Whoops – Griefer Play

After spending a lot of time tweaking the Jump Land rules, I got it to a place where it was ready for serious playtesting. And then I discovered something really frustrating.

The game is only fun if the hero player wins. Why? Because the game relies upon screw-you strategies. The best levels that the world player can play are all about forcing the hero player into a lose-lose situation. They’re about delivering a big “screw you” that can’t be outwitted or bested. The best moves that the hero player can make are all about ignoring the clever levels laid out by the world player – simply circumventing the interesting situations that the game creates. Again, a big “screw you” play style.

When the World Player’s level gets bested, the world player at least gets to launch into a new level – new cards, more resources, another opportunity. There’s an “I almost got you that time!” dynamic, which is fun. At the end of 10 levels, if the world player’s lost, at least they’ve gotten in a couple good shots, and probably come close to success.

But when the hero player loses, it’s because they got fucked over with a level that they had no options to deal with. “Oh, you have a big combo, and I don’t have the specific card I’d need to overcome it. I guess I lose the game.” It’s a total, unfun bummer.

Jump Land suffers from this problem which makes it really frustrating to play at times. And, so, it’s getting shelved again for the time being. If I figure out how to circumvent this stuff, I’ll definitely play with it some more.

It’s Alive!

There are three reasons that I haven’t posted here for a while:

1.) I’ve been busy traveling.

2.) I’ve been busy releasing another game that I wrote, called Perfect, Unrevised.

3.) I’ve been in a design rut with Jump Land, trying to figure out how to make the game feel more dynamic & make player choices matter more. The honeymoon phase is over, or at least on hold… and I’m now faced with the choice of either making it work, or running away.

But today,  I sat down again… and I threw all my designer clout at the game. I put together a test deck for the World Player, and just began playing through Worlds (sequences of levels). If the World felt too jilted, or too slow to get moving, or too repetitive… then I’d design new cards to fit into the deck, cards designed to open play up in a different direction.

And something started to happen, as if by magic. The deck started to be fun to play. It wasn’t actually magic, it was hours of hard work, but the turning point seemed sudden and surprising.

I think I probably played through about 20 games, each one comprised of 7-10 levels.

Stuff I changed, along the way:

(1.) The World Player draws 3 cards, gets 6 points, and then discards back down to 3 cards at the end of the level. That single extra point (from 5 to 6) made a world of difference.

(2.) Stuff is generally cheaper. There are some 0 point resource building cards.

(3.) By default, you cannot double-jump. This change actually came from an earlier playtest, where Daniel Wood lamented about the fact that you are able to simply jump over EVERYTHING, and that there is never a situation that jumping won’t solve.

The way it works is this: by default, you can jump a height of 1. Some cards will let you jump higher.

If ever you reach a situation that you cannot overcome, it’s called a puzzle. There are two ways to overcome a puzzle: cycle your deck (discard & draw) until you come up with a solution, or lose a life to skip through the puzzle. Puzzles can be lethal! Masons work to trap you in shifting labyrinths of brick! Gargoyles turn themselves back into stone to bar your path!

It Has Begun

I’ve started working on 8bit-esque pixel art. I found a really awesome two-part tutorial about creating pixel art in illustrator. At first, I was like, “pixel art in a vector program? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” But actually, it’s an awesome method. Once your art board is set up, drawing is simply a matter of clicking the boxes to colour them in – or dragging the live paint tool to paint whole lines at once.

I decided that I would start by doing some case studies of different 8bit and 16bit characters. I rapidly gave up on the 16bit ones, because counting that many pixels sounded mega tedious. I stuck with Mario & Megaman & Link. I studied how the Megaman characters were the same, and where they differed. I found this, which was hella helpful: a single page showing all the Street Fighter characters, rendered as Megaman sprites.

And so from studying that page and meticulously counting pixels and examining differences, I constructed a “barebones Megaman template.” Feeling adventurous, I abandoned the Megaman pursuit for a moment, and set out to create my own, wholly original character: a brawlin’ street thug.

