Prometheus Game Labs
After 22 whole weeks and tons of votes cast, you the players have chosen your favourite Micro Dojo Building of all! With an overwhelming victory, the Stables has been chosen as the winner, with the Guard House and Theatre tied for second place.
Thanks to everyone who took part, and I hope you enjoyed reading the series with my thoughts on each of the Buildings and their uses.
(This was originally posted as a Kickstarter campaign update)
Micro Dojo was designed to have a ton of flexibility and replayability in a small package, and Loyalty & Deceit is no different. I’ll be featuring the extended game in a later update, but for this update I want to talk about a couple of the other game modes:
The advanced game mode was included as a small section of the rulebook to provide yet even more content to the game whilst making use of existing components. It was recommended to players after they had played 5+ normal games of Micro Dojo as the rules (and particularly objectives) could lead to more complex play that might not be intuitive during the early games. The advanced game content could breath new life into the game for those that exhausted the base game, but truthfully I didn’t think many players would even get to that point. If you only ever play Micro Dojo once or twice it still represents pretty good value for money.
A recent post, and subsequent poll, on Instagram showed me just how popular the Advanced game mode was, with a lot of players saying it was their preferred way to play. The extra decision space offered by the advanced movement abilities, particularly when paired with a cost to activate them, really adds another level to the game for just a few small rules changes. Even, more, replayability!
Just like designing an expansion, the advanced movement abilities aim to ‘break’ some of the game rules to add interesting decision space. What makes the meeple movement abilities so unique is they can be used by both players, and so even if you don’t use the ability yourself you are placing the meeple in a position where your opponent might make use of it. In Loyalty & Deceit there are four new meeples that you can mix and match to further extend the Advanced game mode.
The Horseman is the mirror of the Samurai. Where the Samurai has basic extra mobility this is also mirrored with the Horseman being able to access otherwise inaccessible spaces. The Horseman had to have an ability that was similar to the Stables building of course (both representing the additional speed of the mount) and in fact moving two spaces in a straight line whilst ‘jumping’ over existing meeples was one of the initial design ideas for the Stables. This ability is only useful when the Horseman is on one of the 8 edge spaces and the opposite space is free, so it wasn’t suitable for the Stables, as a building that was only sometimes usable could lead to a negative play experience, but it was perfect for a meeple ability where the threat of using it was something each player had to think about constantly.
The Monk is the mirror of the Geisha, with both intending to be the more peaceful of the movement abilities. The idea of the Monk meditating in place and not moving was a great thematic match for the ability, and I like it as a fundamental rulebreaker ability where a covered space cannot (normally) be activated again. It adds a really interesting decision space too – if you want to move the Monk to a powerful space, then your opponent has the opportunity to use that space after your next turn too. Side note: this mirroring approach wasn’t in any way communicated to the artist, or even intended at the time, and yet if you look at the Geisha artwork you’ll see the Monk is a mirror design of the Geisha (from the kimono/kesa trim and the the posed hands).
The Sensei is the mirror of the Sumo. Where the Sumo pushes an opposing meeple out of the way, the Sensei pulls an adjacent meeple into the space that was previously occupied. The Sensei’s movement ability therefore allows you to move it freely whilst still protecting the space that is being left behind. It is the more defensive version of the Sumo’s offensive ability.
The Messenger is the mirror of the Ninja, and just like the Ninja was also the most difficult to design. When I started to come up with ideas I was amazed at how many possibilities for manipulating movement there was with just 4 meeples in a 3×3 grid. I played with ideas of programmed or forced movement, Daimyo marker manipulation, and even space/board manipulation. I wanted to capture the Messenger’s theme of going from some destination to another, or taking something from or to somewhere, and this is what eventually led to the idea of moving the Messenger adjacent to a meeple marked with a Daimyo marker. The intent here is that the Messenger is delivering a message to a Daimyo and goes directly to them without delay.
Some of the details of the new Solo Mode changes can be found in the How to Play video (2:06) Mostly these were simple changes for the Automa to adapt to using the new Loyalty and Favour mechanics, but also required some changes to the Difficulty levels, rules clarifications for new tiles, and a lot more. Humans are very adaptable to new rules, but the 8 solo cards needed some help!
