Trying Some Racing Game Key Terms. Are they clear?

After playing Wolfgang Kramer's Top Race the other day, I'm thinking about racing games again. In Top Race, each card moves several colored cars through the track as far forward as possible. Because you're betting on the race results as well as controlling your own car, you're still invested in the outcome even if your car is trailing behind. Controlling opponent's cars is very valuable and fun way to stay engaged throughout the game, which is a common problem in racing games.

I got to thinking about how to capture that same versatility and engagement with a card-driven racing game without the betting element. One way I thought about was using conditional positions instead of specific colors. For example, say I establish these key terms.

• You: A car or cars you control.
• Straggler: The car in last place.
• Leader: The car in first place.
• Chaser: The car in second-place.
• Follower: The car immediately behind your car.
• Pacer: The car immediately ahead of your car.

The cards would list a series of actions that must be resolved in that order. Each action moves the indicated car forward a number of spaces on the track. For example:

BURST!
You: 3-6
Leader: 1-2

COMEBACK!
You: 3-4
Straggler: 6

JOSTLE!
Pacer: 1-2
You: 4
Follower: 1

PUSH!
Leader: 1
You: 2
Chaser: 3

Each action is resolved in order, so you could use a card in some fun power moves.

• For example, if you played BURST! to put yourself in first-place, then you are the Leader, therefore you could move 1-2 extra spaces.
• If you play COMEBACK! and you're still in last place, then you could give yourself a huge sprint of +6 spaces forward.
• If you play PUSH! to put yourself in second-place, then you're the Chaser and can move yourself an extra 3 spaces.

My main concern at this point is that it's too confusing to make up game terms for these positions or if there are already real-world racing terms for these positions. If you're aware of any or have suggestions for more clear alternatives, please share!

6 Games I'm bringing to UnPub 6!

Unpub 6 is in just under a month! I'm bringing almost all of my self-published games to pitch and present, but here are 6 games I'd like to highlight in particular. You may have seen my last post on the subject of "sale sheets" or "summary sheets", but I've since expanded this to a whole series of at-a-glance summaries for handing out to publishers.

Curse You, Robin Hood!
You’re a merchant of Sherwood Forest trying to get rich while dodging those thieving Merry Men. Get as much treasure as possible, but not so much that Robin Hood notices you as a target!

Koi Pond
A zenlike, fast-flowing card game. Collect colorful koi fish and keep your pond as balanced as possible.

Monsoon Market
In 1405, a Chinese emissary sails the Indian Ocean, reporting the quality of each market along the way. It’s time to get busy! Earn a reputation for accurate orders or rush off any old goods in bulk. It’s a race to earn the fastest fortune in the Monsoon Market!

A La Kart
Food fighters, hit the road! Bump karts out of your way with Pasta Shells! Blast ahead with a Mushzoom! Baste the track with an Olive Oil Spill! Taste sweet victory while rivals eat your dust!

Tractor Pull (Co-design with Matt Everheart)
It’s time for the Tri-County Triple-Rope Tug-of-War! Lead your team of scrappy vehicles against your rival in three unique arenas! Beware the crooked refs! Pull the most ropes to win the match. Win two out of three matches to become champion!

Light Rail
A new age of rail empire dawns in the near future! Barons vie for ownership of a mega-city’s growing commuter network. Claim routes that connect as many different districts as possible and fulfill lucrative contracts.

You can find PDF versions of all these sheets in this dropbox folder. Hope to see you at UnPub!

Smart Play Games Report for 2015

Happy new year, everyone! It's been a long time since I've done a proper sales report, which probably foreshadows the transitions from 2015. I kicked off the year knowing that I couldn't repeat the same pace I held in 2014, releasing one new game or product each month via DriveThruCards' POD service. That wasn't sustainable for the long-term, but it really yielded great rewards and I'm glad I did it. Without further ado, let's look at the numbers and break down some context.

The Numbers

Here are the sales numbers for each product in 2015 (in red) compared to 2014 (in blue). The good news is that every product that existed in 2014 sold more units than it did in 2015! Across the board growth is very positive.

These are the gross sales numbers for each product in 2015 compared to 2014. As you can see with some small low-priced products like the Koi Pond promo cards, the sales numbers far exceed their actual dollar gross. These numbers fluctuate month by month based on whatever promotional discounts I've got in place at that time.




