic. Well done!
your references to historical games is what makes your channel so great
memory in gamesis tricky cause its one of those things that can be fun in some settings and leading to players optimizing the fun out of the game in others.
For example, in Catan technically everyone knows what resources everyone else picked up and use at every moment, but I very much enjoy watching my friend struggling to remember whether I still had that piece wood in my hand to try and steal it or if I had used it already and he should go for someone else.
I actually really like the type of I have no idea of the strength of the opponent kind of games, there are still often ways of playing strategically, just no obvious ones, which mean making the wrong move isn’t such a hit for the ego
So to make a successful boardgame is to simply keep it simple and engaging
Just bought my copy of the Board Game Designer Journal. (and I'm not even half way through the video. :D )
Thanks! Hope you find it helpful! :)
10:58 it seems like the anti-tank gun is not an anti-tank gun but rather tank itself is anti-anti-tank gun.
30:24 true, however it only gives an illusion of eco-friendly game, cards and other cardboard elements are almost always enhanced with a thick layer of polymer to make them last longer, look more glossy and be more resistant to moisture
( great video, thank you! )
I've got an (unannounced) roll & move game coming out towards the end of the year. I'm very proud of it.
That’s great Geoff! I’ll definitely keep an eye out for it :)
speaking of a "fixed version of tank battle" I was reminded of Duel of the Giants. very fun asymmetric 2 player tank game
Whoa, the Thunder Road example is amazing game design!!
One of my all time favorite catch-up mechanics is in the game Samurai & Katana - on the surface it looks like a Risk clone, but it's quite different.
One way it's different is that you tally score through the game, and the players with the highest and lowest score gets a bonus. The Highest score is Shogun, and I don't recall what he gets.
The lowest score though becomes Emperor, and the emperor dictates who goes in what order in each phase of a turn. There's several phases, and it's usually beneficial to go late since you can react to what other players are doing.
It also leads to a lot of backstabbing and dealing as players try to convince the Emperor to help them.
That sounds great 😊 It reminds me of the Sheriff role in Dice Town, where whichever player currently has the Sheriff’s badge chooses who wins in any tied situation (whether they’re involved in the tie or not) … and they’re allowed to accept bribes!
I'm glad you didn't consign "roll and move" to the dustbin of history. There are ways of making roll and move not irritating, e.g.:
- All roll results provide a similar benefit, for example a 6 allows you to move 6, a 1 can let you move 1 and gain a resource
- Different move directions: Perhaps advancing 6 down one path lands you on a risky square, where a lower roll leaves you safe, so you decide to move down a different pathway which is less dangerous but leaves you further from the end goal
- Having resources that allow you to mitigate bad rolls
I disagree, random events CAN make a game much more exciting, and a great story. the issue stems not from them being random, but from them deciding for you. Random events should offer choices the player can make. instead of "tough luck, you take 5 damage", a lot of modern games offer the *choice* of taking the damage for something valuable, such as a trinket or currency.
I would somewhat agree with your take. Random events can add an uncertainty which when visited upon the leading player can invoke joy in the other players. I am trying to work random events into the game I am working on so that the event is coming but players have up to a few turns to prepare for its arrival, if they can and if it is aimed at them. Hopefully that made sense.
19:19 (lightly paraphrased):
'Games should consist only of actions that move the player taking the action closer to winning. Actions that involve opposing one or more opponents should generally be avoided.'
In that case, why have opponents at all? All games would either be cooperative (which i fine), or just be solitaire in parallel. And if it's solitaire in parallel, why have opponents instead of having random variation in the victory condition?
26:40 The only point I even remotely disagree with you on, not because I 'like' reference tables, but because I like more complex games that often need them. That said, they should be kept to a minimum when possible, or printed small enough for a player handout rather than a book - these are boardgames, not RPGs after all. But I do believe reference tables have a place. And like "Requires Companion App" I'd like them to be labeled as such.
Here's what I didn't see criticized that I expected: Catan and chess.
With Catan, the game does several of these things, and I feel it would have been a good example of a slightly more recent game, being from the 90s. But hey, not everything can be listed, and I understand the focus on classic anglosphere games that anglosphere designers are likely to unfortunately imitate.
With chess: There are a lot of chess wannabees from naive designers of the sort you're pointing at. And chess-a-likes are largely doomed in a similar way to monopoly-likes. Why is this? It's true that chess lacks a catch-up mechanic, but is that the heart of the matter? I think modern games avoid extreme skill curves, where the best player is in a different strategic galaxy than a beginner.
I did have chess variants in an earlier draft of this script - not because they’re bad design, but because they are of no interest to publishers or the vast majority of purchasers. I see many self-published chess variants at conventions and they’re pretty much always ignored. Abstract games which don’t directly reference chess still have a good chance in the market (though it’s tough).
Is it even true that chess lacks a catch-up mechanic? The pawn can promote and recover material deficits. I would say that, generously speaking, the catch-up mechanic in chess only moderates its skill curve rather insignificantly.
Catan is one of the most balanced games I have ever played. After playing for many years I have been amazed at how many games I have won or lost within one move of my opponents. I can only dream of making a game so fun and balanced. The first game I designed was kind of a chess like variant. It was a fun experience, however, it became too complex and often ended in either a stalemate or total domination by one player.
@@verdmooring2695 most chess variants only allow for different shuffles of the same pieces per player precisely because it is difficult to balance a game where each player can have a different army.
DOG, Partners, and Pegs & Jokers fix some of the issues behind Pacheesi by giving people access to a deck of cards instead of dice.
You have choices; they're still random, but you can choose from your hand of cards, you're no longer totally at the mercy of the dice roll.
Don't get me wrong, they still have a lot of the problems of Pacheesi (or Ludo as it's known on continental Europe).
All your pieces start home and you need a specific card to bring a new piece out.
But the cards add variety: splitting your movement between multiple pieces, moving backwards, and even swapping pieces.
So it's better, but not perfect.
I’m keen to try DOG. It’s always heavily promoted at Essen Spiel so obviously popular, but unheard of in the UK.
DOG is an insanely good improvement over the earlier variants.
There is a reason there are tournaments ❤
@@manveroo1340 I'm not a fan of the shrinking hand size. I'd rather just see each player draw back up at the end of every turn