Designing a game is a lot of work. You need to make sure the rules provide strategic opportunities for players, that the mechanics are engaging, think through the pace of each turn and also look at the gameboard, pieces and supporting materials all align with the experience you want players to have.
Bringing back a game that has been out of print for decades also has it’s own challenges. Like how much do you modernize the game? do you codify “house rules” that have been developed over the years. How much do you change the look and feel of the game vs staying true to the history and “charm” of the original.
We recently completed a strategy review for our current project. Here are some of the decisions we made and why we chose them:
- First we decided to do all new card designs. There are many reasons for this, but one of them was to modernize the use of text and have more (but not too many) icons. This helps with things like translation of the game and also makes the game more collectible by making alternative art and special card treatments easier to realize.
- We revamped gametext keywords. Over time the taxonomy of keywords that were originally designed can grow tired or convoluted. This can be challenging if certain keywords have been tied to game mechanics, or if game expansions have made too many. You don’t want players to have to read a 200 page book of definitions to play the game.
- Rules review. Because we are recreating a game based on and out-of-print game, there has to be a balance between new rules and old rules. Managing power creep in card games is especially difficult so you have to think about mechanisms to address card combinations and deckbuilding strategies that overrun the game. You also want to create the joy of discovering a strong combination so players can stretch their strategic creativity. Most of the rules we changed were about balance. That and fixing things that just didn’t seem logical about the original.
- Make the game better for organized play. Draw tournaments are very popular for these kinds of games. So if you can build the game design from the ground up with this in mind, it will make it easier on players to get into these games. That means designing around mechanics that hurt this style of play. Tokens, fixed cards and toolkit cards are just a few that can be problematic here. So we found a way to solve those issues.
We continue to work towards having a game that the fans will love, and that will invite many new and returning players to the game. Once we have all the agreements worked out with our partners we will be able to make a formal announcement. In the meantime, keep checking back here with us and we will provide updates when we can.
See you at GenCon!