How to name your game!

When you design a game you face many challenged from the very beginning to the very end. You struggle to find out a good and interesting mechanic that offers something new to the players, you work hard to prepare a fitting theme and figure out the look and feel for your game. You spend countless hours testing your game, circling ideas and iterations to smooth it and perfect its core. There is so much to do and so much to take into consideration, it’s amazing that a single person can handle it! However in such a multitude of tasks, where all are equally important, some things tend to slip away if we don’t steel ourselves with rigour and good planning.

And one of such important thing is the game name.

Yes, as trifle as it seems, game name is hugely important and even long-lived, respected publishers tend to slip on time to time here. And we, beginners on the field of game design, can always fall into a trap with game naming. In fact, we here at Rombo Games know this from our own mistakes, since our kickstarter project – Publish or Perish – did not work out so well, and the name of the game was one of its problems! We learnt late into the campaign that the game seemed too aggressive and competitive for a cooperative game for families and kids, that it was too exclusive in its meaning, restricted mostly to the members of the Academia to see and enjoy the reference. Simply put, we tripped on the basic thing like the game name! Now we ensure proper, deeper research before settling down with a game name.

So what you can do to ensure that your game name works just fine? Well, we are not going to claim that we are big time experts on this, but we learnt and observed the trends... And we believe we can share a few handy tips. Here we go:

Quadropolis title is a great example of an unique yet straightforward title!

-        >>>  Unique and not generic. This one is both the key and the biggest struggle in finding a suitable game name. Tom Vasel said once that the titles of the greatest games yet to come are not taken yet, and that is obviously correct. When you pick up a game you have to ensure that no one else claimed it… And that goes beyond browsing Board Game Geek search. Mostly because you would like to be sure that your game name is not used in a video game or any other popular product! Why? Well, to promote your game you want it to be on top of the search engines listing, and if it happens that a similar or same name is used in a different, more popular product, you’re royally screwed.

Blood Rage. Simple, clean, easy to remember and spell out. Great title.

-       >>>  Simple and easy. Okay. Here we are getting slightly mixed up… So, we need a name that is unique and yet it have to be easy and simple? Well, it is important due to the simple fact of human nature and accessibility to information. Word of mouth is a big marketing thing in the boardgame community, and if you made your game name hard to spell or type down quickly, you’re making it hard for your potential customers to find you, and I hope I don’t have to explain why that is a very bad thing. Avoid stuff like replacing ‘I’ with ‘y’ because it looks cooler. Avoid unreadable fonts and big, robust names. Avoid made-up words as much as you can, and if you do need them, make them nice and simple, and easy on the tongue.

Food Chain Magnate - the title is as clear as it can be. You know what the game is about already.

-       >>> Theme fitting. This one should be obvious! Your name should give people idea what the game is about even if all they will know about it is the title alone. When you hear ‘Robinson Crusoe’ you will get the idea of the theme – lonely island, survival and so on. When you read ‘Power Grid’ it might not tell you that it is an auction game, but you will get the notion it have something to do with the electricity and infrastructure of providing it. Keep that in mind when naming your games – the biggest package of ideas you can put into it that fit your game, the better.

Patchwork simply works - it's short, to the point and fit the theme with a tight knit!

-         >>> Short and with no subtitle. Simple enough, really. If you are a boardgamer, and we believe we all are here, you know how we tend to shorten the names when talking about them. I know of no person who says “Let’s play Settlers of Catan!” but I will hear “Let’s play Settlers.” Because everyone will know which game it is. Same with Ticket to Ride, to give another example. People don’t play Magic: The Gathering, but simply Magic. They don’t play Neuroshima Hex, but Hex or Neuro. There is little reason to make big names, since players will shorten them without hesitation. Same with subtitles. You know the games, like Descent: Journeys in the Dark or Ancient Aliens: Creators of Civilizations. Not only it’s huge but literally no one in entire world will ever spell the entire title, ever. Not to mention it make it looks like these are expansions, and not core games. Which is not such a good idea.