And here are the actual earnings from each product in 2015 compared to 2014. This is what's left over after DriveThruCards takes its cut.

Funny how on all of these charts, the big 800-pound gorilla is Kigi. Koi Pond used to be my flagship product and the high bar for anything else in my catalog, but holy cow Kigi earned double Koi Pond's 2015 earnings and tripled Koi Pond's 2014 earnings! Wow, what a year.

Okay, let's break down the year by subject.

Heir to Europa
2015 was a very experimental year. Early on, I wanted to pick up licenses for other designers' games, hoping to offer others the same success I'd had with my POD model. Nick Ferris agreed to let me publish Heir to Europa, a lovely trick-taking card game. Unfortunately, I hadn't anticipated how much other business would distract me from properly promoting and supporting Heir to Europa in the latter half of 2015. I really want to release more standalone suits for the game, but a proper rules tutorial should be produced first. That has unfortunately been delayed by my own freelance work ramping up into December. I still feel bad about how slowly that's been developing. I hope 2016 will be a year for Europa.

POD Imports
As a part of 2015's experiments, I pursued some licenses for foreign games that I thought would be easy to release via POD. Most of these games have extremely short local print runs and never reach US shores, so I thought POD is a great way to "import" the games in an affordable and efficient form. I still think POD has the strong potential to take on that role, but perhaps I'm not the best salesman for that proposition. For now, traditional import and licensing retail seems to be the more attractive channel at the moment. The BGG Marketplace is doing some interesting things with this area of business.

A La Kart
I began the year deciding I'd focus on one game instead of my manic pace from 2014. That game would be A La Kart, which I brought to UnPub and got a LOT of really good feedback on. However, it became clear that the theme and the mechanics, while both very fun and interesting, didn't match each other well. So around BGGcon, I decoupled the theme and mechanics from each other and designed a better fitting game for the wacky racing theme. So far, tester response has been very good and it's currently being evaluated by a major publisher!

Becoming More "Legit" at BGGcon
The impostor syndrome bit me hard at weird moments this year, most notably in still thinking of myself as a novice game designer. At BGGcon, some really veteran designers whose opinions I respect suggested that I actually shouldn't attend the speed dating event as it's really meant for rookies. I had counted myself as a rookie as well, but these vets said, no, I'm actually somewhere in the middle. I've got a few games under my belt now and I should be pursuing more formal meetings at conventions. Fortunately there was time to reorient my strategy and get more of these face-to-face meetings scheduled. Hope something good comes from them!

Princess Bride: As You Wish
Princess Bride: As You Wish also released this year, which was an important reminder of the long production cycle required for major retail releases. I originally signed that license back in 2013, then after some development it got kickstarted in late 2014, finally releasing to the retail channels just a few months ago. I have to keep these long lead times in mind as I pursue new licenses.

POD business and Retail Business
One thing I found out at BGGcon was the awkward position my POD successes had put me in. Am I an indie designer? Am I a publisher? Am I a beginner? Certainly the POD games were getting attention and buzz, but that didn't necessarily translate into products which would have strong retail or kickstarter potential. I referred to this as the Chrome Ceiling. POD got me to a certain point in my career, but proper retail with bigger games was the obvious next step. As I learned from Princess Bride, it could be up to two years before a game hits retail and bills are coming in the meantime. So while I develop and pitch bigger games, I have to find other ways to supplement my income month-to-month.

Patreon and Etsy

That's where my updated Patreon came in very handy in the latter part of 2015. By changing to a monthly schedule and releasing more videos more regularly, Patreon offset some very slow sales months from my POD store. Selling some of my complimentary Japanese and Chinese editions of Koi Pond and Kigi also helped fill in the gaps. That's not a long-term solution, but it helped during a few leaner weeks.

Kigi and Kodama
Kigi and Kodama are the standout milestones from this year. It's hard to believe how eventful a year it's been for these games. Kigi got picked up by Japanese publisher Gamefield and sold out at Tokyo Game Market in May. Then a few months later, Action Phase were such big fans that they wanted to develop the core mechanisms into a whole new game. Kodama: the Tree Spirits went on to raise almost $100,000 on Kickstarter and become their highest funded, most backed project to date. Kodama is going to be in the Mensa Mind Games competition this year as well, which will be very  exciting to watch.

