BCM 300: Cosmic Mercenaries Dossier
Introduction
The design has a few design goals in mind; replayability and unique playthroughs in a limited materiality box, create a game that can be competitive with lots of strategy and choice involved and nuance in each decision, and a game that can still be accessible for someone who doesn’t have a lot of experience in boardgames.
Early Draft Map and setup
These elements are obviously very contrasting and perhaps even contradicting. For example the limited materiality and large amount of replayability; not including the difference in moves each game like a chess match for example, but the characters and what those characters can do and the very map they are on are all designed for an essence of randomness, more akin to a procedural generation than a true random, ensuring that when players begin that no two games will be the same, which has become a bit of a redundant catchphrase, but more than focussing on the statistical number differences that means no two games will be the same, I wanted to create games where they didn’t ‘feel’ the same.
This was attempted to be done by ensuring players have a very obvious and large goal as to the victory condition, but left it open as to the methods of that victory. Perhaps their crew is built to go in guns blazing storming through walls and doors in a slapdash run; perhaps they are more coordinated using careful planning to minimise risk to themselves; maybe the crew is completely unique and have ways avoiding combat altogether. The game is designed to reward experimenting with a wide range of abilities and effects to create a playstyle all their own. This is why the drafting stage (which will be elaborated on later) gives players a limited choice, giving players a sense of control and agency, while not letting their own inhibitions and preconceptions shackle their own sense of experimentation.
The game in this replayability relies on a sense of randomness, dice rolls and card draws that tend to be seen in a negative light when viewed from a competitive players stand point, competitive players in any game look for reliability more than anything. Winning by one point 90% of the time is better than winning by 100 points half the time. Where this is curtailed and managed in this system is a kind of limited probability in that players still have control during those random events, or in the chaos phase, an ability to see how that chaos phase may go based on the environment; so it never feels like a truly random event, and that the player could of seen that coming.
The other way the competitiveness and replayability is managed is the random elements are never interfering with the players action directly, the player never has a moment of rolling a dice and getting too low of a number, direct actions are all static numbers and perfectly predictable, but instead these random elements affect the game board, allowing players the freedom to circumnavigate this dangerous environment how they see fit. Having this chaos phase is a key element to allowing the game to be different every time, but without having to rely on elements that negatively affect the individual player experience in terms of control and agency.
Box with all the prototype pieces and cards.
The other aspect of the game is accessibility, part of this accessibility will be through the material inclusion of the game screens, functioning as a propellant of some of the games features inspired from hidden movement games and hidden agenda games, and hiding the cards the player has in hand at the beginning of the rounds, which will have a cheat sheet on how to play on the inside. The other way accessibility has been maximised is the game uses really simple maths, only adding or subtracting numbers as they appear, with little reliance on modifiers and other mathematical tricks to convey depth. And finally all numbers on each character can be represented by a simple d6 die, making tracking Action Points and Health Points easy with multiple characters with materials provided by the game.
What is the game?
These are all the mechanical elements that was kept in mind when creating this project, and do provide a cohesive interplay of systems that ensures the replayability and competitiveness that the game can present. But the way these systems express the theme and narrative the game is trying to explore also ties well with the systems chosen.
The theme is about a crew of mercenaries and salvagers at the edge of space, trying to get paid, but also not die. You are a cog in the machine of the larger mega corporation Finnegan’s Beer™ and just like your crew, you are expendable. Games are rife with high damage and quick firefights, that ensures that your game can be over in a flash, but these mercenaries really are a dime a dozen, for every Fired Tax Accountant and Mechsecutive that made a bad decision and ends up as a mercenary, there is another around the corner waiting to take their place.
The randomness and chaotic nature means as the board shifts and moves, representing the shipwreck being torn apart, that it means this unpredictability could mean your mission is over straight away, but again you have reinforcements on the way to replace any casualties. The game is tight and controlled with a frantic pace, almost a volley between players in tennis, it is a consistent and fast paced back and forth, with the chaos phase ironically being a time of peace for players to rethink, and maybe pray that the ship bends fortune back into favour for them.
All of this happens as the ship slowly careens to the Event Horizon of the Black Hole ‘Xibalba III’ and eventually succumbs to its fate.
