Design Diary: Cooperative Deckbuilder

[Jason Waddell]

I'm in the early stages of working on an asymmetrical cooperative deckbuilder. For me mechanics come first and theming last, but roughly:

- one player is the town
- one player defends the town

The Circle of Life

Each card has a battle side (top) and a town side (bottom).



In this game, there is no discard pile. When you play (or discard) a card, it goes to the bottom of your partner's draw pile. Cards you don't play go back to the bottom of your own draw pile.

Tying this idea together is the design that cards tend to be better on one side or the other. Your strong attack card tends to have a weaker economy side, so when you're playing you always have to balance what's good for your role versus the needs of your partner.

Situational Needs

In order to make the choice of what to play (and therefore circulate to your partner) more meaningful, the players will face enemies that need specific answers. Damage in this game is typed, and often a monster's health bar will only go down if damaged by the corresponding damage type. Some monsters even interact with the town's resources. You slow down the Gruncher by feeding him some rocks, and the "Vampire?" has to be finished off by a wooden stake.



The Flow of Battle

In Spire, battles tend to last from 3-7 turns, but that sort of setup makes things really awkward in this kind of environment. What should the battle player be doing when a battle is over? You don't want to punish the players for killing enemies quickly (giving them less economy time)

There are a number of approaches I've considered (and could still consider). Maybe you view it less as a "defense", and let your hero go defeat as many enemies as they can in a fixed number of turns.

The current approach is to have a new enemy (max 3 concurrently) enter battle every turn. Some enemies will leave on their own after some time, and the players can prioritize which enemies to... erm, prioritize.

The Town

The player playing the town is the one in charge of new card acquisition. They'll see at all times an offer of cards that they can buy with the resources they generate. When they buy a card they put it on top of the draw pile of their choice (top of the library manipulation!).





Overall Flow and Unknowns

The idea I currently have is that at various timepoints the town player will select certain buildings to build in the town. When you build a building, you take that building's corresponding set of cards (10-20 cards?) and shuffle them into the offer. Games where you open Blacksmith -> Witch's Hut would play out very differently than Lumber Yard -> Chapel, or whatever. It also allows you to develop some different mechanical semi-parasitic stuff, since you know the matching cards would be in the cardpool.

Still a lot to work on. Some ideas I quite like (the flow of the two decks), some are rough (enemy design) and some are super garbage at the moment (player card design). Have a friend coming over to playtest this weekend, excited but mostly terrified as I'm sure the design will completely fall apart!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

That’s what designing a game is about! I designed some of my own, but never had the perseverance to tweak the bad parts. Some friends of mine have had their games published though, so if you want that, just keep going at it until you hit the sweet spot (or think of a spin-off or a new idea )

 

[Jason Waddell]

That’s what designing a game is about! I designed some of my own, but never had the perseverance to tweak the bad parts. Some friends of mine have had their games published though, so if you want that, just keep going at it until you hit the sweet spot (or think of a spin-off or a new idea )

Oh yeah? Any cool published games I can check out?

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Oh yeah? Any cool published games I can check out?

Sure!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/203238/tricky-dungeon
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/234977/capo-della-mafia
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/344039/sneaky-bastard
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/375411/creepeas

 

[Jason Waddell]

Sure!

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/203238/tricky-dungeon
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/234977/capo-della-mafia
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/344039/sneaky-bastard
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/375411/creepeas

Getting published by 999 games is pretty dope!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Getting published by 999 games is pretty dope!

Yeah, it's very cool. Also a lot of work, though I playtested a bunch of their games, including a bunch that will (probably) never make it to print. Those that do require even more playtesting, tweaking, and iterating than those that don't. That said, how cool is it to see your own game in stores

 

[Jason Waddell]

First playtest is in the books.

Things that went well
Simultaneous turns felt really good.
Purchases going to the top of the deck of your choice is golden. Opened up cool lines of play like: "buy a card, put it on top of partner's deck, play card to make partner draw 2, they use that card, kill a monster, reward from monster allows town to buy additional card".
Turns where we had to help each other (and were able) felt good. Need more of that.
Victor described playing town side as "giving a lot of dopamine". Harvesting mechanic generally worked well.

Things that sucked
The whole town defense side of things. My spire-lite thing wasn't working at all. Needs to be scrapped entirely, need to figure out something different for that player to be doing, and how it interacts with a town-like role.
Enemy design was terrible (expected) and balance of enemies was all over (expected)

Things that had potential
Shared deck was nice but maybe underutilized so far.
Currently lacking in exciting synergies

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Despite having to redesign a core aspect of your game, that's very promising for a first playtest! "Giving a lot of dopamine" is about the best feedback you can get!