And here you have it. Hopefully with these few hints you’ll get a better idea what bad habits to avoid when figuring out a name for your projects and make it pop out from the throng! And if you think we skipped something or perhaps do not agree with the hints above, be sure to write a comments ;)

How Feedback Influences Card Design

Making games is hard. Now that I started with this delightful truism, I think we can progress onto the topic of this post, which is card design. Let us start with a few minor clarifications – I do not want to claim the title of a master in this ground, on the contrary – I am learning the whole tedium of the process along the way, finding out how it works, looking for all the details one misses during development, making iteration after iteration of every step until it clicks just right! And so, instead of the sagely approach of wisdom in this particular topic I’d rather like to guide you through the brief story of how the cards for Mishmash: Galaxy were born. Here we go!

Like any game, Mishmash started as a wild idea born… well… I can’t tell. Simply because I don’t know! It could have been a contemplative session in the meditation chamber (*aka the toilet*). It could have been a sudden stroke of enlightenment during morning ablutions. It could be anything, really. But simply on one of my team meetings disputing the progress – or rather lack of thereof! – of our other Kickstarter Project, Publish or Perish, the idea simply came to mind and was laid down with pencil on paper in the most crude and basic form.

It clicked.

It’s such a warm and invigorating feeling, isn’t it? When you feel the shape of the game in your mind, when you KNOW what you want it to be, ‘but haven’t been forced yet to cash your dreams… When you sit down to the anvil and at last hammer the rules out. But even when there was no game yet, the idea seemed fun to everyone, and further check with gamers outside our tight little circle of friends confirmed it. Jolly good!

And that, of course, was the time to start working on the cards. Too early? Perhaps… The game core mechanics were already riveted together. We knew that until testing proves it to be damaged, dull or simply lacking any spark, it is going to be set in stone. And the lessons we learned from our previous games (*like Roar!:Catch the Monster or Monsters Buffet*) did not go to waste. And one of the most crucial lessons was, that the presence is extremely important and valuable.

What do I mean by presence? Simply put, it’s how the game looks and how it feels to the player. And yes, even to the testers of the most alpha of all versions. Sure, I can test the game with crude cards and components cut by hand and printed on my trusty ol’ home printer. Sure, I can get valid feedback for how the game works and how it operates. Bah, I will even say that it’s GOOD to test a game in such a raw state, so the testers are not distracted by artwork and layout and theme and style, and so their feedback can truly focus on the mechanics and how it grinds through the game.

But good presence make games better. Sure – a beautiful game with crappy gameplay is still going to be crappy, but tell me this… When you pick a random, unknown game of a shelf at your local gaming bar or even at the shop, don’t you pick it based on how attractive and alluring the box is? How delicious the components are? I know I sure do.

And so, the evolution of cards  has begun! Below you can see the first “design” used for testing.

Word in quotes, because as you can see, it is more of a sketch, that none the less served as a firm framework for further designs, since it already established things we wanted to see on the card. The five spots for the resources. The boxes for the abilities. The score given by Technology Cards. And here came the first lesson of components design – making sure you don’t miss anything! Now, before sitting down to craft anything, we first try to make a simple list of building blocks that are necessary for players to know from the component. Name of the card, type of the card, resources it provides… All of it had to be listed and we had to ensure that everything was in place.

And that is how first proper visual design of the cards was made. This one, to be precise:

As you can see the leap in visuals is rather huge! This was the time of trying to put together everything a card needs. And once again, we learnt how little we know about the progress and how miniscule details could turn out to be of extreme importance. To name a few – how the card will work when in hand? Is the necessary information readable on first glance? Is the card going to be utterly rubbish for anyone with any sort of vision deficiency, for example for colour-blind people? All of this questions popped out during our feedback gathering and we had to sit down to the cards once more, this time making notes about all the things we have missed last time and ensure that they will be properly sorted out.

