Grow Giant Games

I've set up WordPress on growgiantgames.com, and so I'll be posting there frequently and not over here. Head on over and check out the new images I've posted!

Grow Giant Games website online!

Check it out here. I'll be posting new card mockups as I receive them. I'll be hooking up a wordpress site there but I haven't figured out how to do that yet.

Some recent developments

This is the deal: I'm trying to design a game, produce the components, print hundreds of copies, sell them locally, and distribute them nationally, all while creating a company to run these operations. The whole thing is wonderful and challenging and I'm glad I'm doing it, yet at the same time it can make me quite anxious. There is a lot of risk involved, of course, but I'm learning what that risk means and what I'm putting on the line. I'm learning about how to identify the sources of pressure and to determine what I can address and what I must abide.

So some interesting things have been happening. I've changed the name of the company from Organic Games to Grow Giant Games. Organic Games comes with a lot of potentially negative connotations, and moreover it represents the state of mind and philosophy I had several years ago. Grow Giant Games sounds better, is sexier, has good words, and is a complete improvement.

Furthermore, I am 95% sure I'm going to change the name of the game from Thief to something else, potentially "King of Thieves". Thief is a fine name and many people have said that it is a powerful word and is effective as the name of a card game. It has many different connotations and conjures up many images. However, there is a video game with the same name: Thief, the Dark Project, and I'm concerned that should my game prove successful, sometime down the road I'll receive a letter from them asking me to please kindly change the name. I don't want to limit myself, to stay under the radar, right off the bat.

What do you think of the name "King of Thieves"?

The upshot of this is that the game is going through something of a rebirth: a new website: http://www.growgiantgames.com, new artwork that I will show off soon, and a new logo that is forthcoming. The cards themselves are being reworked to present a more consistent theme, a Victorian steam-punk theme, full of poisons and pistons and clockwork and cobblestones. The imagery and text are becoming more consistent, and thus better. This is good!

One source of anxiety is, of course, funding. After working on the business plan and cash flow projections, it looks like a good course of action is to apply for $15,000 in loans. However, it is unlikely I'll be approved for such a loan without first approaching the market and seeing how well the game will sell in reality. To do this, I'll need to produce 100 or so units and try to sell them. Where am I going to get the funds to make 100 units? I'll find it somewhere.

Producing 100 units and trying to sell them in the market will be extremely beneficial to me. I currently have a big question mark hanging over my head - I can't be certain that the game will sell once it gets into stores. Seeing how those first 100 do will give me the confidence I need to take the risk and get a big loan to make a larger print run. I think it's a better approach, and it allows me to see a clearer path into the future, which is the most important thing.

Results from the Halifax Game Jam!

http://halifaxgamejam.com/results2012.html

March 13 Ruleset

Description:

Thief is a storytelling game for 3 to 5 players. Players come up with plans to defeat security cards they encounter when trying to steal the loot from a building.

Setup:

In Thief there are five types of cards in Thief that make up three decks: Items and Options go into the Draw Deck (white back), Security cards go into the Security Deck (blue back), and Building cards make up the Building deck (green back).

Draw a Building card and place it face up in front of you. You are the defender of that building.

Draw a loot card and put it face up next to the building. The defender doesn't own that loot. 

Draw 2 security cards and place them side by side face down next to the building card.

Draw 5 cards from the draw deck.

Take 2 blank cards from the pile.

Players who have played Thief before create a new Security card and shuffle it into the top half of the security deck.

Option Cards: used once and then discarded.

Items: used until they are depleted or destroyed during a break in. Discarded when you loot a building.

Blank cards: can be used at any time to create a new item or a new option. You must discard two cards to create a new card. Blank cards don't count against your hand limit.

- Determine who goes first.

- You choose which building to break into. 

- Building defender looks through face down security cards, chooses which security to play, and turns it face up. You may ask for the defender to clarify any details about the security card, and it is up to them to flesh out the details.

- If a security card interacts with the building card, determine the realistic outcome. This may be that the security card is nullified.

- You play items from your hand to defeat security. As you play items, you may fill in any details about the items that aren't provided on the card, but other players may challenge you on unrealistic modifications.

- You must play at least one card, but you can play as many cards as you want.

- You cannot play cards that are disallowed by the building.

