Design Workbench

Design Objective

The goal of going micro is to drop the game down to its bare essentials in components and rules while keeping the essence of the game. I’ll start by dropping the card count down (assuming 2 players) to:

• 18 = Minimum for the player grids.
• + 3 = A trade row of 3-5 cards (depending on player count, maybe n+1)
• + 3 = A few cards that are taken out of the game to hide some information; hopefully, making it more than a puzzle and keep it interesting.
• = 24 Total cards.

Now let’s see how that meshes with the card characteristics:

• Every card has a point value, but the 0 and “Treasure”/Wild (-3) cards stay in the game.
• All point cards 1-x have an action.
  • Options for Point Value – Action card combination.
    • Coincident Value System: Action ranges in scope/value coincident with Point Value. Lowest point cards, highest value, have the highest value actions. Since this game has negative scoring, I will start with this option.
    • Counter Value System: Action ranges in scope/value counter to Point Value. . Lowest point cards, highest value, have the lowest value actions. This is the likely eventual outcome since it balances the two values a card may have so that all cards are attractive – there are no cards that are a bad draw.
    • Some other pattern or arrangement based on playtesting.
• Potentially: Cards can change orientation (square cards or tiles).
  • This allows actions that change card orientation.
  • This may change the actual value of the card or just how it is scored.
  • Keeping this in mind, but not implementing at the outset.

That allows for:

• Point cards 0 – 6 in 3 colors. (21 cards)
• 3 Wild cards.
• = 24 Total cards.

Setup

1. Deal 3 cards to form a “Trade Row.”
2. Players take turns drawing one card from the “Trade Row” and replacing it from the stock to a total of 3 cards drawn.
3. Deal 6 more cards face down to each player.
4. Players arrange their cards into a 3 x 3 grid however they want.
5. The 3 cards forming the Trade Row remain between the players.
6. The remaining 3 cards in the stock are set aside without looking at them. They are out of the game for this round.
7. Optionally, about 12 “lock tokens” are placed near the trade row.

Play

The basic rules with some options to try are:

• Each player in turn does his choice of one of the following actions:
  • Reveal a card.
  • Conceal a card to use its action. (See available actions below.)
  • Lock a card, a row, or a column. (Or a diagonal?) Your choice.
    • This can be designated by turning the card sideways or setting a lock token on the card(s). Since card orientation might be introduced as important later, I am using the lock tokens.
  • An option to try later: Unlock a card, a row, or a column. (Or a diagonal?) Your choice.
• The start player switches to the last player in each turn.
  • This provides the opportunity to play action combos that compound and/or protect the results.
  • This may effectively reduce this to a 2 Player game only.

Additional rules:

• Locked cards cannot be manipulated by either player.
  • However, concealed cards that are locked will be revealed and scored at the end of the round.
• Wilds – Score Options: (in order of preference and testing)
  • Option 1: (but may be too powerful)
    • Count as any color/suit.
  • Option 2:
    • Count as any number only.
  • Option 3:
    • Count as -3. (Like the Treasure cards in the base game).

Actions

The initial Action descriptions and Point – Action combinations are below. I am starting with basic actions, but there can be further changes (e.g., a Reveal Action may become a Reveal or Peek Action).  The rank of Actions is estimated and may prove to be different based on playtesting – due to unexpected uses and possible combos.

Points	Action on Card	Player Affected	Basic Type
6	Reveal a card in any player’s grid.	Either (+/-)	Reveal
5	Reveal two cards in your own grid.	Self (+)	Reveal
4	Trade a card in your grid with the Trade Row. Initially, the card must be revealed, but also try concealed cards and leave them at their current state (revealed/concealed) in the Trade Row.	Self (+)	Trade
3	Swap any two cards in your grid.	Self (+)	Move
2	Force another player to trade a card with their choice of card from the Trade Row. Initially, the player forcing the trade can designate the card to trade, but also try allowing the affected player to choose.	Other (-)	Trade
1	Trade a designated card with another player. The player taking the Action gets to select both cards.	Self (+) Other (-)	Trade
0	At this point I am keeping this action open. It is also worthwhile trying to keep these cards face up, by not having an action. There may also be other actions that are worth trying out.

There is still room for another action or two to replace one or more of these. As in the original Nines Makeover, I want to look for moments in playtesting when the player thinks, “I wish I could…” Alternately, if the cards are symmetrical, new actions can be related to changing the orientation of any card in any grid. In the back of my mind I see a possible future for this design where the values of the cards are represented by patterns rather than numbers and a row of the same cards with the same orientation is absolutely obvious and pleasing.

End of Game

• Once one player has revealed all cards in their grid, their round is finished.
• The other player(s) gets to take one more turn.
• The other player(s) reveals any concealed cards.
• The round is scored.
• The player with the lowest score wins. (Still using low scoring model for now).