 

[Jason Waddell]

With some time in the think tank, I now have two directions I'm considering:

Town and Adventurer, v 0.2

One of the worst things about the first prototype was the damage system. It was very restrictive. Some enemies had to be hit first with fire, then with two ice, then with lightning. This was designed to encourage the players to help each other get past difficult hurdles, but ultimately was kind of feel-bad. I also tried a thing where certain "blocks" of health on the enemies had to be removed at once (e.g. 4 damage needed in one turn). Mostly these two resulted in turns where you just couldn't make any progress.

The vulnerability system did work well though. Certain enemies would receive double damage from certain damage types, and this was fun as the player to leverage. It felt like a reward, rather than a punishment, and you could still progress with other damage types, just less efficiently. So for version 0.2 we're leaning more into this direction.

The other change is that it's no longer a town-defense, but an adventurer who is trying to get through certain environments in a certain number of turns (and early-bird bonuses for finishing early!). This addresses the "number of turns" problem that I've always had in the back of my mind for this type of game.



In the environments, the player will encounter traps, potions, resources, mercenaries, merchants to trade with, and enemies.

One of the comments from the first playtest was that Victor wished the resources between town and adventurer were a bit more connected. Instead of the elemental types of damage from the first prototype, we now have the following damage types:
- arrows
- sword
- fire

The town can craft arrows for the adventurer using wood and stone, or learn recipes to create things like flaming arrows. Flame comes from attacks that usually need wood as an additional cost. And carrots will be used for some sort of hunger mechanic adapted from the old Lord of the Rings cooperative board game.

Arrows introduce the concept of ranged attacks, and there's also a whole jumping mechanic for disengaging from enemies and moving around the map. Victor commented that he wished the adventurer had some sort of resource management like the town had (town had a whole barn system), so I'm hoping the arrows and map will provide a bit of that. Already thinking that maybe the fire stuff will be replaced with magic attacks and a mana bar, but I'm going to run this prototype before fiddling with it more.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The other idea is inspired by ghost kitchens. This is something that popped up here in Belgium in the last couple of years, but more or less a kitchen that will have multiple "restaurant" listings on Uber Eats, and only exist for delivery. The same kitchen might have a classical Belgian restaurant, an Italian one, a noodle bar, and you'll notice it's the same because you can usually get the same desert at all of them.

The idea here is to have a cooperative deckbuilding kitchen. Still conceptualizing parts of it, but the main idea would be that the players (2-4) are each cooking different types of dishes and dealing with their own queue of orders, but they can help each other out by passing ingredients or tossing things into each other's stews or whatnot. As the orders come in your rating will go up or down based on how quickly the tasks are completed. If any restaurant falls to a 3.9/5.0 rating, it's game over for the whole kitchen!

That's the basic idea. I have a few systems sketched out, but I've yet to have that lightbulb moment that really ties it all together. Mostly I'm hung up on what to do about the pans. Are the pans physically objects and have to be passed around the kitchen via card actions? Or do you have a card that represents the pan?

I am really excited about designing different storage mechanics for raw / chopped ingredients.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Play tested Town and Adventurer v0.2 last night. It definitely felt more like a game this time, but the cooperative element felt a bit deemphasized. Part of this was the fact that the first version had no costs on the card, so you could storm off complicated lines of play.

Feedback this time was a bit more vague, but I think Victor had had a long day and his brain was a bit fried.

Probably the next step is to prototype the restaurant concept and see how that idea feels before investing further in this branch.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Tested a new prototype with my wife last night, and it was really fun! (eventually)



It's a variant on the ghost kitchen idea. In this game (2-4 players, cooperative), you're witches brewing up potions for your customers. Only one problem! Each of you has a phobia of one of the four ingredients, and cannot play that ingredient. You'll have to pass them to your teammates, or discard them, or find some way to keep the cards circulating around the table.



When we first started the playtest, it felt a little dry. In my eventual vision for the game, the orders would have varying rewards and penalties based on how quickly you filled them. Do them quickly and you'd get tips, compliments, and card rewards, but if you take too long your restaurant's rating will go down (eventually triggering the loss condition).

I wanted to test the card circulation, so I didn't really develop this part of the prototype very much. But I noticed that in the absence of any "pressure" placed by the game, my wife was just going through the motions. Eventually I got out some dice and said "if any recipe takes us more than 3 turns to finish, we lose the game". All of a sudden the fun was there! She was communicating more, and trying to find more optimal lines. We had tense turns where we had to really cooperate to get an order out the door on time.