I decided to play through and record a Solo game to show you how it plays, and almost immediately regretted it when I started to get crushed by the Automa. How embarrassing would it be for the creator to get beaten by his own game? That said it was a great opportunity to talk through my thought process for how I play the game, how I solve the solo play puzzle, and share some insight on the new mechanics. I hope you enjoy it.
Maybe you’ve just heard of Micro Dojo, or come across the new Loyalty & Deceit Kickstarter campaign, and are wondering if Micro Dojo is the right game for you? If so, read on.
In Micro Dojo you are one of two Daimyo—feudal lords of Edo Japan—tasked by the Shogun to bring prosperity to a small town. Carefully manoeuvre the town’s retainers to gather resources, build buildings, complete the Shogun’s tasks, and win favour. The most prosperous Daimyo will be granted the title to the town.
Micro Dojo was designed to offer a tight two player experience, where it feels like each move you make really matters. If you enjoy a head to head experience, or a puzzly solo mode, all in a small package, then you’ll love Micro Dojo.
Micro Dojo is a game of perfect information, meaning that other than the randomness of the initial setup (which has billions of combinations) there is no randomness. Being skill-based, the winner will be whichever player made the best choices over the course of the game.
If you like games that you can take with you, get setup and playing quickly in a small space, and then pack it away or go again, then Micro Dojo is a good fit for you. Micro Dojo is also very quick to learn – the How to Play section of the rules is just one third of a piece of paper.
Overall Micro Dojo offers a ton of value in a small package, and a ton of replayability between the randomised setup, advanced game modes, solo mode, and the modular board and extended game that comes with the Loyalty & Deceit expansion.
The elegance of the rules, combined with the depth of thought in Onitama, was a big influence on Micro Dojo. Similarly, the tightness of play in Cerebria, as well as the idea of having the public objectives visible from the start, was something I wanted to replicate in the game. And, though it didn’t directly influence the development of Micro Dojo, I found Targi to be a great match in terms of play style and a game I have enjoyed immensely.
Fans of Euro-type worker placement games will feel comfortable with Micro Dojo, as the game is built around a standard Acquire-Build-Score type of framework that has you gathering resources, gaining new abilities, and scoring points.
Finally, the chess-like element of having to predict your opponent and outmaneuver them can be found in games like Hive, Raptor, and Air, Land & Sea.
Retail: TBC
You’ll know from my one of my recent articles that I’m a big fan of Roll-and-Writes games, and just recently I picked up Rolling Realms – a Stonemaier (meta)game that distills elements each of the publisher’s games into various ‘realms’ that make up the game for a unique experience each time.
One of the exciting aspects of Rolling Realms is the idea that more realms, including crossover games from outside of the Stonemaier games catalogue, can be easily added in future. In fact two additional realms have already been announced. Whilst playing the game I couldn’t help but put my game designers cap on! I found that it has a fairly balanced framework that can be used to derive several principles with which to create and benchmark new realms. As well as digging in to the numbers, I used this to create my very own Micro Dojo realm to fit into Rolling Realms.
If you want to skip straight to the Micro Dojo realm you can go to the end of the article. For more details on the analysis of Rolling Realms and how I used that framework to build the Micro Dojo realm, continue on below.
Disclaimer: This is not an official Stonemaier product. This is fan-made content for personal use, and printed versions cannot be distributed or sold. More info on Stonemaier’s fan content policy here.
Stonemaier games tend to have fairly unique mechanics, or combinations of mechanics, that make them recognisable. Rolling Realms abstracts those mechanics, or typically just one of them, into a very simplified form that is still reminiscent of the original game.
In the Scythe realm for example, the core mechanic of gaining a resource with a top action and spending a resource to gain an additional bottom action is captured in Rolling Realms. The area control, resource management, and scoring systems are far too complex to capture in Rolling Realms, but it is still recognisable to anyone who has played Scythe.
In Between Two Cities, the concept of your score being based on the lower of your two cities is captured by your realm score being dependent on your other two realms. Euphoria evaluates dice ‘totals’ in an area when placed. Tapestry has you fit objects to fill a 9×9 grid. Viticulture combines multiple objects to create a final product…
To create a Micro Dojo realm then, it’s necessary to catalogue the key recognisable aspects of the game. I consider this to be simplified to:
The worker movement aspect is the core of the game experience, and in particular the tension with your opponent that it invokes, so a 3×3 grid is a must in the Micro Dojo realm. Gaining resources and then spending them to obtain an ability or score points is also something that is easily abstracted into the Rolling Realms format. All of the objectives in Micro Dojo rely on player interaction to evaluate which player scores points, and since there is no player interaction in Rolling Realms this was part of the game that didn’t make it into the realm. So now there is an outline in place for the Micro Dojo realm – a 3×3 board, and possibly with 6 available buildings.
