20 Days of Prototypes Update – Under the Radar Games

20 days of prototypes is progressing smoothly! I’m 9 days in so far and have made 5 different bite sized game prototypes with the new dev tools. Aiming for 10 prototypes by the end and then the idea is to pick the most promising one and develop it into the next BrainGoodGame!

You can follow along on the discord and Twitter. (Links in the sidebar)

Also thanks for the shoutout by Under the Radar games about Solar Settlers on mobile. Happy to see this game continue to get noticed long after release! You can find the article below.

Stay tuned for an article on Action Funnels as briefly described in the Playfulness article.

Happy Valentine’s Day,

Brett

Under The Radar Games That You Should Play!

Skill Compensation

Something I’ve been meaning to blog about for a long time is a concept I personally think of as Skill Compensation (I briefly touched on it here). Some alternative names for this game property might be Feedback Accuracy, Skill Measurement or Performance Compensation. Let’s take a shot at a definition:

Skill Compensation is the degree to which a player’s performance is reflected in the final outcome of a match. Phrased another way, it is the extent to which “the better player wins”*. 

The skills measured in a game like basketball might include running, passing, shooting accuracy, passing accuracy and decision making ability. In a game like “War” there are no skills measured whatsoever. Therefore War has no Skill Compensation.

In a match of a game that is primarily a strategy or decision making game, a player’s skill is primarily a function of how valuable their decisions are in terms of maximizing their win probability/expected value (“EV”).

Interestingly, in a game like Yomi, for any given game state/turn of the game, there exists a single “best” play in terms of raw EV. However, because the system has both you and your opponent act simultaneously, it is possible to “win” a hand by doing the “wrong” play. Frank Lantz talks about this concept in his article on Donkeyspace. This means that a given turn of Yomi has less than perfect Skill Compensation, if we set aside any value from the skill “reading” or “predicting” the opponent.

Simultaneous action in Yomi. Notably, Yomi still features a lot of depth/strategic consideration possible beyond “reading” or “predicting”.

However, crucially, despite the fact that simultaneous actions tend to lower Skill Compensation, the depth of the game has not necessarily decreased; there may still be the same about of strategic consideration, calculation and skill possible. Even though you might be rewarded for making the wrong move and punished for making the right one, the “right” or “more correct” move or set of moves still exist for players to find. This is also the case for games that feature a significant degree of output randomness, like Hearthstone or Risk. While a given game may feature more or less of either, Depth and Skill Compensation are not the same thing.

Pictured: lowered Skill Compensation.
Cards like this lower Skill Compensation but may actually increase depth, because players may have to contend with more possible future game states.

There are also advantages to adding a system like simultaneous actions to a system. It allows for weaker players to have intermediate successes even when playing the “wrong” move. It tends to allow for the hope of comebacks. And it allows us to tell stories about how we “just knew” the opponent would do that, which can be fun and exciting. Similarly output randomness, or any number of Skill Compensation reducing mechanisms can fuzz up the feedback and also allow for weaker players or players who have fallen behind to have hope. It can allow for a wider range of “valid” or “justifiable” moves, which contributes to playfulness. And variance in a system tends to contribute to a variety, novelty and excitement.

That is not to say that Skill Compensation is irrelevant. Some players may play games “to prove something”, in which case this might be a highly important property. Otherwise, such players may find themselves feeling cheated or having “wasted time” in terms of evaluating their skill/progress. Also, having lower Skill Compensation tends to lower the rate at which players will learn/gain understanding about your system. Whether this is important to you as a designer is a topic for another day. (Keith Burgun has claimed that a fundamental value in strategy games is gaining understanding, but it seems to me to be unclear whether the rate of this learning is important)

One thing I’d like to mention before closing is that games can also give feedback within a match (like taking a tower in DOTA), reducing your opponent’s life points in Magic or fulfilling an objective card in Wingspan. The extent to which this feedback is valid in terms of contributing to your win-rate is also interesting, but beyond the scope of this article.

To summarize, it is absolutely possible to have a game with high depth (interesting decision space to explore) and low Skill Compensation. Varying Skill Compensation can have both positive and negative effects on your game design, depending on what other properties you’re optimizing for (evaluation, learning rate, playfulness, etc). In addition, some players may find one range or another of Skill Compensation to be incompatible with their tastes. 

Let me know what you think, and whether this brings to mind games as examples of extreme ends of this spectrum, but with variable other properties. If you’re interested in games made with these sorts of considerations, especially with an eye towards playfulness, please sign up for the BrainGoodGames mailing list here.

