The pandemic has led us all in different directions. I found myself developing an unexpected interest in creating a table top game — unexpected because I rarely play them. But like other maker projects, working though the stages of creation, testing, revision, and production are alluring.

At this point the game is completing the play testing phase and nearing being made available to the public in a crowd funding campaign. I will make an updated post when it is available.

Like most DIY projects I wanted to make something that I would enjoy. As someone who doesn’t enjoy unnecessary competition I wanted it to be a cooperative game where a team had to work together to solve a problem, and where team leadership rotated. In this case the theme was a space mission where the team had to negotiate with planets to join their confederation. What each planet needed to agree would be a puzzle to be solved and team members had to put together offers from hands of drawn cards.

The first physical prototype was stickers with some rudimentary clip art attached to poker cards (hard to shuffle!) and folded “planetary packets” that players would open the leaves of as they made offers in a series of rounds.

The first attempt at a play through (with friends) and some further reflection brought out three big problems.

1. I was definitely in over my head in trying to make a cooperative game the first time out. Something mildly competitive would be a must safer bet.
2. The planetary packets would be a nightmare. I would have to come up with a separate detailed and multilayered puzzle for each, and there would need to be a lot of them to keep the game fresh through several play-throughs. Moreover, there would be no way to get them professionally printed at a reasonable cost. They were essentially square envelopes with no glue and printed on both sides. I needed another way to bring variety to the playing experience.
3. I had no idea of how often a player would have a winning offer in their hand.

I tried to deal with the last by coming up with ways of calculating the odds of different hands using random number generators and math simulations but wasn’t very successful. I know many people use Tabletop Simulator to collect this kind of data but I didn’t feel the game was developed enough to be worth making a TTS version of it at this point.

Version 2 of the game addressed the first two issues. Now players competed for points but the game still required collaboration. It would take minor iterations of version 2 and version 3 to find a good balance between cooperation and competition. Secondly, dice were introduced to set what planets needed to get in a successful offer. This meant one simple tile could be printed for each planet and the dice would introduce sufficient variability.

Version 2 was still a handmade affair but with some ideas for the overall look that would be refined as it went forward. Limited play testing with several groups showed that it was a viable game as well as some areas that needed improvement.

As I moved forward with the third major version, I spent time viewing many play-throughs and reading reviews of popular card and dice games for guidance.

I also began researching short run printing houses for games and considering how I would bring a small run of the game into the market. Although there are several companies that will do this, I decided on The Game Crafter to print prototypes. Their capabilities and products also constrained (in a good way at this point) my options for producing a marketable project.

I purchased six prototypes of version 3 via The Game Crafter, with the game now titled Planetary Profiteers. These were sent out for more extensive play testing to distant contacts for honest feedback. The feedback is still coming in at this point but it has been useful enough for small and (hopefully final) revisions and positive enough for me to move forward with plans to finish this up and get it out there.

A final lesson I have learned so far is to start on the next one before the first one is done. I am in a bit of a lull as play testers take their time to get back to me and I am waiting on some new printed copies from Game Crafter. So in the meantime I am on to a paper and pencil test of an idea for a social puzzle. This one will be cooperative and less conventional.