Rolling Realms’ has two (maybe three) great advantages that make adding and balancing a new realm very simple.
Rolling Realms’ modular approach, where 3 different realms are chosen for each of 3 rounds, means that two games won’t be the same (with around 90,000 unique combinations). This modular approach means that realms can be designed and balanced in almost complete isolation. Unlike complex euro games with unique interactions between abilities, each realm is effectively independent and linked to the other only through common resources. As long as the realm is internally balanced (i.e. in line with the framework detailed here) then it will fit well within the Rolling Realms…realm. The exciting thing about this from a game design perspective is that it makes the game easily extensible, as already demonstrated by the official Terra Mystica promo pack and the very meta Rolling Realms realm.
Secondly, Rolling Realms uses shared dice and a shared set of realms (like X-and-write’s such as Welcome To or Railroad Ink) as opposed to personal or semi-shared resource like in Ganz Schon Clever or Hadrian’s Wall. This means that, since all players have access to the exact same resources, it becomes a game that rewards the most skilful use of those resources. More importantly for balancing purposes, it allows for somewhat imperfect balance without affecting the enjoyability of a game. Internal balance issues in games typically cause frustration when they favour one particular player (e.g. they drew the ‘broken’ card or got the ‘best’ player character) and usually when this is a result of random chance. If one particular realm is viewed as stronger or easier to complete than the other, then all players have an equal opportunity to exploit that realm. Whilst a totally overpowered realm would be undesirable, it does mean less overall playtesting is required to create a suitable realm. This analysis should go a good way towards creating a balanced realm.
First let’s take a look at the action economy in the game. There are 9 turns in each round, with two dice being placed each turn, and as each realm can only be activated once per turn, this ordinarily means that 9 spaces is the maximum number that can be completed.
| Realm | Action Spaces |
| Between Two Cities | 9 |
| Between Two Castles | 10 |
| Charterstone | 12 |
| Euphoria | 12 |
| My Little Scythe | 12 |
| Pendulum | 11 |
| Scythe | 12 |
| Tapestry | 9+? |
| The Society | 9 |
| Viticulture | 9 |
| Wingspan | 9 |
As mentioned above, 9 is the maximum number of dice that can normally be placed in a realm, so Between Two Castles, Charterstone, Euphoria, (My Little) Scythe and Pendulum are immediate standouts . Most of those realms manage this by offering ways to place additional dice; Euphoria allows doubles to placed for ‘free’, Charterstone allows all matching crates to be crossed off at once, and Scythe allows extra spaces to be crossed off by spending resources.
Another aspect to look at here rather than the number of available spaces is how many dice are required for a maximum score. A lot of realms require every single box to be complete in order to score the maximum 6 stars (see the section below on scoring) however Pendulum and My Little Scythe do not. This means that it is possible to score the maximum 6 stars even with no (intrinsic) way to obtain place additional dice and more than 9 available spaces. The only realm that seems like an outlier here is Between Two Castles – it requires 10 dice for a maximum score and no method of placing an extra dice without spending 3 Pumpkins.
The Micro Dojo realm would need to have 9 available spaces at least to fit the 3×3 grid that is the central playing area of the original game (or perhaps 5 if ignoring the starting corner spaces). If the available spaces go beyond that, some method of placing additional dice would be required.
Obviously, it should be feasible to score all 6 stars for a realm, so I wanted to look at the minimum possible dice needed , assuming optimal dice rolling. The table below shows the minimum number of dice needed, and whether that also leads to a ‘complete’ realm. (If you have a better Tapestry solution do let me know!).
| Realm | Minimum Dice for 6 Stars | Realm Complete |
| Between Two Cities | 6 | No |
| Between Two Castles | 10 | Yes |
| Charterstone | 7 | Yes |
| Euphoria | 3 | No |
| My Little Scythe | 0 | No |
| Pendulum | 8 | No |
| Scythe | 6 | Yes |
| Tapestry | 9? | Yes |
| The Society | 9 | Yes |
| Viticulture | 6 | No |
| Wingspan | 9 | Yes |
Aside from Euphoria and My Little Scythe, all of the realms require at least 6 dice to score 6 stars. In fact, the average minimum number of dice needed to score 6 stars is about 6.6 across all the realms. This is the best case scenario but does give a good minimum for the number of dice needed to get the maximum score in the Micro Dojo realm – at least 6.
