Welcome back to my designer notes about the board game “Journey to Cheeseland.” For those who just joined me you can check out the first part of this series here: Journey to Cheeseland: Beginnings
Today I’ll talk about designing some of the key mechanics for the game.
Game mechanics are defined by the ways players can interact with the various game elements (in the case of a board game the board and various pieces) and how these actions affect the game state. Or more simply put: What can players do? How do they do it? What happens when they do it?
The most important question that defines the potential actions is: What is the players’ ultimate goal?
So what is the main goal in Cheeseland? Originally it was simply finding the secret entrance to Cheeseland. The first player to make it to Cheeseland won. But as the story evolved it became more about solving the mystery of the disappearing cheeses and confronting the evil mastermind behind it. As mentioned in the first blog I also changed the gameplay to a cooperative gameplay instead of a race to the final destination. In the new version finding and entering Cheeseland is a requirement to confront the evil mastermind and return the stolen cheeses to Grand Central. Although I introduced a clear “lose” state for the mice with Maxo’s track (Maxo wins the game if he manages to move his token all the way to the end of the track before the mice make it to Cheeseland) I decided to leave the “win” state a little more story driven and open ended. By entering Cheeseland and confronting the evil mastermind the mice put an end to the disappearance of the cheeses but the final choice players make and the outcome of the final confrontation changes the ending to their heroic journey.
First of all I made the evil mastermind a random card the player places on Cheeseland and uncovers at the end. I’ll talk more about randomness introduced through various cards in another blog, but its purpose is to add discovery and replayability. If the adventure changes every time you play it’s obviously more fun. Not all evil masterminds are technically evil. Some of their motives for hoarding all the cheeses are either misguided or just silly. Players get to choose from two different options when exposing the mastermind and then roll for the final outcome. So a game may end with exposing the evil mastermind but him getting away or you actually going along with his crazy scheme, something that is very RPG inspired. You may not always get the perfect outcome you were looking for but you get at least the partial satisfaction of having solved the mystery and put an end to the disappearing cheeses.
Games often have intermediate goals that need to be achieved first. In video games these are often levels players have to complete in a sequential order but intermediate goals can also be conceived in a less linear fashion (although there may be a strategic advantage to doing them in a certain order). Either way these milestones give a sense of progression. In Cheeseland the goals are visually represented by cards turned face down and five tracker tokens that need to be placed. The players must reveal all the cards in order to win the game. Specifically these cards (selected randomly at the start of each game) are:
Five Cheese cards: These represent the only remaining cheeses in Grand City. Players need three clues in order to turn over each card (the order is up to them). Doing so will reveal the location of a particular cheese. Once a cheese location is known the mice can head there to find the cheese and place a tracker on it. Note that collecting clues and tracking the cheeses can be done in parallel as soon as at least one of the cheese cards is revealed.
Secret Entrance to Cheeseland card: This card can only be revealed once all cheeses have been found and a tracker was placed on them.
Evil Mastermind card: This card can only be revealed once all mice made it to Cheeseland. It will outline the final confrontation.
Here is how this flow is currently laid out on the board:
Here’s a sample Cheese card once revealed:
And a sample location card revealed after all the cheeses are found.
This leads to the final confrontation in the center of the board.
Note that I added setup instructions directly on the board (though I will distinguish them better in the final version). My goal is to have as much information as possible in front of the players (board and cards) instead of forcing them to constantly refer to the manual.
You may have also noted that I try to convey story elements through the cards by adding flavor text (like with the cheeses) or the way instructions are conveyed (like with location card).
Maxo’s goal is to interfere with the mice as much as possible and he scores points by catching them. His goal is visualized by a track.
Note that the final length of the track may vary after playtesting.
Taking Action: So what are the actions players can take to achieve their goals? The game is themed as a cat and mouse game so I based the initial actions on what cats and mice can do. Being a cat Maxo and his goal being to interfere with the mice he can move and pounce. To make him more effective he can also recruit and move minions. Note that giving him this “special” ability defines the world of Cheeseland and requires some thought as to what cats and mice are like in this setting.
The mice are trying to evade Maxo and his minions while finding the secret entrance to Cheeseland. As mice some of the obvious actions are: move, hide and evade. Just like Maxo though they are smarter and more resourceful than their real-life counterparts. Here too defining how smart and resourceful they are defines the world. I mentioned giving Maxo the ability to recruit and move minions to make him more powerful (a gameplay decision). This worked from a narrative standpoint as I knew that I wanted to give the mice similar “unrealistic” abilities. I could have given them human-like abilities and intelligence with actions like crafting gadgets or flying airplanes. I could also have turned this into a magical world with the ability to cast spells and whatnot. But I wanted to stick with the theme of tiny mice having to confront a large and dangerous city. I wanted the dangers and obstacles to be inspired by real dangers a mouse would face like traps, poison, traffic and of course, cats. I envisioned more of a Tom and Jerry kind of world than for example Mouseguard. Though obviously enhanced the abilities should remain limited. So here is the current list:
Move: The players roll a dice to move their mouse token on the board. The total can be affected by items spent or conditions the mouse may be suffering from.
Hide: This is a preventive action a mouse player can take to increase its chances to evade Maxo or one of his minions.
Evade Maxo and his Minions: This action is automatically triggered when Maxo or one of his Minions launch a pounce attack. Instead of giving the Maxo player a static number to beat I preferred giving the mouse player an active chance to escape by having both roll against each other. Some factors like hiding mentioned above or spending some items can affect the outcome of the roll.
Search: Mice can search the streets for clues. What they find is randomized.
Interact with various citizens of Grand Central: Humans are mostly off-limit (I made two exceptions for the Clue Givers though here too took more of a Tom and Jerry approach where humans are only seen from the animal’s perspective). The type of interaction is defined by the Encounter and the Clue Giver cards. The Encounter cards usually give a couple of options to choose from and then require to roll for the outcome. The Clue Giver cards give the option to try to convince one of the inhabitants to give you clues about the whereabouts of the last five cheeses. Here the action is defined as a “convince” action and the outcome dependent on a roll.
Resolve Encounters: I mentioned that I wanted the obstacles to be inspired by real dangers like poison, traps and traffic. These random encounters are also resolved with a dice roll and usually have a binary success/failure outcome.
Use the Walkie-Talkie: This is the most blatantly unrealistic action for mice but it fills an important role I mentioned in my first blog: co-operation. Besides providing a logical explanation for the mice’s ability to communicate and strategize, the walkie talkie is also used as a way for players to help each other by using their action to add their roll to another mouse’s roll. I’ll go into more details about the use of the walkie-talkie to enhance cooperation in another blog.
I briefly considered giving the mice some high-tech devices to introduce more of a “Mission Impossible” feel but much prefer the simpler retro feel of the walkie-talkies. From a narrative standpoint I imagined the mice scrounging up parts from a scrapyard to put together these simple (yet still effective) devices. (Purely narrative background, not an activity in the game though it opens the door to one for sequels of the game). This introduces the notion that mice have at least some very basic technological skills which also justifies the existence of trackers and gives me some options for the final confrontation with the evil mastermind.
You may have noticed that most actions are resolved through dice rolls. I’ll talk about the role of randomness, chance and strategy in the next blog but know that this was a conscious decision balanced with the players’ ability to strategize and improve their odds.
Exercise 3:
Take some of your favorite games and look at the actions players can take and each game’s end goal. Do the goals have anything in common? Can you think of a different goal for one of these games while keeping the same actions?
Share your thoughts on this exercise and if you enjoy this series you can support my work at https://ko-fi.com/pixeldorian. See you soon and stay safe in the meantime.
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