And so, the next and currently most fresh design came to life:

See the difference, eh? We didn’t just shift the colour theme entirely. We worked hard and took all feedback into consideration, to deliver cards that are not just a redesign, but an evolution of the idea. Icons were checked and double checked with the vision impairment emulators, so we could be moderately confident that information provided by a card is clear in any circumstances. Text was enlarged and so was the box for the art. Colours were put into stronger contrast, so the text is stark, sharp and clear. Icons were developed for quicker and easier identification of resources. Miniature icons bands were added to Substance cards so they are readable at glance even when fanned on the player hand – redundant as it might be, we prefer the cards to have more than enough information rather than lack it, when needed! ;)

The end result was quite satisfactory – especially, since that  all of the people that helped us shape this cards nodded their general approval in the progress! And of course, this is surely not a final card design – oh, the changes will be getting smaller and smaller, until they turn into minor polishing work on the details, but it will still take time, effort and most importantly…

Plenty of learning.

Why You NEED Reviews in Your Kickstarter Game!

Our Kickstarter campaign is slowly coming to an end. It has been an intense couple of weeks, campaigning is harder than anyone can imagine.  We have made it a point to gather as much information as possible from our backers or those who have simply seen our campaign.

The response has pointed us to the areas we were good at and and to the areas we could improve. In the following post, I will focus on one of the aspects that came up in way over half the responses we got.

If you put yourself in the shoes of a board game backer, you discover that you're looking at a couple of things in order to decide whether you want to back the game or not. One of the most important things are the reviews. 

Reviews do a couple of things for your game. First and foremost, they give you credibility. If your game has been reviewed it means it works. One of the biggest setbacks for Kickstarter campaigns is that people don't know if you can pull off creating the game after the campaign has finished. People don't like backing games that haven't actually been made yet. A review can show your future backers what stage of designing you are actually in. 

Secondly reviews give the prospective backers a feel of what the game is like. Watching someone play is never as good as trying it out yourself, but it's second best. You can make your mind up if you like the game or not, backing becomes less of a guessing game.

Thirdly, reviewers have an audience. They help you get coverage. If you get the opportunity to work with someone influential, and they like your game, that can boost your campaign to another level.

In our campaign we had a few quotes about the game from people. Someone commented that they looked fabricated (which they weren't, honest!). I guess having it on video in a third party platform is more convincing. We got a lot of requests for reviews because people didn't understand the rules. We had instructions, but a audio-visual guide is so much easier to digest. 

All in all, we highly recommend getting your game reviewed. Before the campaign and during the campaign is best. that way you can let your first backers understand the game fully, and then gather an additional audience through different bloggers.

We'll know what to do next time!

Any questions? Any ideas? Please comment below :)

Top new technologies to use in Hybrid Games

Hybrid games represent a new world of opportunities for board game designers. With the possibilities that new technologies like mobile or wearable devices - the sky is the limit. In this post we will go though the best examples or these new technologies in board games.

Some of the technologies mentioned below are already being used in board games, others aren't. The one thing we know for sure is that they are going to change the way we play forever.

No. 5: Smart mobile devices

Mobile devices have multitude of uses in enhancing board games. Most of the time they are simply a convenient way to store data or they become a game master, keeper of secrets or multimedia device that boosts immersion.

An example is XCOM: The board game. A game that uses a mobile device that plays against a cooperative team.

No. 4: Controller gadgets

Other devices and controllers have appeared after the boom of mobile phones and tablets. They are usually extensions of the functionality of mobile devices and cannot really do much without them.

Dice+ falls in this category. An electronic dice that connects to the phone and sends information about the rolls.

No. 3: iBeacons

iBeacons are another kind of device that can be used in games. In opposition to controllers like Dice+, iBeacons are passive and they  connect to mobile devices and send information about their localization. The gameplay opportunities that iBeacons offer are very distant from board games but they are still a kind of hybrid game.

There are plenty of companies building iBeacons at the moment like Estimote or Kontakt.

No. 2: Electronic Pawns

This is something completely new in the board game world. Pawns that move themselves and are able to keep track of rules of the game. They also do other fancy stuff depending of the model.

You can check out the ePawn for example. They are trying to kickstart themselves this very moment :)

No.1 1: Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality is by far the most convenient way of empowering a board game. It feels nice and powerful. If you think about it, the possibilities of adding 3D objects and procedurally generated content to board games is AMAZING! As we said before, the future for Augmented Reality could not be better now that Hololens are on the way. It can be combined with all the previously mentioned technologies too.