I hadn't really considered how much 'context' plays such an important role in the experience. When you think about playing a roguelike, a lot of what keeps you invested is the concept of the 'run' and how much you have invested, emotionally, into it. In Spire, not all the fights are really that fun (I don't think I've ever gotten dopamine from an Inklings fight), but because of the context, the engagement in fun is still there.


Things that worked well
Simpler cards (the split-cards from the town/adventurer prototype were kind of a bummer)
The ingredient phobias. It's much less asymmetric now, but there's still cooperation required
Orders of varying difficulty. Was fun to have some orders that required specific sequencing, and others that you could just dump ingredients into.

Things that need work
The synergies were too underbaked or subtle.
The starting deck needs to give the players slightly more agency. I know part of deckbuilders is that you have a basic deck that you improve by adding better cards, but I think the baseline need to go up.
More exciting cards. I think my card design is too conservative and I tend to design too many cute cantrippy cards.

Open Questions
Should the different ingredients have different mechanical identities (e.g. beetles do discardy things, feathers do pass-y things, mushrooms do memory things)? This can give it a better "feel", but makes it so the deck can't be as "specialized" (e.g. a spire discard deck), since you will need all the ingredients in your deck.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Only one problem! Each of you has a phobia of one of the four ingredients, and cannot play that ingredient.

That's a fun premise!

 

[Jason Waddell]

That's a fun premise!

The potion brewing game is starting to come together.

Had a bit of a weird playtest last night with Victor though. I found it to be a lot of fun, and to me it was the first time things really started to feel like a proper game.

Victor said he didn't have that much fun though, but couldn't really articulate why. Maybe I've made him playtest too many times in a short period of time? I also know deckbuilders aren't so much his thing. I had him play Spire once and he just kind of fumbled through it without putting any effort into reading the cards or what the enemies did, and put down the controller after like 10 minutes. By contrast, I also showed James Spire once and could really see the lightbulb moments where he got excited by discovering cool synergies.

Will show the game to a fresh set of eyes tomorrow and get the first 3-player playtest.

Random Thoughts
The stronger starter decks definitely made a smoother start to the game. We did run into an issue where it didn't feel like the deck levelled up that much by adding cards to it. Definitely a balance to be found there.
Ingredients as card-costs feels like unique design space. I had a few in the last playtest that worked okay. Need to figure out the balance between energy and ingredients as costs.
Made some recipes with hexes attached to them (rules that affect the player making them) that seemed to work really well.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Three player playtest in the books.

I'm at a bit of an impasse about this shared-deck mechanic. It's definitely novel, and reshapes the way things like discard and returning cards to your hand work, because it affects the circulation of cards. The unspoken sub-game is that you are trying to avoid a situation where a player's phobia cards get logjammed in their hand (and deck).

This also requires that, in the card design, a very high density of card effects are dedicated to passing and discarding cards. There's a certain density of these effects in the starting decks (around ~1/3 of cards), and we reached a situation where our deck had a lower density. We had strong cards, but our deck lacked the flexibility needed to keep circulation going.

The end result was our mushroom-phobia player staring down a hand of mushroom cards. Which to me prompts the question:

Is this a cardpool issue, or a systems issue?

One approach is to crank the density of these effects in the pool of draftable cards.

The other issue, is to drop the shared-deck mechanic. I think there can still be passing of cards and phobias, but something like discard is no longer linked to card circulation, as it was before.

Hashing out some pros and cons.

Shared Deck
+ high in originality
+ the idea of 'the cards that you play are the cards the next player will draw' is an interesting play mechanic
+ recontextualizes discard
+/- is a safeguard against degeneracy / infinites
- the card passing (no discard pile) is confusing at first to new players
- it's hard to make the deck feel mechanically specialized and focused
- similarly, hard to design narrow cards, since they will circulate to everybody
+/- without the specialized stuff, harder for the output to scale exponentially. danger of things feeling 'samey'

Individual Decks
+ gives each player more ownership over deckbuilding
+ more familiar gameplay loop to those familiar with Dominion / Spire
+ fewer 'feelbad' moments, and less clunky turns
+ players can build their deck in a specialized way, synergies are more likely to find their partners
- less original
- concerns over passing cards. 'optimal' play may involve one player passing away their cards and building an infinite
- maybe less cooperative?


Probably need to do tests on both. Problem is a bit that the two designs require different design approaches in terms of card design.

My instinct is that the individual decks would lead to a game that is more fun but less original (which I have mixed feelings about).