Of course scoring 6 points in all 3 realms is challenging, if not impossible in some realm combinations, but I was curious to dig further into this scoring pattern. The chart below maps how points are delivered per dice, assuming an optimal path to 6 points. Some realms offer points at a fairly even pace (Scythe for example at a rate of about 1:1). Some realms require a heavier investment up front to begin scoring (such as The Society and Tapestry). Others deliver their points in chunks (such as Viticulture, Pendulum and Wingspan).
In the games that I have played, I’ve scored an average of 13-14 points per round. Some outlier situations resulted in a round score of around 16 (thanks, Between Two Cities) or lower scores of around 10 (thanks, dice gods), but an expected score of 13-14 per round means an average score per realm of about 4.5 stars.
As a general rule across the realms, placing a dice seems to lead to 1 resource generated (whether pumpkin, heart or coin). This assertion is instinctual given that, on their own, few spaces do ‘nothing’ and few spaces provide two resources. Let’s have a look at the numbers in more detail by seeing how many resources are available and how many dice are needed to obtain them:
| Realm | Pumpkins | Hearts | Coins | Total | Action Spaces | Ratio |
| Between Two Cities | 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 9 | 1.33 |
| Between Two Castles | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 10 | 0.9 |
| Charterstone | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 12 | 0.5 |
| Euphoria | 4 | 4 | 4 | 12 | 12 | 1 |
| My Little Scythe | 6* | 6* | 6* | 18* | 12 | 1.5 |
| Pendulum | 6* | 6* | 6* | 18* | 11 | 1.64 |
| Scythe | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 12 | 0.5 |
| Tapestry | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 9+ | 1- |
| The Society | 3 | 3 | 3 | 9 | 9 | 1 |
| Viticulture | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 0.67 |
| Wingspan | 2 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 9 | 0.67 |
| Micro Dojo |
Firstly, and rather unsurprisingly, resource are equally spread across every single realm. That is the number of Pumpkins, Hearts and Coins available are the same in any given realm. Though it seems like an obvious point that realms should have equal internal balance as well as overall balance, it is reminder that the Micro Dojo realm should also have equal resources (and that these resources are about equally accessible, with no one resource harder or easier to obtain than another).
Secondly, my assertion above that placing a dice leads to 1 resource generated is about right, at an average of 0.97 per dice. However, this average is calculated on the basis of a fully completed realm. Since scoring points is the ultimate goal of the game, and resources simply smooth the way to get there (the 0.1 points per resource being fairly nominal), it is also interesting to look at how many resources are generated when following the optimal scoring path.
| Realm | Resources | Dice | Ratio |
| Between Two Cities | 4 | 6 | 0.67 |
| Between Two Castles | 9 | 10 | 0.9 |
| Charterstone | 6 | 7 | 0.86 |
| Euphoria | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| My Little Scythe | 0* | 0* | 0* |
| Pendulum | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| Scythe | 0* | 6 | 0* |
| Tapestry | 9 | 9 | 1 |
| The Society | 9 | 9 | 1 |
| Viticulture | 3 | 6 | 0.5 |
| Wingspan | 6 | 9 | 0.67 |
When following an optimal scoring path (i.e. the minimum number of dice needed to obtain 6 points) the number of resources generated per dice is about 0.5. In several cases this is because no resources are generated when exclusively focusing on points, or in the case of Scythe because the gained resource is offset by a resource spent.
Finally, an approach that focuses on optimising gathering all of the resources in a realm (whilst ignoring scoring) results in an average ratio of about 1.2 per dice. Hardly enough above the baseline to warrant resource gathering over scoring points as a strategy, and so I’ve omitted it here. I also charted the delivery of resources for the optimal scoring case above (much like I charted the scoring path) to see if resources were generally delivered consistently, front loaded, or back loaded. Since the optimal scoring path is not particularly realistic however I’ve also excluded it from the analysis. In actuality, given the typical ‘1 resource per die’ finding above, I expect any deviation from the optimal scoring path (due to dice randomness) to be spent generating resources.