Publish or Perish is a hybrid board game in development that uses Augmented Reality (Developed with Vuforia) to display super fun sub-atomic collider experiments. :)

Do you know any other technology that could be used to build hybrid games? Do you disagree with the order of this list? Do you have any suggestions for future posts? See you soon! :)

Devil in the device...

Hello there dear readers! This time I will start with a story, bah, even better – A true story! See, we are currently in the middle of developing a new hybrid game and like always, the process of building the game is a constant struggle against obstacles and problems. However our brilliant CTO (Chief Technology Officer, as the title is known in Lingua Corporationis) always manage to bull his way through them, as he is a level 18 Programmer Wizard. However the story below will show you how sometimes you need a person entirely ignorant in the glorious world of code to find an issue and solve it. The educated ones from time to time sometimes simply wouldn’t think of such simple solutions.

In a glorious summer day, not so long ago, our prototype App for a game we are working on was making a lot of problems. Mostly, it had a nasty tendency to crash pretty much on the spot when ran on an Android device.  Of course our coders were able to make quite a fat list of things that can cause that and so, under the enlightened lead of out CTO they began the prowl through the code to find the offensive bug and get rid of it. The journey was long and painful, and no matter what they supposedly fixed, the problem persisted… The app would crash on the Android OS like a plane over Bermuda Triangle and with the same reliability. Bugger.

As the precious hours turned into precious day that passed by without solution and with a lot of stress on entire team our art director – a person entirely and fully ignorant of all the codes and math in the world (and slightly proud of it!) decided to join in the fray. He took the phone. He laughed. He clicked a few things. And handled the device back in the hands of the coders… Voila. App was working smoothly and without any issues. After a few more tests it continued to work well, perplexing the adepts of the binary languages. It turned out solution was just too simple for them to think about it in the first place.

The device was overloaded. In poor shape. In bad condition. Simple as that. App was good from the start and it was crashing simply because our test smartphone had not a bite left in its memory and on its drive and had about half a million (slight exaggeration!) processes running on it. All that had to be done is turn off some of the background apps, clean some space, free the memory usage and everything was working just fine.

Simple, right? And you know what is the moral of today story? It’s not the app. It’s you(r device)! Yes, I played myself with some hybrid games. It comes with the work, really. And I myself had some issues both with XCOM app and the Alchemists, be it issues with recognition of the cards or simply sluggish reaction and ‘laggy’ behaviours. And of course like any user of modern technology, even if fully capable of taking good care of it, I blamed the device. I mean, come on, it should be convenience, not a hindrance! And what If I don’t care well for how much stuff my poor tiny mobile computer have on its shoulders?

It matters, really. And it’s a point of advice that most likely any mobile gamer knows to the core. If the app doesn’t work well, if it crashes, if it slows down, before you fly into a righteous rage about the chunkiness of the application and the shoddy optimisation, be sure to put that hot feeling on the shelf… You can always return to it if the game won’t run well on a cleaned device with free memory to use. Because it just might happen that you won’t have to reach for that rage again, because the game will work just fine if you only give it some space to work with…

Why Hybrids are a Thing (and why you might care about it!)

I am a boardgamer for a decade if not longer. Sure, it doesn't sound all that impressive, right? I mean, I personally know lovely maniacs with half a thousand game boxes littering their houses from floor to the ceiling, having almost a quarter of century of experience with these games and treating them no longer as "just a hobby" but more a way of life, if that is even possible. Still, I know myself the nagging, gnawing sensation of uncertainty, when you try to sell me a hybrid game. Which is funny, considering I make them now and actually enjoy them, right?

When it comes to the Hybrid Games a lot of hardcore players scrunches their noses with mild disgusts and proclaim quickly, that it is sinful. Or just plain bad. I mean, come on, right? You went for boardgames because you admire it's down-to-earth physical aspect, the fact that it's so disconnected from the modern world of everyday gadgets and technologies... You use your smartphone or tablet every day at work, you most likely treat internet connection in the same way as air you breath (it is just there, you barely notice it, but when it suddenly vanish, you feel your life choked out of you!). Classic boardgames with their pawns and tokens and boards are a lovely way of escaping from such dreary overlordship of technology over our lives. It's a statement, really - I like Boardgames, aside for other reasons of course, because they let me get my eyes off the bright digital screens...

