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Game designThe card game version of Find the Treasure has an interesting background that well illustrates my creative/chaotic process. The current Game Crafter contest Hook Box Challenge was using their new 18 card hookbox and I had considered submitting a card game version of Turn of Time (which is basically a retheme of Iconoclasm - the Card Game). However, I thought a game of laying and flipping cards would be too simple and abstract for the contest. An unexpected sales of Turn of Time almost made me reconsider but I still wanted a meatier game. How about a game where you lay cards to build a map instead, similar to Akrotiri? On a Thursday evening, during a floorball session and with only three days left to the deadline, the idea began to form in my head. Cards could be played either as maps or as clues, showing the way on the map. But wouldn't players just build their own routes? Well, what if the routes all starts from "holes" (cards spaces never filled) and where routes are followed in turn order. The turn order could be based on pass order, hence creating a tension between passing first (and take treasures first) and passing last (and decide starting points). That would add a turn order struggle in addition to the map/clue card management. With that, I thought the game was interesting enough to pursue, not as Turn the Time - the Card Game but Find the Treasure! - the Card Game. I then spent the Friday evening drafting rules and making art, mainly reusing art from Find the Treasure. Still, I thought the game lacked some action and when I realized that you could use shards as well, new ideas emerged. During a jogging session, I thought of how to make the map more dynamic and the solution was the addition of pirate flags as movable starting points. By letting the players choose between different starting points, altering them and exchanging used clue cards with new ones, I suddenly had a a GAME not only in the first "map" phase but even more so in the latter "treasure" phase. The rest of the day was spent completing the all the cards and rules, before leaving for a dinner. Some final details were modified on Sunday morning (thankfully, so that I could get the game out of my head during the following chess game) and I could then spend Sunday evening preparing the shop page, the print and play documents and the draft game video. Find the Treasure! - the Card Game also got a solo version, something that is increasingly popular in today's board games. As a player, I'm not a fan of solo games where you play against mechanics rather than opponents (although I did add solo versions to my small puzzle games Iconoclasm - the Card Game and Turn of Time - the Card Game). However, the contest encouraged games with many different player counts and I realized that the same rules could be used for solo play as well so why not? Three days' work is way too little time for designing a game, even a small one like this, but the deadline helped getting the idea out quickly and find the simplest solution at all crossing paths. Nevertheless, subsequent testing revealed that the game was solid enough for the contest and almost reached the semi-finals in spite of the huge competition (130+ games). Find the Treasure! - the Card Game would definitely be revisited and further worked on in the future! The opportunity to do so came some time later, when Ravensburger invited to online game inventor days, where one of the many categories was family games. Find the Treasure! - the Card Game was simple enough for a family but would need to accommodate more than three players. It would be simple to add more cards but I couldn't just duplicate the existing cards, since this could create a loop where a player uses two similar cards to go back and forth to pick up gems every turn. Instead, I found the inspiration in an old rule question that asked whether diagonal moves were allowed. They weren't in the original version but why not add cards with diagonal movements in the new one?It would be a simple addition but how should a diagonal move be evaluated (in terms of found gems) compared to straight moves? To answer this, I first had to calculate the number of potential gems per card and board position, e.g. a pirate in the corner can find gems in two directions with a straight card but only one gem with a diagonal card. Then I had to set the gem to be found for each card. The result was the following:
The table shows that the different cards have the same difficult order both on a small board and a large board with one exception: Diagonal 2 is easier than Straight 3 on a small board but more difficult on a large board. Also the differences aren't that big so perhaps the two should find similar gems (as should perhaps Diagonal 1 and Straight 2)? I finally decided to keep six colors instead of four to get more variety but let the similarly difficult gems be similarly valued. Game components
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