- Other players determine success by voting. If there is a tie, you may play additional cards to augment your plan. If there is still a tie, your plan fails.

- Other players determine which cards were used up or destroyed during the break in and which cards stick around.

- If you fail the break in, discard the cards you used in the plan, and play passes to the next player. At this point you may discard up to two cards and redraw up to five.

- If your plan succeeds, you may choose to continue on and face a new security card in the same building. You must keep the same hand of cards. Or you can end your turn, and you can discard up to two cards and redraw up to five.

If you defeat the last security card in the building, take the loot card and place it in front of you, separate from your building. Discard your hand and redraw up to five.

The defender of the defeated building draws a new building card and puts it face up on the table with a new loot card. They draw 3 new security cards. If this building is defeated, repeat the same process, drawing 4 cards instead.

When the draw deck is empty, shuffle the discard pile to form a new draw deck.

The player who gets three pieces of loot first wins.

http://facebook.com/organicgames

Halifax Game Jam: Awesome Edition

Last weekend I participated in the Halifax Game Jam hosted by Twisted Oak Studios and held at The Hub. 48 hours of glorious game-making madness. A marathon of creative ideas, sleepless nonsense, and Unity3d hacking, resulting in a dozen surprisingly enjoyable projects.

I skipped the computer hacking and went straight to the index cards and colour pencils. I posted on the Facebook group that I wanted to make a tabletop game and I quickly got a few people interested. When I got there and pulled out my supplies it wasn't five minutes before I was joined by four others who wanted to work on something tangible and computer-free. Thanks to a growler of Propeller Porter, we had good ideas spilling onto the table in no time.

From the list of possible themes, we glommed onto "Randomly Generated" "Show Tunes". We came up with the idea that each player would represent an instrument on stage and would compete with the other musicians to be the most awesome. Without really working on the mechanics, we made cards that we felt were appropriate: "Frankie's Fedora", "Flying V Guitar", "Double Kick Drums," "Bass Solo". By doing this, it became clear that the cards we were making fell into a short list of categories, which eventually became codified into "Style", "Sound", "Sex Appeal", and "Stunts". Likewise, we realised that certain cards applied more to certain genres: "Jazz", "Rock", "Punk", and "Metal" were the ones we would up with, though we experimented with other genres, and instruments, for that matter. We wanted the gameplay to have mini-competitions somehow, and it seemed like those competitions would involve the 4 Esses: style, sex appeal, stunts, and sound. That was as far as the gameplay mechanics went at that point. This was all conceived by Friday night/early Saturday morning.

With an initial deck and a rough idea of how the mechanics of the turn might work out, on the Saturday we tried some playthroughs. It was clear that we had to cut out some of the things that didn't quite work, like attack cards and extra instruments. We were able to put some numbers on the cards and try out some of the mini-comps. The game wasn't near finished, but we were able to see what worked and what didn't (The Sound category of cards was one of the things that didn't work). It was enough for us to write and balance a bigger deck with 15 cards for each instrument.

At about 7 a.m. on Sunday I used that deck to try some more playthroughs. I quickly saw that each player was interested in only 25% of the deck: only the cards that pertained to that instrument. There needed to be a mechanic that made the other cards useful for all players, and able to be moved around from player to player. There also needed to be a way for the genre of the "song" to be manipulated somehow. I came up with the idea of adding to the genre by playing unwanted cards tapped, which could then be fought for in a mini-competition. Thus, players could either build up their instrument with a card from their hand, fight for a tapped card played previously by another player, or add a point to one genre by playing an unwanted tapped card.

From there the game was pretty much done. Further balancing was required plus some tweaks to the scoring. Each style card was attached to one specific genre, and so the point value of the card was equal to the base value marked on the card, plus however many points that genre had. It worked well, and it lead to a really interesting cooperative side-effect: players who wanted to work toward the same genre because of the cards in their hand would tapped cards that were advantageous to their opponent, but applicable to their own favourite genre. For example, if the vocalist was playing points on punk, but the bassist and drummer were focussing on rock, the drummer might discard a bass rock style card, so that the bassist would take the card and continue playing points on rock. It made mechanical, but also musical, sense.

