Tag Archives: expansion

Cucumber Pun Pack

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Post by: Grant Rodiek

My desk, at work, is in the middle of a way over-crowded collection of producers, designers, a QA tester, and some engineers. At first we scoffed at how cozy it was, but now many of us have grown quite fond of the close quarters. We’ve developed this barracks mentality where the humor is constant and makes working fun. We jokingly refer to this little area as the “Prod Hole” (Prod as in Producer).

I don’t know how it came about, but a producer mentioned Farmageddon and I was telling him about the new FrankenCrops. Now, the topic of puns is like candy to weird people and another co-worker tossed out “Cucumbear.” Like, a cucumber that’s also a bear. This cracked me up and I suggested we make a Cucumber Pun Pack for Farmageddon.

It actually isn’t a bad idea.

We immediately started listing the good ones. We took it with us to a meeting and even our VP started chiming in. Then I tossed it on Twitter and my friends there started chiming in. I thought I’d share some of my favorites. It’s funny how many of us arrived at the same conclusion independently. Great minds think alike? Or perhaps idiots all think the same stupid joke is funny?

  • Cucumbear – Rawr!
  • Cucumbare – Imagine a naked, shamed Cucumber.
  • Cucumbarista – Get caffeinated!
  • Cucumberto – The Cucumber from south of the border?
  • Cucumberry  – Refreshing.
  • Cucumbarry Manilow
  • Cucumbarry White – Ladies….
  • Cucumbarry Bonds – With small berries.
  • Queuecumber – This one kills me. From Couple vs Cardboard.
  • Cucumbrrr – The Arctic Cucumber. From Danny Devine.
  • Cucumbawhumba – He gets knocked down, but he gets up again. From Danny Devine.
  • MooCumber – Why by the cow when the milk is pickled? From Mark Wallace.
  • Cucumberbund – For those fancy evenings. From Mark Wallace.
  • Cucumpatriots – Witty!
  • Cucumpair – Why settle for just one?
  • Cucumpear – Fruit puns.
  • Cucumburr – Like, a burr under your saddle. From Couple vs Cardboard.
  • Cucumbro – Totally.
  • Cucumburt Reynolds – MY FAVORITE.
  • Cucumbrella – Ella, eh, eh, eh, under my cucumbrella, ella, ella…
  • Cucumbersome – Why bother?
  • Cucumburrito – Actually, not a bad idea.
  • Cucumbird – Caw!
  • Cucumburger – Also not a bad idea.
  • Cucumbeware – Danger.
  • Coupcumber – SUPER clever. From Adam Buckingham.
  • Cucumburglar – He’ll steal your flavor! From TC Petty III.
  • Cucumbert and Cucumbernie – This is just genius. From AJ Porfirio.

Note: If I didn’t credit you, it’s because we already came up with it here, or I forgot.

Thanks for participating. It was fun and honestly, I’d love to make this expansion.

Your Variance is Showing

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Post by: Grant Rodiek

Quick Note: Last year I observed many of my blog posts were overly specific about my games. Many of my posts were very specific and assumed a great deal of previous knowledge on the reader’s part. As a result, unless you’d read everything on the topic, a blog post would often feel like jumping in the middle of the season of Game of Thrones. Huh? What the heck is happening?

As a result, I’ve tried to broaden my topics and write about my games as examples for a broader subject, not THE subject. This means I need to wait until an idea hits that I can turn into a larger topic, but hopefully it’s working for you readers.

Let’s talk about variants. 

What is a variant? I shall define a variant loosely as a minor rule change that seeks to modify an experience without a significant variance in overall experience or components. That definition is already suspect as a.) I just made it up and b.) I used words like “minor” and “significant.”

Typically, I’m actually against variants. If I’ve ever read one of your rule sets, you can attest to me leaving feedback to ditch the variant and focus. Variants to me often feel like half baked ideas. They feel like concepts that weren’t good enough to officially add to the game, but were a pet of the designer and snuck into the final rules.

My general philosophy is that a game should have everything it needs: no more, no less. I’m hugely in favor of expansions, so I’m a big proponent of designing games with natural paths to expansion. Expansions are a good way to add additional content, new strategic layers, or even additional complexity that experienced players can appreciate. But, I feel like expansions come later in the life cycle once a game has matured and is needed by its loyal players.