 

[Zoss]

Why not do both? Have an individual deck and a shared deck with cards that cycle into each as circumstances demand. Card backs being different could even let savvy players count cards--you could make that a feature and not a bug. You could flavor it as the individual deck representing yourself while the shared deck represents what you find. Alternatively, maybe you can't upgrade your deck but you can upgrade your partner's deck to keep that feeling of shared decks while avoiding some of the pitfalls.

It's a ton of fun hearing about this process, thanks for sharing!

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Another way to deal with this problem is to give players an suboptimal alternate action they can fall back on if the cards in their hands don’t match up with what they want to or can do. Ideally it would be something like trading a card from your hand to draw a random card from somewhere so you don’t have to strategize with your fellow players, and you have a way to pitch cards from your hand. Other options would be a wild card option where any card can substitute for 1 of any kind (but you would have to adjust all the values) or, potentially easier to implement, have a number of the cards come with a choice of two elements, so you can always play a card, even if it’s a suboptimal play. E.g. have cards that can be used for either two mushrooms or one beetle.

 

[Jason Waddell]

Another way to deal with this problem is to give players an suboptimal alternate action they can fall back on if the cards in their hands don’t match up with what they want to or can do. Ideally it would be something like trading a card from your hand to draw a random card from somewhere so you don’t have to strategize with your fellow players, and you have a way to pitch cards from your hand. Other options would be a wild card option where any card can substitute for 1 of any kind (but you would have to adjust all the values) or, potentially easier to implement, have a number of the cards come with a choice of two elements, so you can always play a card, even if it’s a suboptimal play. E.g. have cards that can be used for either two mushrooms or one beetle.

Yeah, I had thought about the suboptimal alternative action thing. Two mushrooms or one beetle is also interesting.

One idea I have, and I'm not sure if this is too complicated, is to have the first half of the run be shared deck, and the second half of the run be individual decks.

One thing we noted in playtesting was that the dynamic of "the cards I play this turn are the cards you draw next turn" fades away as the overall deck size increases.

Splitting the run in half would recontextualize a lot of cards in an interesting way. Passing cards becomes less about getting teammates through immediate bottlenecks, and more about pairing synergistic cards with the player who can best leverage them. If, say, Rounds 1 and 2 are shared deck, but 3 and 4 are individual deck, then Round 3 becomes this set-up round, and then Round 4 you would get an explosion of output as your decks become more focused and people weed their phobia cards out of their decks.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

One idea I have, and I'm not sure if this is too complicated, is to have the first half of the run be shared deck, and the second half of the run be individual decks.

Splitting the run in half would recontextualize a lot of cards in an interesting way. Passing cards becomes less about getting teammates through immediate bottlenecks, and more about pairing synergistic cards with the player who can best leverage them. If, say, Rounds 1 and 2 are shared deck, but 3 and 4 are individual deck, then Round 3 becomes this set-up round, and then Round 4 you would get an explosion of output as your decks become more focused and people weed their phobia cards out of their decks.

That is really one you ought to test to get a feel for it. It sure does sound more complicated, and in game design often less is more. The question is whether you want to invest complexity points into this part of your game.

One thing we noted in playtesting was that the dynamic of "the cards I play this turn are the cards you draw next turn" fades away as the overall deck size increases.

Other ways to tackle this would be to introduce ways to get rid of cards, or to make the game shorter. Generally, in a deck-builder game, effects that permanently thin your deck work very well to streamline the game in the later stages. Dominion and Ascension are games that showcase this very well. I'm not exactly sure how hand size works, and whether destroying cards from your hand is going to work, but I'm imagining effects like:

Add 3 mushrooms. You may destroy an ingredient from your hand to add 2 ingredients of any one kind instead.
Destroy an ingredient from your hand to draw two cards.
Choose one - Add 2 beetles or destroy an ingredient from your hand.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Oh, I just thought of a very "simple" default rule. What if you can exchange any three cards for two ingredients of your choice?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Oh, I just thought of a very "simple" default rule. What if you can exchange any three cards for two ingredients of your choice?

I think the way it currently is implemented this would be maybe too strong. Strong is maybe not the right word, but to me a big part of the fun is having to rely on your teammates to get through tough situations.


Maybe in a couple iterations I can post a pdf here if anyone wants to print and play it, probably a bit easier to brainstorm after getting a session in.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. My suggestion is directly at odds with the core game tension you are trying to achieve, I gather?

 

[Jason Waddell]

Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. My suggestion is directly at odds with the core game tension you are trying to achieve, I gather?

Yeah, I guess to me one of the most "fun" things to do is load up a container with somebody's feared ingredient and pass it to them, so they're set for a few recipes. It's a hoop to jump through, but if there's an easy alternative, it won't feel as good to jump through the hoop.