Beneath the cut, you’ll see my early attempts. It has begun.

Needlessly Advanced

This is what I do, when I start designing games: I immediately think about how it might look as a finished, retail-ready product. And then rather than designing the game, I scour the internet looking for price quotes.

This, for the record, is not the most effective way to design a game.

However, it’s been super fun in regards to Jump Land. I’ve come to a totally awesome discovery: it will cost no more to do randomized decks than it would be to do pre-constructed decks. What this means: if I end up producing Jump Land as a sexy, profesh card game, there’s nothing stopping me from packaging it as: a core set (1 Hero deck, 1 World deck) and then selling additional packs of 54 random cards (or 72, or whatever). I can’t do randomized boosters of 12-16 cards, though, unfortunately (I can do pre-constructed boosters of that size, though!).

Here’s what I’d need to do to have randomized decks:
1. Posit that I have 198 World Cards, 108 Hero Cards, and 18 Heroes & Bosses. That comprises the entire card list (the “set”).
1b. Those are a couple of the increments they print in, which is why I chose those numbers.
2. Order any number of full sets. The number doesn’t matter – assume, for now, that each set is dealt with separately.
2b. Order tuck boxes. 6 times the number of full sets.
3. Shuffle the 198 World Cards (very gently!), and then divide them into 6 piles of 33 cards.
3b. Shuffle the 108 Hero Cards, and then divide them into 6 piles of 18 cards.
3c. Shuffle the 18 Heroes & Bosses, and then divide them into 6 piles of 3 cards.
4. Assemble into 6 tuck boxes, each box containing: 33 World Cards, 18 Hero Cards, and 3 Heroes & Bosses (at least 1 of each).

Without “rarity” as a factor, this is super easy math and super easy assembly. If I handle each full set separately, assembly becomes quite easy and unwanted card duplication isn’t that big of a factor. I imagine assembling six randomized decks would take under 10 minutes, possibly under 5.

To print a single full set this way (so, 6 randomized decks total) would give me a unit cost of $4.75 to manufacture, plus shipping.
To print 51 full sets this way (so, 306 randomized decks total) would give me a unit cost of$3.80 to manufacture, plus shipping.
In the case of ordering 51 sets, the total cost would be $1161.78 plus shipping. So, theoretically manageable given enough assessed interest.

I could sell decks at $12, and still make a couple bucks with shipping factored in. Totally workable.

But, uh… I should probably get back to designing the game.
This has been fun, like playing house, but I so should be designing the actual game.
*hangs head in shame*
*returns to work desk*
*starts designing “lava” cards*

Budget & Bricks (or: Tags, You’re It!)

So, we’ve talked about the basics of the Hero Player’s role. They have a 30 card deck, and need to make it through 10 levels. Card conservancy is the name of the game, but strategically playing cards is a big part of that overall strategy. To jump, you discard from your deck. To play cards from your hand, you just play them.

Now it’s time to talk about the World Player. I want to talk about how the World Player’s budget works, and what that implies about the World Player’s strategies. And I want to talk about tags.

The World player draws 3 cards and gets 5 points. They then spend those points to field cards, thus constructing a level. Now, in my example videos, I used the same couple cards each time: Meat Babies, Brick Walls, Brick Floaters, and the recently revealed Meat Punk. So, let’s take a look at those, quickly. A Meat Baby costs 3 to field. It’s basically a generic mook, but it comes with 3 tags: meat, baby, swarmy. Those are good tags!  A Meat Punk only costs 2 to field, but it comes into play with a pathetic one tag: meat. Both the Brick Floater and the Brick Wall cost 2 to field.