Trickster
Trickster has had an even faster lifecycle than Kigi. I released my first Trickster sets in the middle of 2015. Now I'm happy to announce Action Phase Games is also picking up Trickster for retail publication! They really liked the gameplay and we're currently developing it into a bigger game in a bigger box. Something about the scale of Smash Up or even Dominion. We have big plans ahead. More details to come!


Thanks very much for your support in the past year!

A La Kart playtests - UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire

(Photo Source: +Michael Harrison )

The Game Designers of Carolina held a great UnPub Mini event at Atomic Empire last Saturday. This is the third year for an UnPub Mini at Atomic Empire, the second organized by GDoC, and it's grown each year. We had fifteen designers with full tables for nearly the entire event.

(Photo Source: Matt Wolfe)

My plan for playtesting A La Kart was to run two concurrent two-player demos of Fish vs. Chips at the AutoBun and Sugar vs. Spice at the Sundae Speedway. I made significant edits to Fish's deck after March's extensive outside playtesting revealed how overpowered it was.

I made some minor tweaks to the other decks as well, and kept track of win rates for each deck over the whole day. Sugar and Spice went back and forth a lot over the day, with minimal repeated final scores. That says to me a lot is riding on each player's decision and a little bit of luck, so I feel pretty good about where they stand now. Here is my handwritten record.

I found some odd results at first in Fish vs. Chips. The first two games had the exact same scores. Like, exactly. I made some edits over the course of the day to hopefully break that pattern and luckily I was able to get them closer to parity, but Fish still didn't win most of the time. Fish vs. Chips had some odd patterns where 21 point and 25 point final scores appeared three times each. 11 appeared twice as well. Despite tweaking the decks towards the end of the day, that pattern persisted, which tells me a lot of this comes from how the Autobun course scores.

I also compiled a few comments from the anonymous feedback forms:

• Different characters was fun. It was cool that there were different themed race-tracks also, if I got into the game it\'s the kind of thing I would buy the extra tracks for.
• More clear instructions
• It didn't feel terribly strategic, maybe because there were so few cards & they were all pretty similar. Felt a little go-fishy in that sense. I had a few cards at a time & it was always really obvious which one to play. (high or low, or middle if I didn't care). Partially could be because of the "beeping" to move faster... maybe if there was more time to think, I would have noticed some tricks that I missed? I didn't feel like the cards for burying, scraping, etc. really had time to matter. Time in the sense of, there aren't that many turns in a game. I'm not sure how to make it feel more strategic to me. Also: take my feedback with a grain of salt, I spend way too much time playing abstract strategy, so maybe my expectations are tainted.
• It was a really cute theme & concept. Would definitely feel comfortable playing with my 30yr old friends, or with my daughter in a few years when she\'s old enough to play it. The game is coming along great & seems like it\'s really close to completion :) Great job!
• As suger, playing against spice, felt there were too few opportunities to buff steering, thus lowering my chances of winning desired card. 
• Theme is fun and unique, cards were well designed with good art and keywords for easy learning. 
• Could be a bit more tweaking with making the asymmetrical decks more equal. The defensive decks seem to have more of a learning curve. 
• It\'s quick, it\'s not \"pay to win\" (MtG), it\'s strategy based and still randomly generated. Each game is a new course. 
• Very fun! Might be nice to add a few more action cards to sugar\'s deck to balance it out a little bit more, I felt like almost every card almost was an engine card aside from maybe two or three.
• Maybe make the decks slightly larger, so there are more choices left at the end, but at the same time the limit adds some strategy.
• Knowing the numbers of the remaining cards makes what choices you opponent predictable, but the effects can add surprise 
• Create a system to display each players current scoreboard, it will lend to strategy. I really like that the art in the game features non-sexualized images of women. 
• Love the artwork associated, love the food puns. game play was fairly balanced, second game would be better for both players so that you know all of your cards for aviable.
•  Needs a LOT of racer for replay ability sake. Different tracks only matter so much.
•  Put out one course at a time instead of all three at once
• The theme is a blast and the way each deck plays very differently is super cool        

Overall verdict is that folks love the theme, but the decks need more variety and the game needs to be easier to learn. Doing both is going to be tricky.

I must be getting older because I used to be able to run demos non-stop for a full eight-hour-day. I had to tap out two hours early because I was just spent. Apologies to anyone I missed that evening! It was a great, productive event and I even got to squeeze in one test of Trickster: Fantasy before I left. It was a lot of fun!