As we did desktop habra game and what rake at the same time caught

Developing a board game is almost as fun as software , plus you can touch it later. Under the cut - the promised story development, a bit non-trivial things, process and rake.

The idea of ​​making a game with Habrahabrom came at a conference in the summer when I first saw Bumburum live. Actually, the principle is this: in our line there was a lack of something good economic, and I had long been curious about this niche. This is how “Startup” appeared (here is the topic about the game itself ).
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Introductory

The niche stood gapingly empty: in the domestic and western market there are no banal good IT games or simple economic games with a small entry threshold. Five years ago a collectible card game about the duel of “white hats” and hackers was released, but did not win popularity. Nobody is doing straight specific IT games, because many people still see IT specialists as an admin with a beard in a stretched sweater, sitting in his nest hugging a box of beer and playing in the MMORPG, which excludes desktops, girls, solvency and positive in general .

Now we look at economic games. “Monopoly” is too simple, and the rest is geeky and has such a high entry threshold that you can’t play in an unprepared company (for example, in an office after work). There is, of course, the magical "Kuhandel", but he is German and not very popular. In recent years, Energoset came, but with it another slightly ridiculous bug - it does not fit into the standard domestic trade cabinets, which significantly affects its sales. Well, plus, as it turned out, for some reason this is a women's game (although the tender for the power station is the last one where I expected to see girls).

Finally, I wanted to make a normal game for my own workouts. The most important thing in our work (and in general, in business) is the skills to agree, explain, organize joint work, delegate, outsource on time and generally make competent decisions on a project. Yes, we love “Mafia” and “Overboard!” Very much, but in pure form there are almost no contracts.

With such input data and a preliminary agreement with "TM" I started making the game.

Concept selection

The initial concept was the idea to draw a large playing field in which such giants as Google, MS, Apple and so on would be located, and make slots for players' enterprises near them. For example, they created a speech recognition start-up, built into a slot near guglofonov and iPhones. They started their accounting company - you serve a couple of other small companies and, for example, at some point you are doing an audit for MS. Something like the first wireframe of the field:



It turned out too widely and incomprehensibly from the point of view of mechanics. There was still a question of production: the field turned out to be at least A3, which makes the game very expensive (the field itself costs a lot of money + make sure it is of high quality in Russian conditions + a big box). The field had to do less. The second concept is a game about bloomers and applications for mobile platforms.

Later came the idea of ​​a new ecosystem:



Here [+] are slots for any projects. Profit was supposed to be created by connections between projects: the more connections (customers) you have the better. This version I prototyped on a huge board in our negotiation and special prototyping maps that we produce for developers. On this day, a new employee came to us and slightly fueled from the madness occurring right in front of his eyes: I was surrounded with paper and pencil and insanely drew circles.

In the end, after a quick assessment, it turned out that the most buzz was just separate projects, not embedding into an ecosystem. The field, in fact, gave 20% of the buzz, the remaining 80% were just cards. At this stage, I decided to abandon the field and began to work on a new direction.

Study of the main topic

The new version has retained the “project feature” system, added free projects with the ability to monetize them later. Much later it turned into a system of two types of cards: a project and a feature. A project is a burning big task, a feature is a small, perpetual piece that brings in small stable money, a way to monetize a project.

At this stage, real prototype maps were needed to test basic ideas. The first part - projects - we quickly added, simply passing through the companies of Habr and seeing who does what.

Then it was necessary to decide what to do with the staff . At first, I saw this part of the game as a stack of employees of three professions that differ in different skills and salary. At about the same time, we had a project about a musical group in which I applied this engine. After the pretests, it became clear that the idea is good as an independent game about HR, but is not needed in the economy - again, returning to the basis of the buzz, tasks should revolve around projects.

On the other hand, individual cards of 4 types of employees could not be included in the game: they would take too much attention and take up a lot of time in game mechanics. Making a deck for only 4 different cards is somehow bold. The idea immediately appeared to mix them with other cards. This is how the concept of a general deck appeared, with a lot of things inside. Again, conducted tests. It became clear that the deck should be divided into two: projects and everything else. Launched another test session. It turned out to be optimal to divide into 3 decks - projects, situations and fakapy (by the way, fakapy were called that way until the last, but just before the release, they had to be renamed as “incidents”). At the same stage, employees were brought to the card of opportunity.

For fakap maps, stories were needed. Then I created a question in Q & A about what happened and with whom, and immediately received a bunch of nice incoming data. The situations were altered to the game, plus I remembered the major packs of the last two years. Toward the end of development in the Amazon data center zipped up lightning, which added another map.

Now paper maps with pencil marks turned into such a prototype:



We printed the whole deck and went to conduct field tests with real live people. Such tests are done in two iterations: first with those who understand the topic, but are not related to the development (for example, sellers or operators), then with real people from the street, who even mention with difficulty “Monopoly”. Both sessions went well, but the second showed some interesting things.