Glossary

Since I have scrapped the theme, there is less to report here, but I also want to change the definition of “Set” to be consistent with typical card games.

• Action: The action described on a card that can be enabled/activated by concealing the card.
• Coincident Value (System): Lowest point cards, highest value, have the highest value actions.
• Collection: Cards in a row or column (and optionally diagonal) that are all the same color.
• Counter Value (System): Lowest point cards, highest value, have the lowest value actions.
• Grid: The 3 x 3 grid of cards in front of each player that acts as their hand.
• Lock(ed): A card that is prohibited from any further action by any player.
• Set: Cards in a row or column (and optionally diagonal) that are all the same number.
• Single: A card that is not part of any Set.
• Trade Row: Three cards between the players that are used initially to draw a starting hand and that remain throughout the game to be traded when an appropriate Action is used.

Scoring

• Wild Cards: Wilds count as any number or color desired when scoring any set or collection.
• Sets: Cards in a set score 0. A set is any row or column (and optionally diagonal) all of the same number.
• Singles: Cards not in any set score their point value (0 – 6).
• Collections: Any collection of all the same color in any row or column (and optionally diagonal) scores -3.
• Locks: Locks have no impact on scoring. (I don’t anticipate this changing, but have them listed here in case there is cause to change this.)

Playtest

Prototype

Here is a great use for Uno cards – one might say a better use for Uno cards. I separated out cards from an Uno deck that match the stats for this game (3 Wild and 1 each of 0 – 6 in 3 colors). I printed stickers that describe the actions for each card and affixed them to the appropriate cards. I added 15 black tokens to represent locks to complete the components. As mentioned earlier, the lock function can be further simplified by turning a card sideways to signify a lock, but I am keeping card orientation open for other possibilities for now and don’t want to train my brain that it strictly means locking a card.

Playing

After the first few plays, it is obvious that this microsizing has turned a relatively simple game into a brain-burner. (The original Nines game could be described as very simple). With the various scoring options, the plan of attack can be very mathy. However, there is still the option of playing conservatively and only using obvious actions, so the game may still be very approachable.

The Draft

Depending on the cards that are turned for the Trade Row, the initial draft is fairly straight forward. There can be some decisions based on:

• Color vs. Point Value: Pick a card with a matching color to one(s) already drawn instead of a lower number that does not match.
• Action: Pick an action that the player can see as useful based on other actions already drawn or generally useful.

Although the typical decision is still very simple, having any decision and a better chance of getting something useful mitigates the luck of the draw.

Grid Play

Depending on what cards are in the grid at the outset, the first few turns might be fairly straightforward; reveal a few key cards in your own grid to determine the best strategy, but they can also be very tricky and highly interactive; go after the opponent’s low point cards to 1) get a lower score and 2) take away their ability to get at your cards.

Switching the first player each turn provides the opportunity for combos which make planning moves more complex and interesting.

More plays and introducing some of the options discussed here (e.g., optional point-action cards, use of diagonals, peeking instead of revealing, exchanging concealed cards with the Trade Row, etc.) are necessary to do a deeper analysis.

Working It Out

So have I made any progress with these changes?

Unmitigated Randomness

• The Trade Row provides some mitigation.
• The Actions that allow trades with the opponent and the Trade Row and swapping cards in the grid provide mitigation.

Few Decisions

• The number of decisions for a player that wants to do the math have jumped up significantly.

Bland

• At this point this game is an abstract, so there is nothing thematically to make it more interesting.
• The complexity and opportunity for combos have made it technically very interesting.

Multiplayer Solitaire

• There is definitely much more player interaction and interdependence (Actions that affect the Trade Row or the availability of desirable cards in the opponent’s grid.)
• It is hard to figure what the opponent will do so it is not like playing against an AI, but more playtesting is necessary to see if dominant strategies emerge.

Game Length

• The limited number of cards and the almost automatic progress toward an end make this a bit of a race.

Redundancy

• There is little wasted action in the game now, so there aren’t repetitive, meaningless turns.

Wasted Information

• Essentially every card has 3 properties: Value, Color, and Action (Wilds excepted). All of these have importance in every game.

Wasted Cards (Chaff)

• There are no wasted cards. Technically, I could eliminate 1 set of 3 cards, but at this point having 3 set aside to keep some mystery in the game is a bonus.

Frustration

• There may still be some frustration but it is more likely to come from option overload. We’ll have to watch for an AP problem. Not that anyone (except “That Guy”) would spend all night on a turn, but this is supposed to be a quick game.

Hand Setup

• Even with the draft from the Trade Row at the beginning of the game, this is a very quick setup. All the cards get oriented the same at the end of a hand and all get shuffled together, so a new hand is very quick to setup.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

It didn’t take very many more test games to figure out that a stalemate condition could arise; where Player 1 would perform an Action (or more likely 2 Actions) and Player 2 would immediately perform an Action (or likely 2 Actions) to exactly counter or undo Player 1’s Action(s). Now Player 1 is set to do the exact same thing. Details are discussed a little later in the Grid Play section.

