Dev Diary #1: The Game Design Lesson That Changed Everything
Author:
Introduction
Hi guys, Lloyd here, Studio Director at Foxhole Games. This is my first ever dev diary entry for our upcoming board game Loot the World. Deciding what to write about first is never easy. I have so many thoughts running through my head about the topics I could write about, and I so badly want to fit them all into one great-big megablog brain dump. But that wouldn't make for good reading. Gotta remember: baby steps!
Before we dive in, let's kick off with some context. Our first game, Loot the World, started off as a small, very modest idea. I'm a historian by training and I've always been a gamer from as far back as I can remember, starting off with Pokemon Red on the Gameboy Color in '98-'99. I don't even want to begin to think about how much money I've spent on games since then... So anyway, one day I just thought to myself, why don't I just combine my enthusiasm for those two things and make games about history! It's so delightfully simple! Not.
I think that's an issue a lot of aspiring board game creators run into. It sound so simple at face value to just think up an idea, get people excited about that idea because it's obviously just so cool. Then all you do is run a wildly successful crowdfunding campaign, find a factory to pump the game out in droves, et voila, overnight success. Or was that just me? Maybe it was just me...
The Challenge
The task of creating a game with concrete, enjoyable mechanics, completely void of exploits and flaws, is gargantuan. As the saying goes, "No strategy survives first contact with the enemy". We've stress tested Loot the World enough times to know that! Massive shoutout to Joe and Sherman for their time and dedication to the cause—couldn't have it done it without you guys and your sheer love of board games.
I'll never forget one thing Joe, a pro board game designer, said to me when we were testing one of our earliest versions of Loot the World. He said something along the lines of:
"You know there are two types of games right? You have game games and then you have puzzles."
I'm thinking "what the heck is a game game?"
He continues, "What you have here isn't a game. It's a puzzle. There's always one move you need to make, and if you don't make that move you're shooting yourself in the foot. The game is solved from the very start and to win all you need to do is solve the puzzle by always choosing the right move."
Joe had a insanely good point and it's stuck with me ever since because, at that point in time, we'd created a game that wasn't truly a game. It was a puzzle. I believe this might be one of the hardest challenges developers have to overcome with to create truly memorable gaming experiences.
One example that comes to mind is Victoria 3, a video game by Paradox Interactive. For the uninitiated, Victoria 3 is effectively a geopolitical, economic simulator set in the Victorian era spanning the years just before Victoria was born up to the precipice of World War 2. You pick a nation to play as and, TL;DR, your job is to make line go up (i.e. make loads of money). In order to make line go up to you have to do X, Y and Z. If you don't do these things, the line will not go up. And you have to do it in that specific order, and as efficiently as possible, with as few mistakes as humanly possible along the way. Does that sound like a game to you? Or does it sound like a puzzle? I'd argue it's the latter and it's probably why Victoria 3 is among the least enjoyable of all Paradox games. Ultimately there is a "right" way to play. Fun maybe once? But only once. Would you undo hours upon hours of hard work just to redo the same puzzle over again?
The Solution
Joe's puzzle comment really struck a chord with me, and defined how I've approached our game design for Loot the World since. We want our players to play the game and know that there isn't a single move standing out amongst the rest as objectively the best move across the board. We don't want players to be figuring out a puzzle, we want them to feel like they've got agency to choose their path to victory. And I'll tell you, it's been one hell of a challenge!
To overcome this, we made use of a Markov Chain; plotting out every single possible decision a player could make at any point of the game. A Markov Chain is just a fancy way of saying a decision tree. You end up with a chart to rival that of the Pepe Silvia meme.
If at any point along that chain you see only one decision a player must make in order to win, the line between game and puzzle begins to blur. I strongly recommend all aspiring strategy game designers make use of a Markov Chain. We used an online tool called Miro to create our chain, but there are other tools out there such as Figma that do the same thing and is entirely up to preference.
Closing Thoughts
Whether you're an aspiring board game designer or simply interested in the various design philosophies of creating a game, I hope this dev diary entry has given you some insight into one of Foxhole Games' most important design tenets. And I also hope you've enjoyed reading this as much as I've enjoyed writing it. I'll keep on writing these as often as I can in the lead up to the launch of our flagship game Loot the World on Kickstarter. If you're keen to stay in the loop, feel free to sign up to our newsletter via the homepage.
Thanks for reading,
Lloyd