This all fits neatly in an emergent player narrative of rising chaos as events slowly unfold, at an exponentially more chaotic and dangerous rate. Opening a 3 act structure of exploration and discovery, struggle and conflict, and finally panic and survival.
Design Process
The game actually began as two separate games, one based on the system of a shifting board map, and the other on the card drafting hero builder. But eventually the two thoughts were collated into one; the drafting aspect was heavily inspired from custom game mode in Dota 2, called Custom Hero Chaos. The game used the cards less as the central mechanic and as the mechanic characters were built. Cards was chosen so that the game was light on rules and pre reading, and gave a sense of intuitiveness to the overall gameplay by allowing people to directly see the effects in front of them, instead of front loading all the information in rulebooks, and allowing exploration of new mechanics to become more organic.
The second game it started as was a simple treasure hunt movement game, with a shifting map like an older game called Labyrinth. The core of the game was getting a team safely out of the map. This game was extremely simple in terms of supporting systems, and mostly revolved around this moving map mechanic. The game theme was interesting as a mechanic, but due to the player interaction with this mechanic being limited, it almost felt like it would be better suited to a supporting system in another game.
And so I began collating the two projects together, which wasn’t difficult as both games were similar in theme. Using google sheets and adobe InDesign to create the cards, I created a simple Print and Play version to place on a group feedback document, which was read through and given feedback on by a couple of students, mostly based around the idea of clarifying the rules in a clearer and better organised manner. I will suggest if you want to follow the design process and original games used as inspiration to follow my other blog posts Here, and Here
Viability of the product
Using Boardgames Maker as a production agency for this product, and using kickstarter is a exceptionally viable way of making and selling this product. A run of 500 games would cost $33,015 to create, averaging $66.03 per unit; seeing games of similar size and qualities are funded on kickstarter for a minimum of $50,000 this game has a huge availability to be marketed. Again looking at games of similar size and qualities, the game could reasonably be sold for $80 a unit (for any that aren’t done through preorders on Kickstarter) the game has a huge potential reach.
The game also has the potential to appeal to the miniatures crowd of people interested in board games, as frequently these Kickstarter projects appear to be a collection of big boxes of plastic miniatures; and when you look at the highest funded and most successful kickstarters in boardgames, there does definitely appear to be a trend of more plastic, more money. That being said, while that potential is there, it is far from a priority, and if anything would be a interesting expansion option for higher pledges, as the game keeping it’s base cost down means it is far more likely to recoup the investment.
A smaller whats in the box than its mile long spread
Galactic Era
This kickstarter project was unsuccessful, and looking through the Kickstarter page I can see a very clear potential reason why. The game appears very, very convoluted, my background in graphic design taught me an important lesson that was intended for websites, but I believe is heavily applicable to everything else, “Don’t put stuff you want people to see below the Fold line” being the first bit of a design you see. In this case, just the picture showing off all the bits of paper and plastic that are in the box, as opposed to the game you play with those bits of plastic, doesn’t actually appear until 5 ‘Folds-worth’ of webpage down.
The game seems to have a very similar design, with a rules explanation video that takes 50 minutes, combined with the fact the game seems to have a relatively high cost to buy, I personally don’t feel compelled to pledge to this game. That being said the game wasn’t far from being funded, and obviously has some potential; and shows that the theme of space and the customisation of the players (one of the features I picked up from here is that players can customise their faction to how they want).
Reading the comments section revealed a few major points of contention that were mentioned by potential backers. The game was expensive for the lack of miniatures, being a $150 game people really felt they weren’t getting the quality of art and components for a game of that price. Apparently the designer had some interesting political beliefs that were included in the game, I wasn’t able to find exactly what this entailed, but to be honest I was a little too scared to dig properly for it.
Cosmic Run
Cosmic Run Box Preview
This one is quite interesting, with a similar if more serious theme, and a similar goal for backing. There isn’t anything hugely obvious to me in terms of why this game wasn’t able to be funded, but scrolling through the comment section revealed a few things. One was that Kickstarter apparently didn’t send out a 48 hour reminder for people who had saved the project; developing a transmedia campaign and focussing a lot of diversifying the advertising would help mitigate this. Another major aspect I noticed was that the game seemed to mostly support shipping within North America and excluded the markets of Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa; in the case of Europe this is obviously a huge market limitation, and combined with the limitation from other continents this becomes a huge issue.