Variants typically ship with the game, in the rules, and have a fuzzy vibe of official about them. Why is this here?

Variants feel like uncertain twists. Instead of draft 1 and pass, you draft 1, keep 1, and pass. Instead of winning the game with 15 points, you instead win when all of your cities are level 4. The thing is, when I see little twists like this, the first thing in my mind is “well, which is it?” I don’t really want to feel like I’m beta testing a final game. I don’t want to find the best way to play. My hope is that you, the designer/publisher/developers have already determined that for me. Tell me how to play. Don’t give me a buffet here.

I approach variants much like I approach mods in PC gaming or house ruling — I don’t want to do it. I just want the right game, the perfect edition, and I will love it to death. Therefore, it may just be a matter of preference?

Should you vary? 

Variants are very appealing as a designer. They give you a community approved outlet to toss in a few things that you think may be better or just happen to personally prefer. But, approach them with caution. Game design is ridiculously difficult. The long-term development process of testing out every rule, every card, every variable, and every player number is very thorough and trying. You need to test your final rule set so many times to find every hole, imbalance, king making opportunity, and exploit. You need to test your final rule set to squeeze every ounce of fun into the game. Time you spend testing variants is time that detracts from making that single, perfect experience.

As learning designers, something I consider myself to be, we must challenge ourselves to create beautiful experiences. To do that, we must focus, refine, test, and be incredibly clever and creative. Use variants to test and find the right solution — don’t stick to the first one that seems to work. But, don’t use variants as a crutch to be indecisive. Don’t use variants as a way to pad your game content.

One of the best places to vary is for player numbers. It is often very difficult to make a game work with 2, 3, 4, and 5 players. Don’t be afraid to add rules tweaks, within reason, to make the different numbers work better.

The Wozzle Variety

Now, to go against everything I just wrote, I’m going to talk about how I’m including variants in Wozzle. Wozzle is my 2-5 player card game that takes some of the core elements of Texas Hold ‘Em Poker and twists and refines them to become and entirely new game. I’m pretty proud of it and it has been testing quite well. You can watch my short video walk through of the game here.

The first variant for Wozzle came about when we began testing a card that every player started the game with. It gave them a one-time use power. The card is relatively simple and it was testing well, but it had a few problems that made me question it as a core aspect of the game:

  • By giving players a starting card, it added an additional thing to learn when playing.
  • It’s an advanced card for players who really know the game.
  • It’s a card that doesn’t get played in every game. It can have a narrow use.

I removed it from some of my tests to streamline them and found that it wasn’t hurting the experience with its absence. Then, I tested it with and spoke to my development partner — it still had value. We decided to make it a variant. This then opened the door for additional variants that use this system of everyone begins the game with 1 card of the same type. We added a second one, specifically to make 5 player games more interesting. In a sense, it’s like a minor expansion that adds just a few cards and light gameplay.

The game also needed some light modifications for both 2 player and 5 player. Due to the economy mechanics, the game absolutely needed a way to slightly tweak the 2 player game to work better. It’s a minor twist and easy to learn. The 5 player tweak was trickier. With 5 players, it’s easier for some players to get left behind and feel like they are out of the game. If everyone is winning, the game can also take a little bit longer. The solution was to add a minor way for players to win points, even when they don’t win.

With 2 player, one blind playtester, the excellent Robin Lees, noted he missed a poker mechanic in Wozzle, especially in head to head games. We discussed it and ultimately came up with a solution that we’re now testing. It adds a single card, which contains one minor rule that works within the game’s framework. As of now I’m worried about the complexity it adds, so I’m tentatively treating it as an advanced variant. But who knows? It could make its way into the 2 player core rules.

The Lesson?

Really, there is no right way or wrong way. I think focus is important. I think you need to create the best, single, perfect rule set for your players. But, some games lend themselves better to micro expansions and variants to tweak complexity and provide different experiences. This works really well for Wozzle and in some ways makes it a bit of a sandbox for me in Wozzle. But, the idea of adding variants for York, Sol Rising, or even Farmageddon just doesn’t seem appropriate.