Firstly, at that time we used counters to mark the deadline and to complete the work. The players were at times more convenient to put checkmarks with pencils on the cards. We figured: to make maps on which you can write with a marker or pencil - or make a couple of hundred markers - these are two big differences. 250 counters on the Russian market meant that the game could not cost less than 1,700 rubles later, which is not very good. It is clear that dense cards with special coverage also increase the cost of the game - but if the players themselves try to write, then we must meet, especially since there is a simple and logical possibility. At first, the markers were chosen.

Secondly, we then had two circles: first, maps, then work. Players always on all tests intuitively tried to distribute the work on their turn. This caused difficulties with resolving maps of situations where work was required (I already did everything, and then my opponent throws me a surprise — not good!). Deciding not to go against human nature, we simply cut out all the cards of opportunity with “checkboxes” that were played against opponents. This greatly accelerated the gameplay and at times simplified the explanation of the rules.

Approximately after that I went to Habr to show a prototype. From the side, it looked like a lot of cartons with printer printouts pasted on them, a bag of “Overboard!” Instead of coins, A4 sheets with slopingly drawn “I” cards and other delights of “napkin” solutions. Burum and Alexey surprisingly quickly grabbed the essence of the game, and began using different strategies on the very first move. This confirmed that the logical nature of the game is intuitively perceived by everyone for whom our topic is close.

Yes, one more. At that time, I-cards were offices and included seating for employees. Payment of office depended strongly on the number of employees, plus there was a job of a tmlid. Here is the largest office:



There were only 3 offices per game (different), so the one who occupied the larger one could grab more buns and even sublet it (which is important with 5 players). There was also information security, accounting and other things that are needed for the normal operation of the unit. On the subsequent optimization cycle, it became clear that all this, again, did not completely fall into a normal game, and the number of unnecessary actions in game mechanics outweighs the possible fan. As a result, the offices became universal, only backup remained from the “integrated” projects, the team leader left. On the same maps, we put reminders with the order of the turn, because on the tests, many preferred to keep them near themselves.

After all these movements, we went to the tests again, but now amongst ourselves in the presidium of the company. The buzz from the tough competition was unforgettable.

Then we went to balancing tests: we threw out “offensive” cards (such as “destroy the project” that interfered with the gameplay), checked various combinations of starting cards, honed the card-taking system during the game (the first one assumed that the cards were taken only after the project was completed, but 3) at once, adjusted the terms of different projects, considered the criteria for victory and checked all the calculations in practice. At the same time it took more to simplify the game mechanics due to a number of changes on the maps. In the same balancing tests, the rule of “throwing out” coins during a pack was born - otherwise the contract “it’s because you need it more” took a lot of time. So there was an emotional moment, bluff and liveliness - in general, we took the rule to the final version.

Design

The maps initially looked weird. We made rough prints that were used for prototype covers. Most of all I was afraid that they would enter the final version, so I immediately took up their changes.



We decided to go to the pencil style. Here is an illustrator completed the task “draw a computer with smoke”, which immediately burned you on a standard theme (by the way, we later added his mistake to the mask show map). Then he quickly recovered:



That was originally intended to print.



After this renderer, it became clear that only text typesetting is a task so nontrivial in the RF that it is normally very difficult to solve it. I can only say that the final edits occupied three pages and were very pleased with our layout designer. Like, he had a desire to kill people.



As can be seen from the figures, we then had two problems: icons of work (then we thought about counterfeiters with the same icons), and icons of money. By the way, what is our currency, no one still knows - everywhere it is said either about “profit”, or the icon itself is drawn.

With coins, we went through three stages, until we drew the yellow ones. Here the situation is generally beautiful: all illustrators and designers know how a coin should look. These are two branches on the sides, face value and all that jazz. But it was completely wrong. I just called my friend Timlid and asked him what were his associations for the word "coin". He immediately said that it was necessary to break a brick with his head. Everything became clear: it should be just yellow circles, as in "Mario".

Options:



Then the glider is the marker of the active player:




The box turned out to be an interesting topic: I wanted something in the spirit of XKCD, but, as it turned out later, thanks to the community, our illustrator simply took and circled various pieces of different comics. For what already otgreb, by the way. We have withdrawn a part of the print run for the replacement of the boxes, now the images differ from the work of Rendell quite strongly. I think it will still change in the direction of hardcore, for example, I really want to write there something really compiled.

It was necessary to write around the box only with hands: after two attempts to explain that the “handwritten” font was not needed, we found a girl with a pleasant handwriting, she made the callouts and wrote the name of the game.





In this place the coder lost his screw, which made it necessary to redo it from memory.



The following circulation:


Composition in evolution:




Already later (in almost two weeks of tests) final versions of the design appeared.

rules

The store has a pair of Agricola games (farmer’s simulator), with more than 400 components, including various resources and maps. Understand these rules, even clearly and simply written for hours. My personal point of view is this: the rules should be as simple as possible, and the game as deep as possible. I do not believe in a friendly interface with a 500 page manual.

