Category: Black Sonata

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Black Sonata: Designer Diary Part 2

To show off the brilliant mind of John Kean, we wanted to share some of his thought process while making Black Sonata. This series of posts are pulled from his Work In Progress thread on BoardGameGeek. Here’s part 2:

ANOTHER POTENTIAL MECHANIC?
30 May 2017

It’s 2am and I’m awake thinking about one of the suggestions posted above…

Say you had ten locations labelled 0 to 9. There are two pawns – one representing you and the other a spy with whom you need to rendezvous. You have a “code wheel” with two circles of card, slightly different sizes, pinned at the centre so that you can rotate them relative to each other. Each circle has the numbers 0 to 9 spaced evenly around the outside, and the top (smaller) circle has a small window cut into it.

Each turn you must place your pawn where you think the spy will go next. Then align the number corresponding to your pawn’s previous location (outside wheel) with that of the spy pawn (inside circle). Now a number is visible through the window, and determines the next location of the spy pawn. If you got it right, you and the spy will be in the same location and a clue is exchanged.

So your challenge is to deduce the pattern underlying the wheel. I’m guessing it will somehow involve modular arithmetic but will need to check that out… (not now – it’s 2am). The game could include several different wheels of each size and you’d choose some combination at random at the start of the game. Maybe there could be more than one window. Maybe the locations would be named rather than numbered, to make it harder.

This could work, I think, as long as the underlying maths is sound. I have no idea if it is yet, but will investigate further…

PROTOTYPE DEDUCTION MECHANIC

OK, I have put together a simple one-page PnP prototype for a deduction mechanism that seems to work (I think!). I have wrapped a simple pseudo-game around it, mostly as a way to test how many clues are needed to make the deduction (it seems to vary, but I haven’t had a chance yet to look at it more systematically).

I am excited because this seems to create a nice “if that then this OR that” logic puzzle that is not just about eliminating possibilities.

NOTE: Do not study the cards and try to discover the patterns or memorise their symbols! This will ruin the deductive element and spoil the game for you.

Please, if you do try it out, can you report back on how you got on. Useful data would be the “suit” of the hidden card and how many clues it took to correctly deduce its symbols. In lieu of that, your score would be almost as helpful. Thanks!

Here’s the link: THIS IS NOT THE FINAL GAME

Meanwhile, I need to start thinking about a theme. I have a couple of off-the-wall ideas, but I need to digest them for a few days (and do some research!). More news soon…

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Black Sonata: Designer Diary Part 1

To show off the brilliant mind of John Kean, we wanted to share some of his thought process while making Black Sonata. This series of posts are pulled from his Work In Progress thread on BoardGameGeek. Here’s part 1:

THE CHALLENGE
29 May 2017

Recently I have been enjoying a range of solitaire PnP games, but noticed that there are very few replayable solitaire deduction games. I love deduction games and it seemed to me there is a gap here. A few weeks ago I posted a thread on this:

Replayable solitaire deduction game – is it possible?

The response was very interesting. At first the consensus was “nope, not possible”. Then it morphed to “OK, maybe possible with the use of a game app”. Then finally a couple of suggestions came out about how it might be approached, using edge-notched cards for instance. Overall, the consensus seems to be that it *might* be possible, maybe.

Well, that’s enough for me – challenge accepted!

I have enjoyed designing games for recent BGG contests, and in this year’s 9 Card Contest, just finishing up now, I set myself an extra challenge as a seed for creativity. In that case it was to design a solitaire deck-builder in just 9 cards, and I’m not sure that the resulting game (Blorg in the Midwest) quite achieved that, but it was a lot of fun exploring the idea with suggestions and input from this community.

So my personal design challenge for this contest is to design a replayable solitaire deduction game (not based on elimination), without the need for an accompanying app. I have been mulling this over in my head for a few weeks now, and I think I have an approach that may work. But more about that soon…

A POSSIBLE MECHANIC?

A few days ago a friend introduced me to Dobble, and like every newbie my first reaction was – how the heck do they do that?! The mechanism of every card having one (and only one) symbol in common with every other card seems somehow miraculous. I had to figure out how it works, and once I did I started to wonder if it might be a way to attack the solo deduction problem I had been thinking about…

Of course, you smart people will have figured out by now that it won’t work. Removing one card from the Dobble deck, you can’t possibly deduce what is on it from the remaining cards without comparing every single one of those cards with every single other one. Which would not be fun. And if there is more than one card that you don’t know then there is no way to deduce which of them is the target card.