I found it really helpful to keep the metaphor of the game at the fore-front of my mind, and I brought it up to the group several times. We were working on a game where the players were musicians on stage trying to get the most attention. When were thinking about how the mechanics of the mini-comps would work, we went back to the metaphor: if the mechanic didn't makes sense in terms of the metaphor, we scrapped it. That led to better decision making, because we had a model we could check our ideas against, and ultimately a better game.

We finished the game, called Ticket to Jam, about five minutes before the 6 o'clock deadline. The cards are neat and easy to read and the game is simple and fun, and so far, it doesn't seem to be broken in any way. It was a really good experience for me. It boosted my confidence in my game designing abilities, plus I met a lot of other cool designers plus musicians and artists, and hey, we made a good game!

Me and Julie Hall, game designers extraordinaire

Business Plan

It's crunch time, folks. Draft business plan due tomorrow.
I'm finding it hard to stay positive when the numbers really aren't very promising.
I'm a one thing at a time kind of guy - projecting sales figures two years from now is difficult, and honestly, meaningless. I guarantee something is going to change between now and then that will alter the way I design games and do business.

Hoop jumping!

This actually happened.

Stuck against a room full of laser tripwires?
Use your Sacks of Flour to reveal them and your Catherine Zeta-Jones Transmogrifier Ray to wend your way through them!

Proposed Features

Adding new security: During setup, players who have played before can create one new security card and add it to the deck.

Removing cards from the deck: During their turn, players can discard two cards to draw one new card from the draw deck. One or both of the discarded cards must be marked on the back with an X. When a card is marked with two Xs, remove it from the deck.

Games night at Monster Comic Lounge!

So I just talked with Mike down at Monster Comic Lounge, and he invited me down to run a demonstration game of Thief at his store next Friday. Should be good! They have a regular games night on Fridays so there will be some gamers there ready and willing. This'll be the first public playtest. Woo!

Latest ruleset

Draw a filter card and place it face up in front of you. Put a piece of loot on the card.

Draw 2 security cards and place them side by side face down next to the filter card.

Draw 5 cards from the draw deck.

Determine who goes first.

Player chooses which building to break into.

Building manager looks through face down security cards, chooses which security to play, and turns it face up.

Player plays items to defeat security.

Other players determine success. Other players determine which cards were used up or destroyed during the break in, and which cards stick around.

At the end of their turn players discard as many cards as they like and redraw up to five.

The player who defeats the last security card takes the loot and places it in front of them. They also take a blank card.

The manager of the defeated building draws a new filter card and puts it face up on the table with a piece of Loot. They draw 3 new security cards. If this building is defeated, repeat the same process, drawing 4 cards instead.

When the draw deck is empty, shuffle the discard pile to form a new draw deck.

The player who gets three pieces of loot first wins.

POTENTIAL PROBLEMS: too much downtime between turns.

GOALS: Reduce playtime to 90 mins or less.

Session Report

Some good Thief sessions last week. We played twice, on Tuesday and again on Thursday. Tuesday's game was a bit nuts, probably because there were too many players and a few too many beers. We played for about 2 hours and then the game sort of fell apart.

The game on Thursday was much better. Four players, smooth moves, and we wrapped up after two hours exactly. I'm trying to pare down the length to less than 90 minutes, but I know how to do that - next time it'll work well.

There was at least one memorable play that game: someone created a Star Trek communicator card a couple weeks ago and used it to teleport to the other side of the Crushy Room. This time, however, we realized that the communicator doesn't teleport you unless you have a starship up in orbit, of course, so it couldn't be used to teleport you. However! The player who drew the communicator used it as it was meant to be used: to communicate. Presented with a locked door, she used it to phone-a-friend, a locksmith, to open the door. Presto!

Meanwhile, I created a transport module from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles to get under the Impossibly High Wall. It was cool.

Thief Rules Feb 23

Draw a filter card and place it face up in front of you. Put a piece of loot on the card.

Draw 3 security cards and place them side by side face down next to the filter card.

Draw 5 cards from the draw deck.

Determine who goes first.

Player chooses which building to break into.

Building manager looks through face down security cards, chooses which security to play, and turns it face up.

Player plays items to defeat security.

Other players determine success.

If successful, player can look at another security card of the manager's choice. If they want, they can discard a card and face the next security.

The last security card cannot be looked at ahead of time.