So, on my first level, I can field a Meat Baby and a Brick Wall. Or a Meat Baby and a Meat Punk. But, that’s a pretty easy level to clear. No matter how I set it up, the Hero Player can overcome it with two jumps – or worse, he might be able to play a clever card to beat the level at an even more minimal cost. Clearly, this “draw 3 cards and get 5 points” business is nonsense. I’m going to need more cards and more points.

Enter the World Player’s goal: you need to get more cards, get more points, and harry the Hero in the meantime. Now, let’s look at some examples of how you might go about doing that.

First, there are some cards that are helpful in and of themselves:

Power Source (cost: 1)
Duration: World
Discard Power Source from play to gain 2 points.

Advanced (cost: 3)
Duration: World
Draw an extra card at the start of every level.

Consortium of Power (cost: 1)
Duration: World
Instead of starting every level with 5 points, start with a point for each card in your hand.

There are a few cards like that, which are designed to potentially fit into any deck and help boost its cards & budget. Power Source is a great play to make early in the game – you could play a Meat Punk, a Brick Wall and a Power Source all on your first level. That’d leave you with the potential to spend 7 points on your next level. Advanced is a bit more costly to get out there, but will pay off in the long run.

Consortium of Power really isn’t a generic, “good in and of itself” card. It’s the kind of card that you build a deck around. Think how awesome it’d be to have a deck that let you draw nine cards a turn, and Consortium of Power would be there, awarding you 9 points for it. You’d effectively eliminate the budget-generating need, and be able to focus more succinctly on the card-generating need. It’s a fun card to think about, albeit probably not as good as the other two examples.

Now, we’re brought to the other type of card that generates resources for you. The tribal one. The one that’s driven by tags. You see, each card has 1-3 tags associated with it. Those tags get referenced and “plugged into” by other cards. Sometimes to boost an effect, sometimes to generate points, sometimes to do other stuff.

So, let’s look at a couple of the resource-generating cards that reference the “brick” tag.  It’s one of my goals to bring slightly different themes to every tag. Bricks are thematically tied into masonic conspiracy theories. Masons are weird cultist brick magicians. Bricks obey non-euclidean physics and bizarre geometries. Sometimes, they float without reason or conceal dark histories. And finally, bricks don’t seem to stay put.

Foundation (cost:2)
Duration: World
Gain 1 point for each “brick” in your discard pile.

Still Good (cost: 2)
Duration: World
When drawing cards at the beginning of a level, also scoop one “brick” from your discard pile.

Masonic Summons (cost: 3)
Duration: World
Play one “brick” for free every level.

All Fall Down (cost: 4)
Duration: World
At the end of each level, you may discard a card.
If you do, all “brick” cards with Float stay in play for next level, but lose Float.
You may re-arrange them when constructing your level.

All Fall Up (cost: 4)
Duration: World
At the end of each level, you may discard a card.
If you do, all “brick” cards without Float stay in play for next level, but gain Float.
You may re-arrange them when constructing your level.

A skilled World Player will be able to construct a veritable maze of “brick” cards over the course of their ten levels. At least, that’s the hope. I want to build a deck that combos All Fall Down and All Fall Up, letting me keep all my bricks in play for every level, constantly building up a bigger obstacle course.

So, is it optimal to just build a deck of nothing but bricks, nothing buy mud, nothing but ogres? In ways, yes. However, bricks have a limited range of abilities – you can’t re-arrange bricks mid level, for example. Plus, they all have the “brick” tag, which means that a single Hero card with “bash any brick” or “all cards with a chosen tag” could leave you devastated. So, there’s strength in focusing a World deck on a single tag, but there’s also great vulnerability.

Spin Rush!

So, the World Player’s role gelled in my head much more quickly than the Hero Player’s. The World Player’s job is to build levels, to try to exhaust the Hero’s cards, and to build resources for themselves to ensure that levels scale in difficulty. It turns out that these things were very easy to design for. I had no trouble writing up a great deal of World cards, and even cards that clustered neatly into cute themes. Remind me to tell you about the bizarre geometries of the mason’s guild, some time. Or the malicious sentience of clay. Or remind me to preview “Meat Dog” some day.