Let’s see how we might fix this issue without creating more rules.

Playtest

Prototype

We started with the same prototype, but changed it in the middle of this test as follows. All Actions were moved to the card opposite them in the value order: The “1” Action became the “6” Action, the “2” became the “5”, etc. So now the Value-Action table looks like this:

Points	Action on Card	Player Affected	Basic Type
0	At this point I am keeping this action open. It is also worthwhile trying to keep these cards face up, by not having an action. There may also be other actions that are worth trying out.
1	Reveal a card in any player’s grid.	Either (+/-)	Reveal
2	Reveal two cards in your own grid.	Self (+)	Reveal
3	Trade a card in your grid with the Trade Row. Initially, the card must be revealed, but also try concealed cards and leave them at their current state (revealed/concealed) in the Trade Row.	Self (+)	Trade
4	Swap any two cards in your grid.	Self (+)	Move
5	Force another player to trade a card with their choice of card from the Trade Row. Initially, the player forcing the trade can designate the card to trade, but also try allowing the affected player to choose.	Other (-)	Trade
6	Trade a designated card with another player. The player taking the Action gets to select both cards.	Self (+) Other (-)	Trade

 

The cards now look like the ones pictured here.

Playing

The Draft

My son and I just played the draft part of the game multiple times trying the two different point-action systems to see how the system affected the strategy:

• Coincident Value: Low point (high value) cards have high value actions.
  • As noted before, the choices are pretty obvious here.
• Counter Value: Low point (high value) cards have low value actions.
  • Wow! The player may set out on a completely different strategy based on the cards that are available and the cards taken by the opponent.

Although the typical decision is still very simple, having any decision and a better chance of getting something useful mitigates the luck of the draw.

Grid Play

An unintended consequence of combos is potential stalemate. Since an action card is concealed to use its action, without the first player switch each round it would take two turns to use that action again and the other player could change their grid to prohibit making the exact same action. With the first player switch, though, a player can repeat the exact same action and the other player can take the exact same defensive action to undo it; thus creating a stalemate scenario. An option to deal with this could be to introduce new rule(s) to prohibit or mitigate the potential: (with some quick observations)

• Temporarily lock a card that has just been either used for its action or manipulated by an action.
  • Prohibits player from using it differently.
• Conceal a card that has just been acted upon by an Action.
  • Assumes that Actions cannot be performed on concealed cards.
  • Slows game play – the objective is to reveal all the cards. Another cause to conceal them draws out the game.
• Prohibit taking an exact opposite action (an undo action).
  • Not horrible.
• Prohibit using the exact same action two turns in a row.
  • Not horrible, but more to track.
• Institute a threefold repetition rule as in chess that immediately initiates the end game when the same play has been made three times in a row.
  • Could be catastrophic to the game – could happen on round 1-2-3.

Ultimately, introducing a new rule is not desirable; especially since one of the main objectives of micro-sizing the game is to trim it down to the absolute minimum rules. So a system approach would be far better. A change to the Counter Value Method for the point-action system may be the key.

New Rules

The objective of this round was to mitigate the stalemate condition without introducing new rules. So far, it appears that we have accomplished this, so no new rules are introduced here.

Working It Out

So have we made any progress with these changes? There are several impacts of these changes with the most dramatic listed here.

• Few Decision: The Counter Value system increases the number and complexity of decisions available.
• Multiplayer Solitaire: The Counter Value system also adds more risk-reward calculation to interactions so knowing what is in the other player’s grid is more important.
• Game Length: The game doesn’t appear to necessarily take any longer, but with more analysis comes more time. More playtests are necessary to determine this impact.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

Now that we have a sense of how the game plays, we are ready to make a few more changes. Although we started with fairly stripped down rules, we are going to try to strip them down a bit more. Previously we only allowed Actions and Locks to be played on Revealed cards. That made it simple to think about what was happening, but also imposed a rule; “the card must be revealed” that may not be necessary and may actually inhibit the game play. So what if the state of the card Concealed/Revealed doesn’t matter?

Is the game more interesting? Is it easier or more difficult to understand, explain, score, play, etc.? What new problems may arise from this new mechanism? Does it reduce or increase the rule set?

Playtest

Prototype

There are no changes to the prototype in this round.

Playing

Opening the ability to affect Concealed cards changes the game significantly.

The Draft

There are no changes to the draft this round.