The player who defeats the last security card takes the loot and places it in front of them. They also take a blank card.

The manager of the defeated building draws a new filter card and puts it face up on the table with a piece of Loot. They draw four new security cards. If this building is defeated, repeat the same process, drawing five cards instead.

At the end of their turn players discard as many cards as they like and redraw up to five.

When the draw deck is empty, shuffle the discard pile to form a new draw deck.

The player who gets three pieces of loot first wins.

GOALS: Reduce playtime to 90 mins or less.

PROPOSED: To decrease downtime between turns, players can face only one security per turn.

To limit the power of multi-use items, building managers choose which of players' revealed items to discard.

Email newsletter

Hi folks,
If you're interested in keeping up to date with the developments of Thief, including how to get a free homemade copy of the game, sign up for my online newsletter. I'm sending out emails about once every two weeks. Send a message to organicgames at gmail dot com and I'll sign you up.
Sam

To map or not to map?

Over the past week or two I've been waffling over whether to include the map and its associated function in the game of Thief. It's not a good feeling, acknowledging that I might have to remove an element of the game that I've been working on and refining for the past eight months or so.

After some strong feedback from some players that the map was adding nothing but complexity, I took it out and whipped up some very simple rules to show off the main mechanic, which is strong, strong enough to carry the game. And it did. We tried it a few times and the game played smoothly, there was lots of interaction, and no one felt confused or slowed by any map mechanics.

However, the map created a visual centre, a focus point for the players to look at. It formed the context of Thief, a frame upon which to build the imaginary world of the game. Without it, play felt abstract and even possibly irrelevant. Without a visible goal to provide motivation, play was simply a social interaction using cards.

The conclusion I came to is that I pared it back too much. I'm going to bring back a visual centre, in the form of building tiles that will, when put together, represent a city. The map will not add any new mechanics, it will simply track some information on the progress of the players and which buildings are whose responsibility. It's a good compromise, and though I haven't seen it in action yet, I'm confident it will play well.

Thief session report #1

First a brief description of the Thief. It's a card game, you are trying to break into as many buildings as possible to steal the loot at the bottom. In your hand you have a selection of item cards representing tools you might need during a break in: torches, lockpicks, dynamite, disguise kit, a fridge on wheels, and all kinds of other things. You also have a bunch of security cards representing obstacles that your opponents will face when they break into your building: things like an electrified floor, motion detector, a crushy room, bear traps, and so on. These cards are kept hidden. 

In addition, you also start with two blank cards which you can use at any time to create a new item and put it into your hand.

You draw a building card and play it face up in front of you: this restricts the kind of items that can be used while breaking into your building. No loud noises, no fires, that kind of thing. 

On your turn, you pick the building you want to break into, making a decision based on the items you have and the restriction on the building, and then the owner of the building chooses a security card that you'll have to face. You must play your items, singly or in combination, and come up with a plan to get past the security. You then describe your plan to the other players, and they determine whether it succeeds or fails. Usually it will be obvious whether it works or not, but sometimes players will come up with an elaborate plan and certain factors will have to be discussed: the conductivity of rope, or the likelihood that arrows can pierce a fridge, and so on. This is a lot of fun.

Defeat all the security and get the loot; first player to three loots wins.

This past week saw a lot of changes to the game - a rebirth of sorts. I had been developing the game with a map and a cop, what I refer to as a spatial element, which ideally adds a new depth of strategy and timing to the game: can I get to the loot before the cop reaches my building and arrests me, can I afford to use my dynamite and raise the alarm level of my building or should I play it safe and be quiet, etc. This never really flowed smoothly: the cop was too powerful or not powerful enough, one player's turn took 30 seconds to move a few spaces on the map while another player's turn took 15 minutes, and so on. I got some strong feedback saying that these elements distracted from the core mechanic, which was strong enough to stand on its own.

The game is now a straight-forward item vs. security game, with as few distractions as possible. (It's also a lot cheaper to manufacture.) I played it three times this week, with different but slightly overlapping players, and it worked really well. A few problems were identified and possible solutions were implemented. Playing it three nights in a row was very helpful, as potential solutions to recently discovered problems could be tried pretty much immediately.