The real number of resources per dice is of course somewhere in the middle, as players balance the randomness of the dice rolled with the current game state whilst trying to optimise scoring. I briefly mentioned above the number of dice needed to ‘complete’ a realm, and in the case of both My Little Scythe and Pendulum, more dice are required than are available (12), so the actual numbers may be skewed slightly. Nevertheless, this gives a good guidelines for creating a Micro Dojo realm where a dice placement can be expected to generate a single resource on average, with slightly less for a scoring path that leads to 6 points.
Bringing all of the principle parts of the framework together now gives a pretty good baseline for creating a realm. Naturally the realm could (and probably should) deviate from these principles in some areas, lest it be a distinctly ‘average’ and uninteresting realm to play with. But as mentioned above these principles can help benchmark the realm and ensure it has a reasonable fit in Rolling Realms:
Theme
Action Economy
Scoring
Resources
I actually went through several different designs for Micro Dojo, with the one I liked best below. This realm (and one of the alternate designs) is available to download and print: (Download the printable realm here)
Starting with the idea of movement I toyed with a few methods of capturing the mechanic. First was an approach using circles and crosses to simulate moving a different meeple to the one previously. This led to a rather ‘standard’ path each game though. In the end, it occurred to me that a big part of the movement mechanic in Micro Dojo is having your opponent block spaces – this is represented by having spaces get marked off according to the other die roll. Another design also included building spaces (with the concept of spending resources for some benefit) which, whilst interesting from a play standpoint, proved complicated from a graphical design perspective (as well as balance) and ultimately I chose to go with the more simple design.
As a nod to fans of the original, I’ve also tried to distribute the resources in appropriate space on the board (with stars for Action spaces, Coins where Gold would be, Food where Food would be, and Hearts filling in the gaps).
Balancing all of the numbers to align with the principles above was actually more challenging than I expected, with resources and stars needing to be multiples of 3 (and all evenly distributed). Adding two spots to each ‘square’ (making the total 18) was much easier to balance and captured the feel of the original game more elegantly. Just like with the other realms let’s take a look at the numbers:
| Action Spaces | 18 (9) |
| Minimum Dice for 6 Stars | 9 |
| Resources Available | 15 (9) |
| Resource Ratio | 1 |
| Resource Ratio for Optimal Score | 0.66 |
The realm has 18 spaces which is far over what any other realm has. In reality the number of available spaces is around 9, since each time a dice is placed another space will also (usually) be marked off.
Since optimal scoring requires every space to be complete, this is a realm that could actually be quite challenging to complete fully. The resources granted for a ‘complete’ realm is a little above the average which I think is fine to offset some of the difficulty scoring points.
I expect the first 3 stars to be fairly easy to score (needing only a single dice), the 4th and 5th stars to be a little more challenging, and the 6th one to be very difficult. This mirrors Tapestry in that way, and is about in line with the expected score of 4-5 points for any particular game. Having to pay attention to the other rolled dice adds some additional complexity due to the ‘spacial’ element of scoring the final 3 stars.
I believe this is a realm that is quite ‘balanced’ from a numbers perspective, but that offers a lot of flexibility early on in the round whilst getting more and more challenging as the realm gets closer to completion.
I’ll let you in on a little secret. Most of that number crunching and analysis came about after I had put together an outline for Micro Dojo. It’s true that game design is as much art as it is science, and the first stage of the design was making sure the game feels about right.
After that baseline experience was in place, all of the analysis here could be used to benchmark the realm. If the number of dice needed, or resources granted, or path to 6 points, were wildly different to the realms that already existed then the Micro Dojo realm would feel like a square peg in a round hole. Then, borrowing ideas from other realms to either accelerate dice placement (Scythe, Euphoria, Charterstone), ‘chunk’ points awards (Wingspan, Viticulture), or pump up resource generation (Pendulum, Between Two Cities), a unique realm could be created that easily fits alongside the existing ones. In effect, I had 11 mini games to use as a reference to create a number 12.
Analysing and drawing out the Rolling Realms framework was a really enjoyable process, like teasing out the hidden structure behind a musical masterpiece, or seeing the clear image pop out of a magic eye picture. It was made even more exciting by having a purpose for such an analysis in creating the Micro Dojo realm.