Grid Play

Some observed impacts of this rule simplification so far are:

• Positive:
  • The first obvious positive impact of manipulating Concealed cards is the introduction of bluffing. It may not be obvious until you play the game, but the first time a player decides to Peek instead of Reveal, the other player is immediately curious and probably nervous about that card.
  • Trades with the Trade Row “open up” a bit. It seems that in most games trading with the trade row goes stale fairly quickly unless a player can force trades. Now, with Concealed cards in the Trade Row, players seem to be more interested in them. They are more willing to press their luck than to trade for a less optimal card.
• Potentially Negative:
  • It depends on what you are looking for in the game, but one of my initial goals was to not make this a “memory game” – one where memory plays a principal role in winning. Manipulating Concealed cards and Peeking at them without Revealing them certainly increases the role that memory plays in the game. Though, each player can choose how much they want to play this way and there remain other viable strategies that don’t require so much memorization.
• Still Uncertain:
  • Although the rules are generally simpler with this implemented, it may be harder for players to understand the simplified rules. Understanding the best direction requires further testing. In playtesting so far the first and common question is, “When I move/trade a Concealed card, do I Reveal it?” Rather than the obvious, “Leave it as is,” the expectation is one of the following:
    • Always Reveal a moved/traded Concealed card.
    • Reveal a moved/traded Concealed card if the card it was swapped/traded with was Revealed.
  • Keeping cards Concealed can increase the total game time. So far it hasn’t been obvious, but more playtesting is required. It will definitely be a negative if the game is routinely and measurably longer and if the race element of the game is negated.
  • Part of the interest in the game is related to programming Actions – setting up a trade with a predecessor Action. With Actions now on Concealed cards, there appears to be less forward planning and programming required. More playtesting is required to see if this is a real change and whether that change is positive or negative.

New Rules

Playing the game now with the ability to affect Concealed cards creates the possibility for more options to the Actions and requires some revision to the rules.

• Obviously, all references to “Revealed card” in the Actions are removed.
• All “Reveal” Actions now read, “Reveal or Peek…” The Player can Peek at the card and then decide whether to Reveal it or not.
• The End Game can now be initiated before all cards are revealed, so this rule must be changed. There are a couple options yet to be tested:
  • Once one player has revealed all unlocked cards in their grid, their round is finished.
  • Once one player has revealed or locked all cards in their grid, their round is finished.
  • Once both players pass on taking any action in successive turns, the round is finished.

Working It Out

So have I made any progress with these changes?

• Few Decisions
  • The players now have the additional decision to Peek or Reveal.
  • The decision to use an Action is more frequent – they don’t require as much staging.
• Multiplayer Solitaire
  • Actions on Concealed cards have opened more trades with the other player.
• Game Length
  • Possibly negatively impacted due to more turns used to Reveal all the cards, but this requires more testing. Locking Concealed cards may mitigate the effect.
• Redundancy
  • More options available every turn means less redundancy in those turns.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

Now with a game that seems to be pretty solid and fun it is time to introduce Orientation as a card state. Orientation is the final (at least that we can think of at this time) card state important to the game. Its importance comes from the original goal of having a purely graphical game in which the scoring is obvious by the appearance of the grid. Along with making orientation important comes providing an action to manipulate it.

Will card orientation introduce more fun and new (desirable) player challenges or just complicate the game with little or no benefits? Let’s see.

Playtest

Prototype

There is one simple change to the prototype this round. We add an action to the “0” cards that allows changing orientation. So the Value-Action matrix now looks like this: (The Conceal/Peek changes from Round 3 are also incorporated).

Points	Action on Card	Player Affected	Basic Type
0	Change the orientation of any card.	Either (+/-)	Orient
1	Reveal/Peek at a card in any player’s grid.	Either (+/-)	Reveal
2	Reveal/Peek at two cards in your own grid.	Self (+)	Reveal
3	Trade a card in your grid with the Trade Row.	Self (+)	Trade
4	Swap any two cards in your grid.	Self (+)	Move
5	Force another player to trade a card with their choice of card from the Trade Row.	Other (-)	Trade
6	Trade a designated card with another player. The player taking the Action gets to select both cards.	Self (+) Other (-)	Trade

You may notice that the updated “0” cards in the image are a new set of Uno cards. This is due to the fortunate circumstance of having to provide my original set to someone else to test. The image also shows a Yellow “0” card which we haven’t used yet and is an indication of what is to come in the next round.

Playing

The initial and expected use of the “0” action is to reserve the action to change the orientation of the other player’s that affects the scoring of 2 rows/columns.

The Draft

There are no changes to the draft this round.

Grid Play

Orientation is intended to be a third priority scoring element - on the order of something like this:

• Numbered Sets = Meat
• Color Collection = Potatoes
• Orientation Collection = Gravy

Some observed impacts of introducing the Orientation Collection so far are: (with a few solo tests)

• Positive:
  • There is an additional option available to the players.
  • There are no bum cards, so each player has points and actions equating to a valuable draw every game.
• Possibly Negative:
  • Potentially introduces too much fiddliness.
  • Based on the current rules, orientation may be almost completely ignored.
• Still Uncertain:
  • The scoring method in general is still uncertain and Orientation may point out some flaws. (Which is positive in progressing the game design, but uncertain in outcome.)