But what about if you simplified the number of symbols and added a second loop? Well I’ve been playing around with that on paper and I think I have come up with something that is sort of half Dobble and half Mastermind.

It would use 11 cards, and each card would have three mystery symbols. You’d shuffle the cards and set one aside unseen. Your task is to deduce the three symbols on the set aside card from a subset of the remaining ones. There would need to be another game mechanic for how you earn a clue card, but each time you do you’d get more information on the target card, because each clue would say how many of that card’s symbols are present on the target card.

I think it works on paper. Next step is to try it out with some old business cards…

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Business is Picking Up!

Hey, remember us? I can barely remember the last few months! It’s been pretty exciting here at Side Room Games. Not only are we wrapping up the judging of the 54 Card Game Design Contest but we’ve also signed 2(!) games to publish – more on them in a bit!

We’re a little over halfway through all of the 54 Card Contest entries and we’re making a big push this weekend to get them all played. We may have to extend our judging by a week but we’re definitely going to get through them all. There have been some really good ones so far and there are some on the to-do list we’re really excited to play.

My personal favorite so far has been Neapolitan Sundaes by Jason Meyers. The basic gist is you’re connecting various sundae cards on a grid and trying to create links of 3 different characteristics on the cards (either toppings, fruit, or flavor). You score in the competitive version by matching a “favorites” card you get at the beginning of the game. When the game starts there are a ton of options and it’s easy to pick out good combos and get your feet wet. But when the board starts clearing out the difficulty level ramps up and you have to start planning moves ahead as well as avoid giving your opponents opportunities to make links. The way the game climbs in challenge as the game progresses really sets it out from similar games. It might make for a better tile laying game than a card game but the simple design, ease of entry, interesting decisions, and quick gameplay make it a real contender.

I’ve put some other notes on the rest of the entries on our Facebook page as well as via Twitter. As we finish up the testing process we’ll continue to update folks on our progress.

On top of the contest, we’ve been working with two designers and have officially signed their games to publish. The first is Black Sonata by John Kean. The game was created as a part of the 2017 Solo Print & Play Design Contest on BoardGameGeek and won 1st place in Below is his (amazing!) description of the game:

For more than four centuries scholars have argued over the identity of the mysterious Dark Lady of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. According to the sonnets, the Dark Lady seduced the poet and held him in an agonized thrall while also conducting an affair with the Fair Youth who Shakespeare also loved.

In Black Sonata you will find yourself in Shakespeare’s London, circa 1600, in pursuit of the shadowy Lady. A specially ordered deck of cards determines her hidden movements from place to place. You must deduce her location and then intercept her to catch a glimpse and gain a clue to her identity. You will need several clues to deduce her identity, but with each clue gained the Lady becomes harder to track. Black Sonata combines hidden movement and logical deduction into a unique solitaire steeped in literary history.

Can you finally solve English literature’s greatest mystery? Or will the Dark Lady elude you, melting from your grasp like a curl of smoke and promises?

I’ve never played a game like it and I knew I wanted to get it from a print & play version out to the community. John’s design is fantastic and his graphic design is really impressive. It’s basically a finished product – all that’s left is to push to get the Kickstarter ready to launch. We’re planning for a summer launch so stay tuned!

The second game we signed is Pocket Landship by Scott Allen Czysz. The original version is a solo game set in World War I where you command a landship (the original British term for tank) to clear a sector of enemy infantry, artillery and landships. On your turn, you roll dice and allocate them to your landship equipment to make attacks, heal damage, or utilize special abilities. On the enemies turn the dice are allocated based on the enemy set up and you resolve their actions. The really clever mechanic is that each enemy is trying to maneuver the battlespace throughout the game to get into a better position to attack you. A really fun game that’s challenging, tense, and an easy set up & tear down.

The original version was an entry in the 2017 9 Card Nanogame Design Contest on BoardGameGeek where you were limited to 9 cards, up to 9 dice and 9 tokens. Since his original design, Scott created an expansion to increase the number of enemies and player options. For what we plan to publish, he’s been working on coming up with some new enemy and player powers, as well as creating a 2-player cooperative variant. We’re also looking to re-theme the game with all new art and graphic design. I’m really excited about this one as well – the look and feel when we’re done is going to be awesome!

If you want to stay up to date with the progress of these two games and the 54 Card Contest results, sign up for our mailing list in the side menu. We plan on sending out monthly updates as well as notifications when our Kickstarters launch.

Until next time!