Before I go into some of the backend stuff, let me describe some of the fun situations that arose during play. The best break in was Paul's defeat of the Room full of Snakes. He had a riot shield, rags, a five-pound sledge and an oxygen tank. He used the rags to tie the oxygen tank to the riot shield, put the shield on the floor and got on it, then used the sledge to knock of the top of the tank to propel himself across the room, smooshing the snakes in the way. It was dangerous, but too much fun to deny and everyone agreed it worked no problem. During the next game, I had a tough time getting across the Pit full of Spikes. My plan was to throw my pieces of raw meat onto the spikes and then freeze the meat using my ice gun, thereby creating a lilypad like path across the spikes. Also I was wearing a bear costume for some reason. Nobody bought it and I failed. I was surprised by a result from the third game: Harrison faced a state of the art alarm system, and created a card saying Space Lasers. I figured that would work no problem, but the others determined that Space Lasers were too imprecise to target just the control panel and not the entire building. I was outnumbered and had to agree.

Over the course of the three game, a few problems were identified:

- Initially we tried a one-security-card-per-turn rule, which made the pace of the game really good, but we determined that there is a disadvantage to defeating the second last security card in a building, since subsequent players could then potentially defeat the last one and grab the loot. Then we tried with a face-as-many-security-cards-per-turn-as-you-want-until-you-fail rule, which was okay in terms of strategy, but really increased turn length and down-time. For the next game I'll try something in the middle: you can face 2 or 3 cards in a round, and you get that ability either from a card drawn randomly, or some other mechanic.

- What happens if you have the last building left and it's your turn? You can't break into your own building, obviously. That situation didn't come up, but it will, and so to combat that next time I'll try this: when your building is looted, simply draw a new security hand. To complement that rule, I'll reduce the number of security cards in each building, meaning more loot will be taken overall, which is a good thing.

- Peter observed that he wanted more turnover in the items. He felt he was stuck with some not-so-useful items and wanted to replace them with new cards. I'm not sure what to do here but I have a few ideas. One is to discard all items you use 

an redraw up to five every turn, which would increase item turnover greatly, but that interferes with the Getting Arrested rule, which says that when you fail a break in, you must discard all items you used. So that one still needs some work.

Thanks for reading! Let me know if you have any questions about the game, and if you have any ideas about how to address these problems I'd love to hear them.

Weekly Playtesting Session

I'm going to start a weekly playtesting session, every Thursday at 7:30 at my house. If you're in the Halifax area and are interested in the game I'm working on, or are looking for a fun new board and card game to try, drop me a line and join in. You can reach me at: organicgames at gmail dot com.

I'll also be posting some session recaps here, so you can follow along with the development of the game.

You can also take a look at the Facebook event here.

Sam

Map tiles!

I got the first printed set of map tiles! They look great. Finally something solid I can hold and play with and experiment on. My graphic designer brought them over on the weekend, totally unexpectedly. I was hoping for new photoshop images or something, but he went ahead and printed them off on good mat board, plus he made a box for the whole thing! (If he had sent me the draft images I would have caught the glaring spelling error, but that is easily forgiven.)

Anyway, take a look and let me know what you think.

The next problem is this: how can I arrange the map so that the buildings connect up nicely, without any distracting abrupt edges, yet keep the layout of the building random so that each game is unique. I've got a couple ideas and I'll blog about them next time.

Check out facebook.com/organicgames!

The Facebook Page

I made a little Facebook page for Thief. One of those annoying posts that you can "Like", which will then spam you with irrelevant jabber on the minutiae of one crazy person's life. Come on and sign up!

Lots of new Developments!

I've been working with a graphic designer for the last few weeks and I've now got some mockups for the card and map tile designs. They look great! I'm not ready to post them here yet though.

I'm reworking the map design to make the buildings line up more, which will means the city has more twists and turns to make it more interesting. The cop has a harder time moving through it. The cop moves more often now, whenever an alarm is set off. Players are going to set off alarms all the time if they're not careful, so there is a strong incentive to do things as sneakily and quietly as possible.

Furthermore, players no longer have the ability to create new cards all willy-nilly. There is a resource management element to the game now, meaning players will have to make decisions about when to create new cards and what kind to create. Someone who makes wise decisions will definitely have an advantage.

The long and short of it is that Thief is now more game-like. It's not just a hilarious romp through a bizarre series of obstacles. This is good!