Much more playtesting is required at this time. This should be close to the final 2-player game unless something needs to be thrown out. The scoring mechanism still needs trimming which could affect the whole game play, but here is a good spot to test the smoothness of play further before making those changes.

New Rules

With card orientation now playing a role in scoring the game and with an Action related to changing orientation, some new and revised rules are required:

• Any time a card is Revealed, the player taking the Reveal Action may set its Orientation however they desire.
• Scoring:
  • There are now two types of Collections; Color and Orientation.
  • Collections: Any collection of all the same color or orientation in any row or column (and optionally diagonal) scores -3.
    • We are starting here for simplicity (not in scoring necessarily, but in degree of change from one rule set to the next). We expect that the scoring for an orientation collection if done this way will be less than that for color (probably -1) or to take a different approach to scoring altogether.

Working It Out

So have we made any progress with these changes?

• Few Decisions
  • Orientation provides another option which results in additional decisions and more complex decisions. However, orientation may be an almost trivial aspect so the impact to decisions will likely be small. (Though at least the small impact is in the right direction).
• Bland
  • At this point orientation does not have an impact here, but this element is being introduced to see if a purely graphical card/tile can replace the current numbered cards. If successful, this should have a big positive impact on the “blandness” of the game.
• Multiplayer Solitaire
  • The “0” action allows players another option to affect each other’s grid. However, it still needs to be seen how often that action is used. As with the decisions, the impact is small, but in the right direction.
• Game Length
  • No significant impact.
• Redundancy
  • No significant impact.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

In this round I will try to address two seemingly unrelated observations: The “1” Action (Reveal/Peek at any card) does not get used much and a player may run out of time sooner than they want. According to the major objectives for this game, both of these observations may not be recognizing negative conditions, but they may be more pronounced than desired. Let’s break them down a bit into what is actually positive about these observations and what might be negative:

“1” Action

• “Is there really a problem?”
  • The 1 Point card is intended to have the least valuable action and therefore should not get used much.
• “Yes, but…”
  • It should get used occasionally and I don’t think it is used at all.

Player Running out of Time

• “Is there really a problem?”
  • The game is intended to be a race and quick, so players should run out of time.
• “Yes, but…”
  • Some players (mostly Perfectionists) prefer to have more time to organize their tableau better.
  • Some manipulations just take a few rounds to complete.
  • As long as both players are cool with another round or two, what’s the harm. A player that wants to keep the game a race can still do that.

Playtest

Prototype

There is a simple change to the prototype for this round. Simply add the word “Conceal” on the 1 and 2 Point cards.

Playing

The expected use of the conceal action is to slow down the opponent:

• A player always has the ability to conceal a card by using its action, so buying time this way is always available anyway.
• This action can break an opponent’s combo.
• This action can slow down the opponent long enough to essentially extend a combo across turns.

We saw this action used immediately in the first games played with the new rule, so something is right. Better yet each time it was used the player performing the action had a sense of success and the player acted upon had to modify their strategy. Though the action wasn’t met with frustration or anger, but more of a, ”Nicely played.” After a dozen or more playtest with two different groups this looks like a positive change.

New Rules

The rules changes to accomplish these tests are really simple. Add the word “Conceal” to the rules and on the cards as such:

• 1 Point Card: Reveal, Peek, or Conceal any card in any Grid.
• 2 Point Card: Reveal, Peek, or Conceal two cards in your Grid.

Working It Out

This change was intended to have two specific effects, but have I made any general progress with these changes?

• Unmitigated Randomness
  • Players have a little extra leeway in rearranging their grid to overcome the input randomness.
• Few Decisions
  • There is now a “real” decision for the 1 Action.
• Multiplayer Solitaire
  • The new conceal action is mostly used on the opponent, so keeping track of their grid is now more important.
• Game Length
  • From early playtesting, these changes appear to extend the game on average by about one action.
• Redundancy
  • A player can use the conceal action to break the opponent’s repetitive combo.
• Wasted Cards (Chaff)
  • The 1 Point card plays into more strategies.
• Frustration
  • The “Take That” aspect of concealing an opponent’s card may cause some consternation, but so far it doesn’t appear to be frustrating. However, one playtester admitted that he was sheepish the first time he used the action on his opponent, who also happened to be his wife. Once she had a chance to use it effectively, though, the gloves were off.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

Since it has been a while since I last reported on this project and the game is actively being playtested, I thought I should report on progress even though there are no major changes. I propose a few tweaks here that may cause changes to the rules and the cards, so by the next round I may post all new documents for rules and for building a deck. Historically, I have introduced new ideas in this notebook after they have been tested and changes decided. I am going to break form in this entry and suggest a couple new rules that we will be testing in the coming weeks. With many successful tests behind us, these are in the range of fine tuning. We are not experiencing any major problems with the game.