Also, I'm not sure exactly how you intended it (and my early pictures of ingredient cards are probably misleading), but the ingredient cards cost energy.

Ingredient Cards (plus two action/spell cards)



Ingredients (tokens)


When you play an ingredient card, you get corresponding ingredient tokens. These are then placed in containers or cauldrons, or used to pay certain spell costs.

The rule you suggested (probably not what you intended exactly), in the current implementation of the rules reads something like 'discard 3 cards, gain 2 lotus petals', which is very strong given that it's a 'draw 5 a turn' type of game.




I do have some hybrid ingredient designs, but they're 1-or-1 style. The 2-or-1 idea you suggested is super interesting though. Honestly I bet you would have tons of ideas for cool card designs and mechanics. Currently I'm struggling a lot with building synergies and archetypes, much less even getting to the point where one could make glue cards.

I'll make a post with some of the cards that I have designed that I like.

 

[Jason Waddell]

The left card plays with alternate costs. In this game your Potion establishment starts with a rating of 5.0, and you lose the game if you drop to 3.9. The red diamond thingy represents a loss of 0.1 rating, but it lets you "cheat" the major rule of the game of getting around your character's phobia / feared ingredient. It's a simple "life as a resource" mechanic, but it plays well, and spending the group's communal life is also fun.

In theory there could also be an ability (think powers (STS) or enchantments (MTG)) that rewards you for losing rating on your turn to expand the synergy.



A simple glue card that works with the major mechanics of three of the ingredients.

Current 'color pie':
- toads: containers (moving them, being rewarded for their contents)
- mushrooms: drawing cards that have been played this turn (by yourself or sometimes others) or from purgatory (exile)
- feathers: passing cards
- beetles: discarding / purging cards

Likely we need to spill some of these effects into other colors, and usually there are spells (non-ingredient action cards) that can do these things for less efficiency.

The above card works with discarding + return to hand, passing, passing + playing + returning to hand. Lots of ways for your team to get it cheap, but it does have two colors, so potentially two of the players can't even cast it!




Some synergy cards. The top-left card can't be played on its own by anyone, but works with both other cards in the top row.
Bottom row cards also work together.



Random sheet of cards. Top-left one is one @Onderzeeboot mentioned. Bottom left is maybe clunky and too spire derivative.
Bottom middle one is a personal favorite. It's a Treasure Hunt that works with the mechanic that when you obtain a new card, you put it on top of any player's library. So you can stack the deck to turn it into a 0-energy Draw 3 or something with some effort.

 

[Onderzeeboot]

So, do you have a shared energy pool, or does each player have a personal one? And how big is it for each turn?

Also, if I read it correctly, middle right of the last pick costs 1 energy to cast, and gives you both a feather ingredient token and has you draw 2 cards?

Current 'color pie':
- toads: containers (moving them, being rewarded for their contents)
- mushrooms: drawing cards that have been played this turn (by yourself or sometimes others) or from purgatory (exile)
- feathers: passing cards
- beetles: discarding / purging cards

Likely we need to spill some of these effects into other colors, and usually there are spells (non-ingredient action cards) that can do these things for less efficiency.

You could try to identify some amount of generic effects that each "color" gets access to (namely those things you need to make the game work), and then have some more specific synergies shared between two colors? For example, discarding and purging cards are two ways to get rid of cards. What if beetles gets access to both, and e.g. mushrooms gets access to discarding, and toads to purging? You've got one ingredient type that's great at a certain aspect, and two that dabble in it. Likewise, if you can keep toads in bottles, the same is certainly true for beetles!

Some mechanic/card ideas?:
- making another/any one (including you) player discard a card (a way for mushrooms to get access to a card, help others get rid of unwanted cards, etc.).
- cursed ingredients: e.g. bigger reward at a cost; or ingredients that you must play when you draw them; or ingredients that can't be purged or discarded; et cetera.
- preserved ingredients (that come in their own container that you can play in front of you rather than keep in your hand?)
- ways to pass containers around in an easier way than cards in hand
- hybrid ingredients, e.g. feathered toad (can be played as either so very flexible, but two players have a phobia of feathered toads!)
- traps / gathering tools: catch an ingredient and put it in a container as someone else plays it!
- BIG ingredients: play them, they last multiple turns (two, three, something in between?)
- randomness: mushrooms are psychedelic, who knows what you're adding, it could be anything, even that feared ingredient! let's hit the top of the deck and see what comes out! aww.... you accidentally put a toad in that feathers & beetles soup!