What are some of your favorite variants? Which games do it right? Tell me in the comments below!

Expansion Design, with a Case Study

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Post by: Grant Rodiek

Today, I shall be discussing two things very near and dear to my heart and related such that pairing them in a single article just made sense. Today, we shall discuss expansion design and use the impending Livestocked and Loaded as a case study.

For those curious, Livestocked and Loaded is art complete. The final file preparations are taking place and we’re perusing the rules and cards for final edits, typos, and clarity. It shall be sent to the printer shortly.

Expansions, Generally Speaking

I’m a massive fan of game expansions for many reasons. For publishers, they offer an additional revenue source for an existing product and fan base that is less risky than creating an entirely new game. Expansions give fans so inclined additional content and mechanics at a (typically) lower price point. Finally, expansions provide designers a reasonable opportunity to expand an experience they love with meaningful, substantive additions.

A good expansion should not alter the core experience of the base game. If your game has a 5 step turn structure, you shouldn’t re-arrange the steps or add a 6th without a really good reason. Remember, players will need to learn the expansion. Don’t make them unwind and re-learn the base game as well!

A good expansion should offer new strategies and experiences to the players. New paths should be revealed to players. A good expansion does more than just offer more stuff. Adding new Action cards alone isn’t sufficient. Keep in mind that you shouldn’t use an expansion to add in the kitchen sink. If it was removed from the base game because it wasn’t good enough or didn’t fit, be sure to run that same check past it during the expansion.

A good expansion should fill in gaps, holes, or resolve minor issues with the original game. Ideally, your game didn’t ship with dead ends and gross imbalance. The expansion isn’t a patch, but a smoother.

A good expansion should bring people back to the base game, liven it up, and make them fall in love again. Typically, a small percentage of the people who bought the base game will purchase the base game. Let’s say 20-40%. That means you can, with reasonable safety, assume those who buy your expansion really enjoy your base game, or like it enough that they think it’ll be great with one more twist.

A good expansion integrates as smoothly into the base game as possible. People shouldn’t be scratching their heads as they figure out how to snap the new module into the original game. Just because you’re dealing with experienced players doesn’t mean you should set accessibility and a smooth learning curve aside.

Some of my favorite expansions include Kaispeicher for The Speicherstadt, the X-Wing Miniatures ships, Memoir ’44‘s expansions, and Summoner Wars. I own others, but I haven’t played them, or not enough, to list them.

Now, let’s apply these things to my design of Livestocked and Loaded. 

I was originally fairly apprehensive about creating the expansion. I knew I could create one and that the base game could support it, but we didn’t begin our Kickstarter with an expansion in mind. Now that the expansion is almost finished, I’m really glad it exists. I really enjoy the layers it adds to the original experience and it’ll be launched to a game that has sold pretty dang well for a new, tiny publisher.

When I began work on L&L, I set out to use Weather and Livestock as primary components, purely because they are rich reservoirs of content and mechanical inspiration. They also fit some of my mechanical goals for the game.

The art for one of the weather cards.

Weather: I made the assumption that by the time people received the expansion, they would need some new spice to liven up the experience. Weather could serve as this spice, just like it does for farmers in real life. However, unlike real weather, I deliberately set out to make the Weather present more of an opportunity (most often) than an unexpected penalty.

My friend, Cole Medeiros, designed Gubs: A Game of Wit and Luck, published by Gamewright. Event cards are a big part of that experience. They are drawn and, more often than not, they greatly alter the state of the game. While they work for Gubs, I didn’t want to introduce more chaos into Farmageddon. There are 10 Weather cards in the expansion. Every game, you randomly select 5 and seed them approximately evenly throughout the Crop deck. When drawn, they present an opportunity or something to shift the game.

Two examples:

  1. One card lets every player draw an Action card. Then, in order, the players must play them if possible.
  2. Another card lets every player immediately fertilize and harvest any crops in front of them.

Livestock: Farmageddon is a very tactical game. You’re rarely planning more than 2 turns in advance, though careful management of your Actions and Crop cards will be the element that mitigates the luck and leads you to victory. I saw an opportunity to introduce more strategy and long-term planning to the game without sacrificing what makes the original fun.