Playtest

Prototype

The prototype hasn’t changed from the last round, but I have a proposed change this round that may change it for next round.

Playing

The first thing worth mentioning is I have offered to play other games to my key 2-player tester and he is only interested in playing this game. We have played about 30 games (10 sets of 3 games) and are still discovering new tactics and strategies within the game. Surprisingly, one recent tactic is at the setup. We are taking more stock in what the other player has showing in placing our initial 3 cards; anticipating cards to be traded away and others to be unavailable for matching.

Stalemate

With many games under our belts, we have now had one instance when we could have hit a stalemate; each player uses their two actions to counter the other player’s turn. The change many months go to allow two actions per turn has mitigated this possibility, but apparently it hasn’t destroyed it entirely. This was the scenario:

1. Player 1 was using a 5: Force Trade with the Trade Row to force Player 2 to trade an important card (one of a set) to the Trade Row. This required 2 Actions each turn – Conceal the card to use its Action then Reveal it.
2. Player 2 was using a 3: Trade with the Trade Row to get the card back. This required 2 Actions each turn – Conceal the card to use its Action then Reveal it. Player 2 did not have the ability to use another card action to disrupt the Player 1 action (force a trade, swap a card, etc.).

Although it is not uncommon for each player to have the necessary cards for this to happen, it just doesn’t because there are many other actions available. However, it was late in the game and Player 2 was ready to conclude the game, but could not get enough actions to Lock or Reveal the remaining cards. Player 1 did not have any other valuable actions and was not happy with his grid.

A rule to call the game after a certain number of repeats could help, but the timing of that call would have been very important since it was the difference of a set to Player 2 and coincidentally an unused Wild. The point swing would have been 8 points for Player 2; the set was of 3’s and there was a 0 in the Trade Row, but it could have been a lot more. Ultimately, Player 1 decided to reveal his last card and force the end game since neither player was advancing.

Point-Action Value Adjustment

As we have been playtesting, we have realized that the action to swap two cards in your grid (the 4 Action) is probably the second most valuable. Meanwhile, the action to force a trade with the Trade Row (currently the 5 Action), even though it affects the other player, is possibly less valuable than even the action to trade with the Trade Row (currently the 3 Action). So a new alignment of Point-Action Value may be in order. We will test this in the coming weeks.

New Rules

Stalemate

At this point, with only one occurrence in many plays in which the players worked it out, I’m not ready to create a new rule to deal with the stalemate. A chess-like “threefold repetition” rule may be necessary, but I would like to avoid that still. It would be better to prevent the condition, so it is on the playtest hit list.

Peek at the Trade Row

Note: There were a few rules changes in Round 5 and as we have been playing another opportunity to simplify has arisen. The new rule is to change:

• 1 Point Card: Peek at, Reveal, or Conceal any card in any Grid.

To:

• 1 Point Card: Peek at, Reveal, or Conceal any card.

This allows a player to use the action to Peek at or Reveal a card in the Trade Row. It also opens up the action to Conceal a card in the Trade Row, but I doubt anyone would do that. However, there have been a few times when a Player may want to know what is concealed in the Trade Row.

Dealing with a Dud Hand

Although it hasn’t happened yet in our playtesting, it is possible that a player could get a grid that does not have any actions that allow manipulating it. There are only nine cards in the game with actions that will move a card in a player’s grid (3 each of 3, 4, and 6 – the 5 moves a card in the opponent’s grid). Fortunately, three of the remaining four point cards that would make up that player’s grid are the lowest cards, so they will likely still get a low score. They would also almost certainly have at least one 2, so they could rush to the end game as they discover their predicament and catch the other player with unmatched high cards. Even so, that isn’t very exciting. Additionally, if they have any Wilds, they may get stuck with them going unused and a 5-point ding to their score.

For them truly to be stuck, the other player would also have to withhold using the 6’s and possible 5’s to trade cards in their grid as well. It just isn’t very likely. However, I am going to test a new rule to help mitigate this remote possibility. Since the Wilds have such scoring power, they have no actions and they have the penalty for non-use. In a hand like I’ve described, though, they are dead weight (with a rope around your neck). So here’s a new rule that we will implement to see if it ever gets used (for this reason or any other):

• A Wild may be traded with the Trade Row as an action.

Although, the intent has always been to take three cards out of the game to eliminate the possibility of perfect information, optionally this rule could allow for trading with the discards. This trade makes 3 more cards available to the player.