 

* Notably, human performance can vary quite a bit from match to match even in a game that is very high in Skill Compensation, like Chess or StarCraft (there are other human factors like framing, specific preparation, nutrition, intimidation, etc etc). Therefore it might be more useful in some contexts to talk about performance within the frame of a given match rather than talk about player skill as an absolute fixed value, but we can use skill as a rough shorthand for average performance.

Militia 2 is Live on Steam

The first-ever BrainGoodGames sequel! (And BrainGoodGame #7)
You can pick it up here! <<<<<<

Had a lot of fun playtesting yesterday. There is normally some way to surprise yourself by finding out a clever move and clearing boards faster than you thought possible.

Thanks to all the playtesters, family and friends who made it possible.

Special thanks to Keith Burgun for making the music for Push World! It sounds great and fits the mood of the game perfectly!

Rolling in the Reef is Live on Steam! 15% Launch Discount!

Feeling lucky on Friday the 13th? Time to roll some dice baby.

Grab Rolling in the Reef on Steam here! (At a 15% discount this week!)

You’d think making these would get easier, but I think this was the most difficult project I’ve ever made! Super happy with how it turned out, hope you enjoy Rolling in the Reef!

Launch Trailer

BrainGoodGames Site Update! Militia 1.15 Update on Beta!

You can check out the new website here!
www.braingoodgames.com

I’d love to hear your feedback on the functionality and what you think of the design.

There’s also a new Militia patch featuring suggestions from BrainGoodBreakfast live on the beta branch! Patch notes and access instructions are here!

(Not to mention, Militia, and all the rest of the BrainGoodGames are on sale!)

Hoping to get a bunch of re-theming for the dice game prototype done this afternoon to show on tomorrow’s episode of BrainGoodBreakfast. Hope to see ya there!

BrainGoodGames on Sale, BrainGoodBreakfast Episode 3, Theme Poll!

All 5 BrainGoodGames are on sale for their deepest ever discounts on Steam! Great time to jump in or complete you collection!

http://store.steampowered.com/bundle/1514/BrainGoodGames_Complete/

Episode 3 of BrainGoodBreakfast is live now, so you can see footage of the newest BrainGoodGames prototype! It would be awesome if you voted in the poll for the theme! (here! https://www.strawpoll.me/15514756)

SkyBoats Patch 1.03 – “Breezy Mode v2.0” is LIVE

Breezy Mode v2.0 is here!

Patch Notes:
-Rank is now adjusted after 1 win or 1 loss (previously 1 win 2 losses)
-Fixed bug with used goods not refreshing in Ranked mode
-Fixed bug with Compass & a good in the cargo hold

HUGE overhaul to Breezy Mode
This version is fast-playing and more streamlined! Can’t wait for you guys to try it out. I lost 3-4 hours yesterday “playtesting”.

Current Rules Changes From Ranked Mode:

-Goods value only based on quantity for first round (random every round thereafter)-You can no longer sell undemanded goods
-Boats down to 2 (may go back up to 3 at higher ranks)
-Reduced board size
-Removed gold completely
-Maps now cost 1vp (one available at each city/round)
-Upgrades are free at 2/3 cities per round
-Removed refuel from shop
-Contracts are now 3 of the same good
-Contracts are not rerolled each round and are for 3 of the same good
-Moving out of cities does not cost fuel
-All boats refuel up to full each turn
-Wind meter max is now 6 (+1 when 5+ Wind Meter)
-Wind Meter goes to 0 at end of turn
-2 Goods are randomly spawned at the start of each round
-Modified Carrot pattern
-You can now pick up items mid-glide
-Added “goods” abilities to boats as default upgrades
-Reworked a couple upgrades slightly
-Goods can freely be dropped and picked back up in unused holds

Axes and Acres Patch 1.06

The Axes and Acres ‘Spring Cleaning’ Patch 1.06 is LIVE! Changes are as follows:

-Added stats screen to main menu
-You can now use the move box  even with no workers on the board
-Fixed bug where you could deploy a 4th die to a space if you had two reproduce faces on it
-Added feature to highlight spaces that can be targeted by Hunters Hut card
-Added hide/show button to tutorial popup
-Fixed up some wording in the tutorial
-Fixed bug with reproducing too early in the tutorial
-Fixed bug with roads not calculating properly on very complex boards
-Fixed a bug with win streak triggering on 4 wins (now triggers on 3 properly)