Early Days - Part One "Figuring out the Basics"

I wanted to talk about the card game back in the early days. As it's been over a year since Jeff and I started working on Perfect Stride: Cross-Country, my memory of those times is getting a little foggy. Despite this, I'll do my best to pull some of those old details out of my head and onto this blog.

Naturally, as with many things, the game started out as an idea. There were several times where we thought "aha! This is it!" and away we'd go full-steam...only to discover a problem. Gameplay logistics were the main sticking points. We were cutting some new ground with this card game; it wasn't closely based on any other specific game so we didn't have a tried and true template to work from. Rather we referenced bits and pieces of gameplay elements from other games we'd played and from our own vision of how we thought things should work considering the experience we were trying to emulate. Two other resources that have definitely been invaluable are Board Game Geek and Board Game Designer's Forum. Thanks to everyone there who has posted such excellent info!

Here are some examples of things we had a tough time figuring out:

Our card game is essentially a race across country on horseback. You jump obstacles along the way...how do you represent that? Do you use tiles? Do you lay the cards out all at once, or one at a time? Face-up? Face-down? That kind of thing.

Another element we struggled with was how the rider order was represented during the course of the race. If you were in first, but then dropped back to third, how would you know? We tried a bunch of things such as using charts, placing a token amongst the jump cards, etc. After a lot of trial and error, we eventually figured out a system that wasn't confusing (unlike our earlier versions).

We also struggled with trying to inject some strategy into the gameplay. We definitely didn't want this game to be all about "luck of the draw". We wanted the players to have to evaluate each situation and choose a best course of action.

Strategy does add depth to a game, but on the flip side of this a bit of chance can really spice things up and keep you wondering as you draw that next card. As this was a racing game, we didn't want the players to get too bogged down pondering their options. That would detract from the idea that you were all moving at high speed over terrain in a dash for the finish line.

These are just some of the many things we needed to figure out as we developed out initial idea into something fun, functional and richly thematic.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the "Early Days".