This should require a truly desperate player to take advantage of it. This now brings the total cards in the deck that have a move action to twelve (half of the deck). It would take (almost literally) a perfectly awful deal for a player to get no cards that have a move action. Since there are three cards in the Trade Row and three cards out of the game, one player may still get no movement cards. Going back to an early decision in the design, the draft is also intended to mitigate a bad draw of cards. each player will have access to a minimum of five cards through the draft; two in addition to the three they take. So a player has a total of eleven cards available. I would really like the number of cards that activate movement to be at least 14 to completely remove this from possibility.

Alternatively, allowing for trading with the discards brings the total number of cards available to a player to fourteen, assuming the payer gets to choose from them, which eliminates the problem. However, it also could be used to gain additional information about the opponent's cards, which is not the intent and at this point undesirable.

So, the questions is whether this issue is more important to remedy than the actions available on the 0, 1, 2, and 5 (soon to be 3) cards; particularly, if it is more important than including orientation in the game, since that action hasn't been activated in the game yet. A truly bad deal could result in a score of 18 (allowing for trading away a Wild).

Self-Activating

Finally, until now there has been a rule that a card cannot be used to take an action upon itself. Given the stalemate condition discussed earlier and a common desire to break this rule, I am reconsidering this rule. We will test some games with the rule removed to see if it has a positive impact.

Summing Up

So incorporating all these suggestions into the Point-Action Value chart we get: (Green is new, Red is changed).

Points	Action on Card	Player Affected	Basic Type
0	Change the orientation of any card.	Either (+/-)	Orient
1	Reveal/Peek at/Conceal any card.	Either (+/-)	Reveal
2	Reveal/Peek at/Conceal two cards in your own grid.	Self (+)	Reveal
3	Force another player to trade a card with their choice of card from the Trade Row.	Other (-)	Trade
4	Trade a card in your grid with your choice of card from the Trade Row.	Self (+)	Trade
5	Swap any two cards in your grid.	Self (+)	Move
6	Trade a designated card with another player. The player taking the Action gets to select both cards.	Self (+) Other (-)	Trade
Wild	Trade this Wild with the Trade Row.	Self (+/-)	Trade

Working It Out

The new rules to allow Peeking at a Trade Row card and to allow trading a Wild to the Trade Row make a little progress on opening up the game more.  Unfortunately, the discovery of the stalemate condition causes us to lose ground on a few factors:

• Few Decisions
  • Simplifying the 1 Point card Action provides another choice for that action.
• Game Length
  • A stalemate condition can drag out a game.
• Frustration
  • A stalemate condition is frustrating.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

In the last round, I proposed some rules changes to address a couple issues that had come up in testing that, though rare in occurrence, were frustrating problems when they did occur. In this round I will discuss how I have addressed those issues and what appear to be some final refinements. We are nearing the end of this game’s design phase and are at a level of refinement that can only progress through hundreds of playtests by dozens of people.

Playtest

Refinements through playtesting have been slow to reveal themselves because I am now trying to address issues that happen very infrequently.

Prototype

The prototype hasn’t changed from the last round, but I have posted a new set of stickers to make the cards. Remember, these can be applied to a set of Uno cards. This is easier and faster than printing and cutting a set of cards anyway. I bought an Uno deck at a major chain discount store for under $6.

Playing and New Rules

After the last round we had a few open items that I will close up now.

Stalemate

This problem has not come up again in playtesting and some of the changes made open up more actions such that it may be all but eliminated. At this time I am still not implementing a special stalemate rule, but will consider it again when the game development moves into massive playtests.

Dealing with a Dud Hand

This issue still hasn’t happened in our playtesting, but a better resolution/prevention dawned on me during our first playtest after Round 6 was reported. The change is to incorporate a fairly common bad luck mitigation mechanic that actually works well in this game. The rule looks something like this:

• Conceal 2 cards with the same point value to use any available action in any player’s grid.

This is the good old mitigation of; if you don’t have something valuable, you can use two things that are not valuable to mimic the valuable thing that you don’t have.

Self-Activating

For the sake of having the simplest rules, I have conceded on allowing a card to perform an action on itself. This is the case of a card being concealed to use its action and then making that same card the object of this action. The reason that I concede now is that it opens up the number of actions allowable on any grid and in particular may help a player who otherwise has limited actions; particularly ones that allow movement.

Ultimately, this rule is one that needs a lot of playtesting to determine if it has an impact, but we will play it this way for a while and see if there is any difference in ease of learning the rules and game play.

Working It Out

These last changes move the game in the right direction in a couple aspects:

• Few Decisions
  • Simplifying the 1 Point card Action provides another choice for that action.
• Game Length
  • Mitigating a dud hand keeps the game moving along.
• Frustration
  • Mitigating a dud hand eliminates some possible frustration.
  • Self-activation eliminates the frustration of being stuck with a card that needs the action that it depicts. This happens fairly frequently – maybe once per game.