Now it is clear why Hybrids for a long time had quite a lot of problems getting even a tiny niche in the minds of the boardgamers. After all, no matter what solutions, aid and even innovations they managed to bring to the table, all of this was encumbered by the heavy price of allowing a digital device into the gameplay as well.

Now let me change the direction... Ever considered why /nom/ hybrid games attacked again? Why they become a thing? Why Alchemists or X-COM gets solid reviews, quite often high praise? A few reasons, really. Firstly, times changed. Not so long ago mobile devices were still clunky, slow, weak computers. They were expensive too. And mostly, they were no so widely spread through the society. Now try to find a group in any western country that do not have at least one person with a smartphone or a tablet, I dare you. Chances are everyone get one of this devices. The publishers and boardgame developers learnt their lessons too - it is not hard to just slap an app on the game and call it a day. It is however quite a daunting task to make it in such a way, that the application is not an obstacle, but an actual help... And a vital ingredient of the game! It's a ripe time for the hybrid games to nudge the players again.

And there are oh so many benefits of adding an app to the game! Gosh, let me list a few:

• Objective judge! An app, unlike a human being, will not be bribed. Will not whittle at the emotional blackmail, will be exactly as harsh and just to anyone and most importantly, will keep the rules in line and in check all the time. App is a great tribunal for a game, especially when it holds and takes care of the rules... So, you can move up to three spaces with your pawn? Well, you will surely not be able to move more "by mistake", because it won't let you. You learnt something new and would love to back out of your action? Sorry, mate, not a chance.
  
• Keeper of secrets! I think this is the genre where Hybrid games will quickly become a dominant species. Clue, Letters from White Chapel, Roar! Catch the Monster... All these games are deduction games where plenty of information have to be kept secret, and a mobile device is a charm of making that a smooth ride. No need to pen and paper, no problem with running out of dockets to fill out, no problem with falling down paravans of cardboard... Everything is neatly stored in the app which easily allow us moving and keeping track of everything right on the screen.
  
• The progress tracker! Now, that is maybe less important to a lot of players, but I know some who would love this to be a thing... Want to know the scores you've got in a game last month? Or 50 games ago? Want to review what you did wrong and where you did well? Or gosh, maybe you have this sweet sensation of progress when you collect achievements and would not mind one bit having that implemented to your boardgames? App can do that. It was /made/ to do that and with ease.
  
• Variables and ease of expansion! Let me put it into a perspective first... If an app is a crucial part of the game and a lot of it happens through it, then the game developer can offer players outrageous amount of variations and flexibility to the game. Let's say we have an adventure game where every round a new event pop out. Usually that would be handled by cards, for example, which is fine. I mean, you can easily print 100 cards and make that a lovely way to keep the game fresh for longer, right? Sure. App can do 10 000 "event cards". Because it is not a printed material. And same goes for expansions... Adding new  scenarios? New mechanics? New elements? Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Let me once again bring the example of Roar! - in the game player holding the device control a fully digital monster that hides through the city. Each monster have an unique special power. Currently there are three of them in the game... But nothing stop the publisher to adding as many as they would like to later on! That's rad.
  
• Immersion! This is a given, isn't it? Remember the old games with VHS tape or a CD with music on it? Simple stuff, really, usually just a timer... You were suppose to play until the soundtrack or a movie ends. But it have a touch of RPG magic to it... A lot of Game Masters in a vast number of pen and paper roleplays like to add props to the session. Candles, maps, letters on a nicely burnt paper on the edges... And of course music, which is a natural mood builder. And a game with an App can reach for this benefits and double them, because you can not only add music and sound effect, but animation, 3D envirnoments, augmented reality and simply things that can happen only on a screen. It might be a plus for the adult players, but for kids? It is a godsend.

See? Hybrids don't have to be clunky games where players frustration grow over the constant juggling of the slow and unresponsive device and a game. It just might be a thing that smooth the ride through the fun and makes it all a much more pleasant experience for everyone. Just put the bias on the hook by the door and give them a chance.