Oola von Heifer, the $20 animal.

There are now four animals, which are played in the center near the unclaimed fields. They are worth $5, $10, $15, and $20 respectively, which makes the $20 animal the single most valuable card in the game (Wary Squash is worth $15).

To interact with the animals, I added a new activity players can take on their turns: feeding. Any planted crop a player controls can be fed to one of the four animals. The crop is then destroyed and one of 6 feed cards are played to the fed animal. This makes the Sassy Wheat crop far more valuable. It will now be a great Fertilizer and a great Feed crop!

When fed, all of the animals, except the $20 animal, offer a powerful ability. These help you mitigate luck and pursue new strategies. The abilities are:

  • Draw 2 Crop cards
  • You may play a 3rd Action card during the current turn
  • You may discard any number of your Action cards face down into your Harvest pile. They are worth $1 at the end of the game.

In the base game, players should always play two Action cards per turn. If you aren’t using them, you are missing out on the fun and you’ll let your opponents run wild. However, there are some cases where one might have excess cards. Now, you can feed an animal to dump those cards for bonus points. I’ve seen someone use that ability brilliantly to win the game.

Sauce the Pig

The Feed cards will slowly add up to the animals over the course of the game. The player with the most feed cards on an animal will win it and its points at the end of the game. This means players need to carefully balance opportunities in planting and livestock. It adds quite a bit to the experience.

Naturally, as the game has added a new feature (livestock), I knew it would need new Action cards to take advantage of this. I began the game with 6 Action cards, but ultimately whittled this down to 3 Cards.

  • The Blue Ribbon: This can be played to any animal to permanently increase its value by $5. This is a very powerful card.
  • The Corgalohts: This lets you move an opponent’s Feed OR remove a feed of yours from an animal. This is useful for obvious reasons. But, if you don’t have any feed, you can’t feed animals. You can use this card to remove a feed from an animal that is a lost cause, re-feed, get to use the bonus ability, and vie for another animal.
  • Farmer’s Market: This card exists to let you mitigate the luck of the draw of Action cards. If you’re pursuing a crop-focused strategy, you don’t need a Corgalohts, for example. With Farmer’s Market, you draw 4 Action cards, pick one, and discard the rest. This has the side effect of letting you get rid of cards you don’t want in play.

Some Challenges with L&L

Remember when I said you shouldn’t alter the core experience with your expansion? Originally, the Animal related Action cards and Weather cards were unique decks. There were also new choices and turn choices related to using them. A friend of mine and long-term Farmageddon tester said “NO.” He reminded me that the game had a nice rhythm of draw crops, do stuff, draw Actions to end. This was a good reminder. As a result, the Actions are now just Actions and the Weather cards are a part of the Crop deck.

Balancing the power of the abilities with the value of the Animals was a big problem that was thankfully easy to solve. Early on, all four animals had really good abilities. My testers noted that it always made the best sense to just feed the most valuable animal. To spice things up, I made it such that the least valuable animal had the best ability. Furthermore, the most valuable animal had no ability. Want to win that Cow? Go ahead. You won’t get any bonuses on the way.

I’ve learned a great deal since I created Farmageddon. One of which is creating more systematic cards with fewer exceptions. At times, it was challenging to introduce Weather cards, new FrankenCrops, Animals, and new Action cards that played nice with everything in the original. Were I to do it all over, there are definitely some terms and cards I’d revise to work better. Don’t worry — we already have an FAQ prepped for the 1 or 2 cases that may cause confusion. Otherwise, we’ve worked really hard to make this smooth and clear.

Finally, as you read above, the game had 6 Action cards at one point. Originally, all of the cards had incredibly narrow, focused utility. I had forgotten that one of the things that makes Farmageddon fun is how so many of the Action cards pair well with each other or have varying utility in different situations. By refining and massaging the cards, I added 3 cards that all need to be in the game and really make it better.

Ending Thoughts

What do you think makes a good expansion? What are some of your favorites? Any questions on the Farmageddon expansion, Livestocked and Loaded?