Design Workbench

Design Objective

A theme and a name.

As discussed in the early entries of doing these makeovers, I prefer to start a game design from a theme, but by their nature, these makeovers start with one or more mechanics. Finally, though, I am theming this game as the last improvement for this first stage of development.

There is contradicting advice available in the marketplace of game design ideas about whether to present a game design to a publisher with or without a theme. In this case, I can see that basically, the game is an abstract and any theme is to make it more interesting. Obviously, the theme is not integral to the mechanisms since it is being applied to a mostly completed design. However, I have been thinking about the theme for this game over time and the theme I have in mind is not a wholesale paste-on. I think it fits quite well.

The theme came to me when I had the unfortunate experience of finding a packrat living under the hood of my truck in May 2014. (I don’t drive the truck often, especially in in the winter, as it is expensive to drive and I bought it primarily to tow trailers with horses or ATVs and that doesn’t happen often in the winter).

Playtest

Prototype

Unfortunately, I do not have the graphics skills to prepare a prototype that represents the theme well, but I do have some changes that are an attempt at evoking the theme while maintaining playability. At the same time I will try to apply some colorblind-friendly practices that my Uno-based prototype was lacking.

Working It Out

At last I have entered this game into the games section on the website as “Picky Packrats.” You can read the description and instructions there, but for those who have read this far, here’s the pitch!

The Pitch

In Picky Packrats you are packrats arranging the treasures you have collected in your middens (nests); adding treasures that you find by raiding the house or other packrat middens. You are very particular and want everything "just so." Unfortunately, you, like most packrats are forgetful, so you need to remind yourself of what treasures you have already packed away, while you try to arrange them in your midden to near perfection. When you really like where the treasures are, you can cement them into your midden. Once you or another packrat has either revealed everything or cemented everything in your midden, you compare middens. The pickiest packrat; the one with the most organized midden, wins!

 

Design Workbench

Design Objective

It has been a while since I first did the makeover of Nines to form Picky Packrats and I have played hundreds of rounds of the game as-is. So, why would I change anything? Well, to see if I can make it better. In this design round, we break the game layout out of the box and into a circle. A circle is more reminiscent of the rat midden that our theme is suggesting and it opens the game up to more scoring possibilities.

Playtest

I have played a few full games of 4 rounds each with my fellow expert player to test out the new layout and accompanying rules changes.

Prototype

The prototype hasn’t changed from the last round, but ultimately the game would layout better with symmetrical circular or, better yet, octagonal cards. Circular are easily doable thanks to the ubiquitous Spot It and circular cards are available on Game Crafter. Unfortunately, octagonal cards or tiles just aren’t a thing. Hexagons, of course are everywhere in gaming, but they just won’t do.

Playing and New Rules

The rules are essentially the same with a minor change that has a measurable impact on play and scoring. Instead of arranging the cards into a 3x3 square (really a rectangle with standard cards), the tableau is arranged into a circle of 8 cards around 1 in the center.

Scoring

Scoring changes as follows:

• Any 3 numerically matching cards across the center or around an arc cancel out.
• Any color matched cards of 3 or more across the center or around an arc score -1 for each card in the match. So, -3 for any match across the center and potentially, with at least 2 wildcards, -3 to -8 around an arc.

Simpler Yet Harder

Although the change provides more options and flexibility to overcome a bad deal, it also seemed to make the decisions harder; trying to get more out of the color-matching.

Wilds in the Center

When playing the original game, the first discovered Wild card seems to find its way to the center position. This is even more apparent in the circular layout since the game is basically opened up to what would have been diagonal scoring in the 3x3 grid. However, additional Wilds have more scoring opportunities in the arc.

What’s in a Circle

If I had simply described the change as allowing diagonal scoring, it might seem that would be the same as a circular layout. However, conceptually it is very different. Particularly with the addition of scoring arcs for numbers and colors. Although it is essentially the same thing with a grid, the scoring arc is much more readily understood when it is an actual arc. When we laid out the cards, we placed the cards longways away from the center, but the obvious choice would be to use cards that naturally layout either omnidirectionally (circles) or that fit like a quilt (octagons).

Working It Out

These last changes move the game in the right direction in a couple aspects:

• Few Decisions
  • This change seems to make decisions simpler, but the tendency to maximize the scoring opportunities (which actually minimizes the score), made the game brainier.
• Game Length
  • The games did not seem to last measurably shorter or longer once we played a few rounds and were accustomed to the change. After many plays, I suspect that the average number of rounds will be very slightly fewer and the time per decision will be very slightly longer.
• Frustration
  • The change seems to decrease frustration since there are more choices for matching (3 instead of 2) and color plays a greater role.
• Marketing
  • Octagonal cards or tiles will raise the production cost of the game. Since the cost is going up, though, maybe tiles will feel more substantial and add a tactile value to playing.