Wreck and Ruin
Example of play in Wreck and Ruin, has similar combat style.
This game is also quite interesting as a case study as the game has similar combat pacing and a similar price for the full package, even if this game has a different theme and the mechanics are also similar but still very different in focus. Where this game seems to have failed seems to mostly to do with the window the game was marketed, and to the diversity of audience. The game seems to have had a pretty big presence in local conventions in England, but didn’t seem to broaden it’s marketing to an international audience, a shame considering the huge reach the platform enables. The other aspect is the game was looking to be backed when another huge game of similar fast paced combat, Batman, was being released, so amid the competing games, and the similar audience of these two games would of had a detriment to other Backers.
Bristol 1350
First thing that stands out about this project in comparison to the others is the quality of the material components. It looks highly polished and the presentation on Kickstarter is equally sleek, succinct and polished. The gameplay itself is quite simple as well, and it is definitely a simple project without complicated systems, but is extremely elegant in design. I think the art style lends itself hugely to the project’s success.
Expandability
My final bit I would like to say before my conclusion is this game as a system has a lot of room for expansions, in the more mundane booster kind with new cards to play around with in combination with whats already included, but also asymmetrical dungeonmaster like expansions where one player can control a larger but individually weaker force against a team of players; and expansion introducing ship combat and customisation. Environmental hazards such as Rogue Ai, Alien Invasions, or even Walking Dead. The game is mostly just a strong engine of character decision and drafting with a simple combat and movement system, and then set on a game world involving a decaying ship and combat.
Inside view of player screen
Outside view of player screen
Conclusion
The individual project has definitely become a passion project of mine, and this subject has really lit a fire to explore the medium of board game design on a self directed basis. I’ve got a decent list of board game ideas but of all of them, including the Horrors From Beyond one, I feel most strongly towards Cosmic Mercenaries: Event Horizon (even if not the name) the most. I feel the game, could definitely do with playtesting and balancing, as I tried to mentally playthrough the game as much as I could to make sure that there was no overwhelmingly unfun elements in the game, and tried to imbue the player with as much freedom and agency to discover their own counters and playstyles.
One major aspect I wanted to make accessible for this game was the fact I knew someone that likes these types of boardgames, but struggling with a learning disability, felt anxious towards understanding the over abundance of keywords to remember, and mathematics needed to engage and have fun with a game like this; which made learning the game a chore in of itself, let alone be able to comfortably engage with a game during play. Games like Dnd, Warhammer, as a dominant force in the market, always seemed to rely heavily on having certain stats provide a certain bonus to a dice roll if certain conditions were met, and this complication really turned away a large number of people.
That was why I made the game with as few numbers and as few keywords to remember as possible; one number minus another number, gives you your result. Numbers are all tracked via Dice, or Tokens, and so minimises bookkeeping during play; and this goal to minimise bookkeeping is why the game revolves so heavily on a drafting cards mechanic. These cards give the players their abilities, but not being pressured to read a card quickly as you pick it up, only read it once or twice at the beginning of a round, lightens the pressure for games that struggle with these elements in card and board games.
References
Jones, C, 2019 “Galactic Era. Kickstarter” Seajay Games, accessed via: Here
Finn, S, 2019 “Cosmic Run: Mining Colony” Dr. Finns Games, accessed via: Here
McKinnon, M, 2018 “Wreck and Ruin” Dream Big Games, accessed via: Here
Hancock, T, 2020 “Bristol 1350” Facade Games, accessed via: Here
Shut Up & Sit Down 2016- Present “About a million Shut Up & Sit Down Reviews”Youtube Channel, accessed via: Here
The Road ahead
This game is definitely going to be continued after this class, and I will be leaving the Print & Play drive open for people to playtest, and provide feedback. In the meantime, I am going to be doing my own art to get enough together to show for a potential kickstarter.
Ultimately this is definitely a project that I will be balancing and proceeding onward with; and I invite people to join in.
Google Drive Link: Here
mooshbag 