If you haven’t played Rolling Realms yet I urge you to consider picking it up (or trying out the Print-and-Play, or the web application). If you include Micro Dojo as one of your realms, I’d be honoured to have it played alongside Jamey Stegmaier’s creation, and even more so if you let me know your thoughts and experience with it so it can be improved!
It might seem odd to think of board games as having modern improvements the way a technology does – after all we’re using chunks of wood and cardboard which are pretty old fashioned as materials go. But board games have matured rapidly over recent years, and games even only ten years old can feel dated. Just like the first manufacturer that put a camera or a fingerprint reader on a phone that has now become a standard, board game designers also develop new game design features that become accepted standards.
One of the things I aim to do as a designer is spot trends in other well designed games and try to understand where that can be applied, or at the very least broaden my understanding of why a good game is a good game. With that in mind I want to share three examples of modern game design that interest me:
Raiders of the North Sea has a unique worker placement mechanism (something that other Garphill Games are also well known for), where the player takes two actions – placing a worker on an empty spot and then picking up a (different) worker from an occupied spot. Gugong is another game with a unique worker placement mechanism, where players take actions by placing a card (numbered from 1-9) from their hand with the caveat that the card placed must be a higher value than the one already on the space.
Both of these games are ones I would introduce to newer players as being more accessible than some other worker placement games. Often more accessible games coincides with lighter game experiences that don’t have as much to offer more serious gamers, yet these games also offer a decent depth of play .
Worker placement games tend to reward planning, sequencing, and taking advantage of opportunities (either in spotting ‘open’ strategies, or timing your actions before opponents). These things can be challenging for players that are newer to gaming, and even to experienced gamers that may be playing for the first time. As a lot of mental energy is going towards understanding what actions are possible (i.e. how to play the game), planning several turns in advance and then rapidly resequencing or restructuring that plan when an action gets blocked can be overwhelming.
This is where worker placement games that don’t (hard) block spaces come in. In Raiders, if that critical empty space you were planning on taking has a worker placed on it by another player, well now that space becomes your second action instead of your first. In Gugong, if another player plays a higher card on the space you wanted then you now have to play an even higher one perhaps than initially planned, or pay an additional cost to place a lower one.
Disrupting, but not blocking, a player’s plans improves the experience by still allowing the player to have agency in executing their plan. More importantly though it lowers the barrier for newer players, reducing cognitive load since plans can change in efficiency rather than being completely reworked.
Another area I see improvements in board game ‘technology’ is what I would call quality of life improvements to established game mechanics. Incremental changes that (should) become established norms.
Lost Ruins of Arnak is a deck builder combined with worker placement. Deck builders tend to follow a similar format, with cards (often 5) being played on a turn and then used to obtain more powerful cards. These new cards go into the discard pile to be later shuffled back into the draw pile when empty. Most deckbuilders work this way, but Lost Ruins of Arnak has you put the newly acquired card on the bottom of your draw pile instead. A small but very effective change.
Most deck builders that follow the discard and shuffle method of acquiring cards adds a negative experience in two ways. First player has to get through all the older, less interesting cards before shuffling the new one in, and secondly when they do shuffle it in it still may not show up for some time (or even at all in late game). When a player has obtained a new card for their deck that does something cool, they want to use it!
By placing the newly acquired card on the bottom of the deck, players have some level of reliability about when that card is coming, and they get to play with their new card sooner. Not only is this more fun for the player, it has an added effect of getting to the power quicker (without changing the raw power level of cards) and speeds up the game. This is more important in modern deck builder + ‘something’ type of games (Dune Imperium, Clank, etc.) , where decks are not recycled as quickly as in a pure deckbuilder. I can think of few deck builders that wouldn’t be made more enjoyable by this minor change.
You can’t mention table presence without mentioning the Everdell tree (pictured below). This was the thing that I saw, from the other side of the room, and made me say “what is this game? I want to play it!”. The thing about the Everdell tree is that it’s completely unnecessary for play, and the game could easily have just been a flat board. But it wasn’t, and the tree became an icon of the game. (See also the Tekhenu Obelisk, and the Viscounts of West Kingdom Castle).
