Hey there Cardfolk, Speedrobo here. Over the next few weeks I’ll be talking about the development of our new board game, “Eat Putin!” It’s a comedic board game where players take control of time traveling dinosaurs on a mission to eat Putin and save the future. In these articles, I’ll describe the thought process that goes into developing a game like this.
The initial play mechanics were presented to me by the game’s producer, “Torch”. He said that he wanted the game to be about players moving around a game map trying to chase down Putin. To me, this instantly made me know what the core game mechanics would involve. I knew to invoke that feeling I would need to make pieces that players could move. I would also need to make a piece for Putin that the game itself could automatically move. Therefore, going with a grid and using cardinal directions was the obvious method that would be easy for players of all skill levels to pick up on.
I also knew from the outset that Putin’s movement would have to be determined by a deck of cards. At the end of each turn, simply flip over the top card and move Putin as the card describes. This allows for random movement that is clear and easy to execute, while allowing for other more interesting effects. Dice could have been used for movement, but then the interesting effects would not be able to be applied in the Putin deck. Of course, special die faces or number combination rules could have been created. However, if I did go this route it would hurt the game’s ease of learning as it’s more terms, rules, and symbols for players to learn and memorize. Going the card route I feel is the best choice.
The next order of business in the core design was figuring out how players would move. If Putin was going to use a deck of cards, why shouldn’t the players? This would make things consistent across the game. In addition, this allows me to play into my design strengths. This is my first time designing a board game like this, as my experience lies in the realm of card games. Originally, I had a central player deck that all players drew from. However, “Torch” recommended that I make a deck for each unique dinosaur faction and implement a distinct playstyle for each team of agents. Once again, this helped me play to my game design strengths.
I settled on these playstyles for the factions due to how the game’s core mechanics worked. As with all games, I wanted a mix of playstyles so that players could take advantage of the mechanics they found interesting. Therefore, I wanted one movement based team that focused on team movement, one movement based team that focused on solo movement, one team that focused on controlling the movement of other players, and one team that focused on controlling the movement of Putin.
That’s all for this Dev Log. I plan to be writing more in the future. In the next one, I will go over the early card design and the changes that we have made due to play testing feedback. Hopefully the next article will give insight into how I listen to and adjust games around player feedback.
Thanks! And don’t forget to check out our pre-launch page on Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1557798155/eat-putin-comedic-board-game