Here I had the good fortune to observe the professional deformation, just connected with the rules in the IT environment. The symptom is called RTFM first - a person first reads the instructions, then unpacks the device. Of course, this is correct and wise: I also read the instructions for the microwave before switching it on. But it always prevents quickly enter the game.

Accordingly, the rules needed:

• Shrink to the limit, leaving only useful.
• Structuring under "sit down and take steps" to speed up understanding.
• If possible, shrink more.

Here the situation is like with the interface - the more things are understood intuitively, the better. The more learning lies on the interface itself, and not on the rules and instructions - the easier it is for the player. If there is an opportunity to shift difficult moments to the mechanics, plus making sure that the person does so intuitively by default is good. Above, I described how we put this into development.

The most important element of the instruction were drawings with callouts. They allowed to give information very densely without unnecessary complications. The rest was a trick.



Plus we did not describe a number of unobvious things, hoping that the players will find them themselves. Example - in theory, you can hang your feature on the project of another player.

There are a number of points in the rules that are not described in detail: for example, the system “do it as far as possible”, the priority of prohibiting cards over the resolving ones and the list of terms. Here, I confess, I forgot a little about the almost manic passion for the accuracy of the wording of any person who has ever dealt with the code. Nevertheless, practice has shown that almost everyone understands how it should be. I repeat, I am against the complication of the rules: it is better to leave players free. For those who want to know everything, we have prepared a FAQ.

Production

All components are standard, but the main issue of this stage was the execution of maps: either a matte surface and pencils, or gloss and markers. I didn’t fully believe the production, which asserted that pencils are cool. Then my colleague Tikhon brought a set of glossy cards and a set of matte ones with a special coating for comparison. Matt, of course, looked cooler at times.

It remains to conduct a crash test:

Here is a pencil and a map before the test begins (more precisely, right after the first game, you can already see it in a pencil):



The technique is ticked off with pressure in each cell and washed, then again (50 cycles), then 10 cycles each - just paint over the cells and erase. Total - 60 rewrites of one cell, which corresponds to about a hundred batches.

This is how the eraser looked like after that. There were no traces on the map (I was expecting dents characteristic for a pencil - but no!)



Now check the pencil - crazy shading and erasing 400 times, so that with a margin.



There are no traces on the map, but the pencil has become blunt. By the way, this is what saves the card - only the first 3-4 rewrites are dangerous, then everything is type-top.



Then we poked around with markers - erasing them turned out to be unexpectedly uncomfortable. The result - pencils and frosted cards. Production immediately counted only one pencil in the set, I had to specially note that at least two were needed.

About sales

The production process looks like this: all components are prepared for printing, then the “combat” printing is ordered all at once. When all the components come to production, the assembly is done, then the boxes are shipped to our merchant warehouses.

Selling the game was planned from December 7-14. Unfortunately, for several reasons, the order for cards in the printing house was delayed, which is why the game actually arrived at stores only in the last days of the month.

On New Years, storage capacity is, for the most part, used for popular games. For example, up to 200 “Jackals”, “Activity” or “Monopolies” can be sold from a single store per day - respectively, they need space. The fact that “Startup” will be sold “from scratch” at once a lot looked strange, so they were brought to the stores by 20-30 pieces. It was more in the online store, but its warehouse was devastated 2 hours after the release of the topic about the game home. The game in real stores ended in the evening, and even the open showcase boxes were taken away, where the demonstration took place.

The next day, the quota for the number of games in the warehouse was increased, and the car that delivered the boxes passed.

In Petersburg, the story evolved according to a different scenario: the game was in an online store, but it immediately flew away into real ones. Man 5 of the stubborn brought the sellers to hysterics, just checking the store every day on the way to work or back. Now, fortunately, we have stockpiled there.

_{Just in case a pair of purchases hints:}

• _{If you see the game available in the store, you can postpone it to the reserve for a day by phone. Open boxes from the storefront are not reserved.}
• _{If there is no game in your city yet, you can call and leave a pre-order (or place an order through the site as if the game were, then a pre-order will be automatically generated). Pre-order does not oblige you to anything: they will simply call you and say that there is a game. Tasks are processed in order of FIFO - if you left earlier, and there are few boxes, your priority is higher.}
• _{A small gift: a discount on the “Startup” for those from Moscow and St. Petersburg who read this far. The secret word is " Habrahabr ". Valid until the end of May.}

References:

• Rules ( PDF , 5 Mb).
• The page of the game in Mosigra. Description, a bunch of photos, prices in different cities, the availability of stores in real-time, discussion.
• The first topic is about the game.

Summary

At first there was a hell of a difficult game with a sea of ​​possibilities. Step by step, mercilessly thrown away all unnecessary, not creating a buzz. The result was an easy (if you are familiar with IT) and a deep game in which you do not need to think about mechanics, but you need to deal with the gameplay and opponents themselves. When we felt that there was no place to simplify further and pressed still - only then it hit the market.