I would have considered myself the type of gamer that cares more about the core mechanics than aesthetics, and yet even I am drawn to games that look good or look different. The models for Anachrony and Cerebria are similarly unnecessary to play the game, but after painting them and putting them on the board they really do improve the experience! Mindclash Games also does something really interesting with these models by providing them separately (or as part of an expansion) to the base game. This really speaks to me as I like to offer gamers a choice, catering to those that want to experience the game at a lower cost and to those fans that want to upgrade their experience.
Games with table presence are now much easier to design and produce. Thanks to improved design tools, easy prototyping with 3d printers, and the ability of manufacturers to produce more complex and detailed moulds and materials. I expect to see a lot of successful games in future with components that differentiate them and stand out on the table (more than just an army of miniatures).
With Micro Dojo, it would seem that I’ve had quite the opposite of table presence, and a core aspect of the game is about tactically blocking spaces! In fact, the game has a table presence all of it’s own, attracting attention by virtue of how small it is, and being a more tactical game (with very short turns and limited choices per turn) means that disruption of plans doesn’t lead to a negative play experience.
That said, improving the accessibility of games (whilst still having depth of play), adding quality of life features for a smoother experience, and making games with a unique table presence, are all important aspects that I want to be part of my design and I will be strongly considering how to include them in future.
Right on schedule today we’re ready for playtesting! I’ve developed a prototype of our community designed game where I’ve tried to incorporate the mechanics suggested into an 18 card game hidden movement game for two players, themed around time travel (draft story below if you want to read more) .
So today we need playtesters! Just two of you can load up the mod and see how it plays. Consider this at the concept testing stage: the game may well be broken, unbalanced, and possibly unfun, so what we’re looking for is to see whether there is a nugget of a game here that we can develop further. If not then we have the rest of the week to go back to the drawing board!
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2302649500
After the singularity, the civilization of man began to crumble. The only way to save it was for a group of technologists, now called the Time Lords, to manipulate events that allow for the best chance of survival.
The Time Lords now control every birth, every death, and every major event (for good or ill) to keep the human race intact. Mankind persists, but what is a life without freedom of choice?
The Cabal are resistance fighters, preferring to take their chances on an unknown future for the sake of freedom. Coming out of hiding to make their final stand, they have prepared their best agent (and a clone) to sow chaos in the timeline. Even the Time Lords cannot predict the impact of this butterfly effect, breaking their control.
Day 6 and the final day to set all of our choices in place to create the brief, as next up we’ll need to start fleshing out the game for a prototype playtest on Sunday! Drew Richards and Chris Backe both came up with some cool details for the mechanics, with Drew even sketching out his ideas for the first prototype! You can find details by searching the hashtag above, and I think we can combine both of them into a single game!
Drew’s sketch suggested a board layout, but we could also randomise the connections in time using the table space. A fixed game area to layout tokens or cards in a specific manner, with two tracks for both hunter and hunted would fit the brief of the micro game. Chris’s idea of having time being unwound (with the fugitive escaping if they cause enough chaos) adds time pressure to the hidden movement mechanic similar to the murders in Letters from Whitechapel.
So how do we recreate that in micro game format?
Day 5. MOAR MECHANICS! It was a close call, but we’ve collectively decided to base our game around hidden movement. To summarise we now have a brief for a two payer micro game, with hidden movement mechanics chasing a fugitive through time!
This next refinement has no poll. Instead, add your comments below with your 2-4 line summary of the game mechanics and the most likes will be developed further.
This doesn’t have to finalised, but how do you imagine this game playing out based on the brief above? Are players secretly choosing to travel points on a map like Scotland Yard? Do we have variable actions where players must second guess each others choices? Is it a cooperative game where players are trying to work together to beat the game and capture the fugitive?
It looks like we’re creating a 2 player micro game about time travel, where the thematic hook is that we take on the role of a bounty hunter chasing a fugitive through time (is it cooperative, or are you hunting player two?…)
Onto mechanics. First let’s choose the format of our game! Remember the brief of being a micro (small format) game, but that could take many forms.
We had a ton of great theme ideas, but you’ve chosen your favourite (suggested by Clay Dreslough) as Time Travel!
With our overarching theme of making a 2 player micro game about time travel we pnow need a hook for our theme. What are our players trying to do? Are they cooperatively fixing holes in the space time contiuum? Is one player trying to hunt the other through ever complex time hops? Is it an educational tour through historic events?
Prometheus Game Labs 