But designing the Hero’s cards? The ball was very difficult to put into motion. The problem was that a few early design decisions (the jumping mechanic, the goal of card conservancy) were proving to be difficult to design around. By default, EVERY card is “use this card to simply hop over a threat.” Cards which targeted a single threat rarely offered you an advantage over simply jumping – you were down a card either way.

Here’s how I got over that hump: I took a whole ton of blank cards, and I just started writing. I referenced non-existent keywords, wrote multiple iterations of various card names, and I made cards that I knew were “broken.” I just tried to get outside of the design space I was pigeon-holing myself into. I wrote gibberish in order to get the pen moving.

And that’s what led me to Headbomp. Headbomp is the thing that Mario does when he wants to take out a goomba. He jumps up onto it, and bomps it on the head. The card, then:

Headbomp
Whenever you jump over a mook, this level, it dies.

Now, why would that matter? I mean, once you’ve jumped over something, does it matter whether it is dead or not? At the time, I had no answer. But that didn’t matter. I knew I’d stumbled across fruitful design space. It was the fact that the card included the words “Whenever [...] this level.” Yes! That! Cards would, generally, stay in play throughout a whole level. They would be designed to affect your options across the entire level.

Headbomp’s wording has changed a little bit – bomp became a keyword almost instantaneously (along with bash and blast), and cards stay in play by default, now. The card now reads:

Headbomp
(bompy, jumpy)
Bomp any mooks.

Headbomp was still a little… cerebral. Its usefulness came in effective comboing. It wasn’t a good “template card” that I could point to and say, “See? They should all be like that.” That card came later, and it was Spin Rush. Spin Rush was the card that, once designed, seemed to open the design field wide open. It showed me what cards could do, and how they could be chained together.

I’ll skip straight ahead to the slightly-revised-and-current text:

Spin Rush
(speedy, bashy)
Bash anything with Defense 1.
If you jump or play another card, scoop Spin Rush.

I hadn’t invented “Defense” yet, but having written Spin Rush, I knew that it made sense that some things would be too tough to spin through. I hadn’t planned on giving Hero Cards tags, but I knew the word “speedy” should be one of its tags. The whole thing just clicked.

Spin Rush is designed to conserve cards. If there are a string of weak threats lined up, Spin Rush lets you plow through them all with a single card. What’s more, the “scoop” ability meant that if you played it right, you could KEEP conserving cards by spin rushing the opponent.

From Spin Rush, it was easy to imagine Thumpin’ Hammer, Spring Boots, Mega Blast and Fire Spitter. From there, it was easy to imagine Vampire! and Reckless Enthusiasm. Reckless Enthusiasm inspired Clever Tactics, which in turn led to Blink. Returning to Spin Rush led me to designing Washout. A wide spectrum of possibilities appeared.

Wanna see Spin Rush in action?

Sell Me It For Free

Several people have recommended me various other CCGs and games over the past 12 hours. The list includes: Lord of the Rings CCG, Decipher’s Star Wars CCG, Legend of the Five Rings CCG, Netrunner  and Free Market.

Others I’ve got an eye on include Magic: the Gathering (recovering addict), Thunderstone (yet to play it), Descent (played it), and the Mega Man CCG. On the platformer side, I’m excited to start playing Limbo, Lucidity, Trine and Super Meat Boy.

But… that’s a lot of games to digest, a lot of lessons to attempt to extrapolate. So, maybe we can cut to the chase a bit. I’m going to describe the mechanical components of Jump Land, in under 100 words. Then you tell me a game I should be checking out, and then ruin the punchline by explaining the mechanical ideas that are relevant, and the cool concepts that I could extrapolate from them.

Yeah?

Jump Land: there are 2 distinct roles, with different goals and dynamics. The World Player builds levels, with a focus on building resources between levels, and on card combos. The World Player has a fixed, per-level budget, but by playing “resource building” cards can increase it for future levels. The Hero Player moves through the levels and avoids obstacles, with a focus on card conservancy and anticipating future obstacles. The World Player must avoid constructing levels with big liabilities – levels that could be “one-punched” by the right Hero card. The Hero Player needs to avoid losing by having their deck milled.

Now: What games should I be learning from, and what should I be learning from them?

Work It Out

I did a search on 8tracks for chiptune/8bit music that I could groove to while I’m working on Jump Land. After a couple stinkers, I came across a veritable treasure chest of sweet tracks.

Allow me to introduce you to The Greatest 8bit Epics, a mix by c_dash_dash_b. My favourite tracks are: Master Sequence, Death Satellite Evasion, the Driller mod, and The Ecstacy of Gold. The only track I actively dislike is T, T, T (at Sea). Luckily, 8tracks comes with a limited-use “skip” button.

Making the jump to ubiquity

So, the goal is simple, right? A CCG that plays out like a sidescrolling platformer. Someone builds the levels, and it’s probably a semi-visual thing where you sequence out a bunch of cards on the table. The other person guides the Hero through those levels, jumping onto platforms, bomping mooks on the head, and occasionally gaining awesome power-up boosts.

Simple. With that core vision, the first thing that I needed to know was: how does jumping work?

In platformers, you always have the option to jump. That option is ubiquitous. What makes jumping interesting in those games is that it requires player skill, and there’s that tense possibility that you’ll slip. And then it’s the spike pits for you, boy.

How to do this in Jump Land? Would there be some kind of player skill component involved in these jumps? That seemed like it’d become a headache really fast. I wanted jumping to be this super fast, super easy, fun thing that you could always do. Depending on some sort of player-skill gimmick was the wrong direction to take it.

My next idea was to have lots of “jump” cards, as frequent in the player deck as “Bang” cards in Bang. But this would mean having a big, cumbersome deck where most of the cards were boring. It might work for Bang, but it’s not the right direction for Jump Land.

“What if,” I thought to myself, “every card was also a jump card?” Now, this seemed fruitful. Of course, there might be levels were you have to jump a lot. Would that mean that you needed to have lots of cards in your hand? That’s when it clicked, what the jumping mechanic would be.

To jump, put the top card of your deck in your discard pile. You just jumped over a threat! Congratulations. If there are two threats stacked on top of each other, like a Meat Baby on top of a Brick Wall, you’d need to jump twice in order to get over them – that means putting two cards from your deck into your discard pile.

So, what’s to stop you from just having a huge deck and just jumping over everything and never taking damage? Well, the deck would need to have a tight card limit. The Hero Player’s deck is precisely 30 cards – 3 cards per level.

Which immediately gives rise to some ideas about what being the Hero Player is probably like. Whereas the World Player’s job is to build complicated levels and put lots of cards on the table, the Hero Player’s job is to figure out how to conserve cards. Card conservation was going to be the primary goal of the Hero Player.

So, the jump mechanic gave rise to a play-style, which gave rise to a question: Can card conservancy be a fun goal? I’m going to answer that in my next post, where I unpack one of the first cards I wrote: Spin Rush.

First, here’s a Youtube of me making my little dude jump over some stuff.

Love Affair

I have a silly crush on side-scrolling platformers. Jump Land is my newest love letter to ‘em.

It’s a two-player card game. A CCG, where the first C stands for Constructed (though it might also stand for Collectible some day, too). The pitch is simple: One player plays a Hero, who has to beat 10 levels. The other player is the World, and they construct the levels and try to kill the Hero.

I’m going to start talking about how the game is structured, soon. I’ll be overviewing the mechanics, previewing card ideas, asking y’all for help when I’m stuck, and inviting feedback as I go.

All that will start tomorrow, when I explain the first mechanic that clicked into place: jumping.