Designing Tabletop Games for Solitaire Play

I recently wrote a long post on the boardgamegeek forums that I would like to share and expound upon.  You can see the original post in context here.

Solitaire game design has unique problems that multiplayer game design does not have to deal with. The player is not competing against an intelligent and determined opponent, so you have to give the player a challenge in other ways. Looking at other solitaire games will give you an idea of how other designers have tackled this problem.

Multiplayer games have the benefit of incorporating social interaction into the game.  The human element creates uncertainty, tension, and fun.  Players can compete against each other to prove their mettle, as in Android: Netrunner or Settlers of Catan.  They can work together to overcome algorithmic obstacles, as in Pandemic or Space Alert.  Some multiplayer games are ALL ABOUT the social interaction, such as Apples to Apples or The Resistance.  Solitaire games cannot stand on this leg, so other elements must be put into place to keep the game engaging, and to allow the player to feel as if he or she is mastering the system.

Dice Dice Baby

Most solitaire games will have some sort of randomized gameplay element, whether that be dice, a shuffled deck of cards, random chit pulls, etc. This forces the player to stay on his or her toes and prepare for the worst possible outcome. It also forces the player to occasionally take risks. "If I don't roll a four or better right now, I am SCREWED." This helps add tension to what would otherwise be a solvable puzzle--and if the player wanted that, he or she could just play Sudoku.

This is one of the reasons that Zed Deck is a successful solitaire game.  In Zed Deck, the player shuffles a specialized deck of cards.  Each turn, the player draws the next card in the deck, then deals with the event on the card, usually by drawing two or more cards and referencing particular pieces of data on those cards.  Then all those cards are discarded, and the player starts the next turn.  The player only experiences perhaps a third of the available events each game, and always in a different order.  This keeps the game fresh and interesting even after dozens of plays.

Limited Resources

Another good trick is to give the player plenty of actions which he or she CAN perform, but only enough time or action points to perform SOME of them. In Space Hulk: Death Angel - The Card Game, for example, each squad can only perform a single action per turn. Sure, you may WANT to shoot and kill some filthy xenos, then shift the formation to get the best fighters in range of the worst threats, then activate the control panel for a positive effect, then add support tokens to the marine in the most danger... but that's too bad. You only get one action, so use it wisely.

Todd Sanders' games tend to do this very well, especially his Lassadar games.  Check 'em out!  They're free to print and play, and are consistently eye-pleasing and fun.

Flexible Game State

One of the keys to making the above idea work is shifting priorities. Giving the player 10 different actions that he or she can perform is all well and good, but if it is ALWAYS correct to kill zombies, that's what the player will do, and gameplay will become stale. Players will want to make the optimal move, so the optimal move cannot always be obvious, or your game will be boring.

Dan Verssen's games tend to do this well, I think. In Thunderbolt Apache Leader, for example, the player might have a juicy target to take out just over the ridge. The player then thinks, "Okay, I want to destroy that thing. Do I spend a couple of turns flying around the ridge and approaching the target from the north? Do I risk flying through the ridge at low altitude? Or do I go into high altitude and fly over the ridge, but expose myself to fire from that AAA over there?" Each of those options is better or worse depending on the game state. The player has to weigh variables such as how much fuel remains, how much damage the plane has already taken, and how much stress the pilot is already under. At different game states, the optimal approach will be different. Heck, sometimes the correct move will be to just ignore the target and move on!

See the Victory Point Games lineup for more inexpensive examples of this principle in action.

AI See You!

Another problem to tackle is the game's artificial intelligence. Are you going to use an algorithm to have the game mimic human behavior, so that the player feels like he or she is playing against an intelligent opponent? There are ways to do this, but it often means a lot of work for the designer, a lot of work for the player, or both.

For example, Race for the Galaxy: The Gathering Storm is an expansion to the base game that introduced a way to play the game solo. The player essentially rolls a die to see what the AI opponent does. However, the creation of this AI required thousands of computations to create a balanced and reasonably "intelligent" and difficult opponent for the player. That's a lot of work for the designer!

Other games force the player to perform a large number of tasks--drawing cards, moving tokens and cubes, rolling dice, calculating damage, et cetera--in order to perform all of the enemy AI's tasks. That's a lot of work for the player. Some gamers are willing to do this, but it is tiresome, and will dissuade a lot of potential players from really diving in to your game.

Other games don't try to emulate a player, though. In my own Enki-Des: The Soul Gates, the player has to battle six different monsters in turn. Each monster has one or more unique abilities, but each monster is also stupid. Every monster performs the exact same action each turn--attack! This makes it very easy for the player to keep track of what is happening--all he or she must do is decrease his or her Life. This SOUNDS bad, but the game still gives the player plenty of options each turn, as he or she balances short-term goals (killing the monster) with mid- and long-term goals (boosting stats, healing, preparing to fight the next monster, winning the game). Sometimes, the player will deliberately choose to take damage, because killing the monster or blocking the attack is not as important to him or her as some of the other actions he or she can take. Which ties back to the idea of shifting priorities.

Jessey Wright's  stellar print-and-play dexterity game Nimbles the Spell Thief demonstrates a great use of AI.  In the game, the player must flick Nimbles through a series of hallways and corridors in order to grab a precious Spell Tome and escape.  Nimbles must avoid being seen by or colliding with the various guards as she makes her way through.  The guards are controlled by simple rules--they move along preset pathways, and if they can "see" Nimbles (which in game terms means that you ended your turn too far outside the shadowy areas) then bad things happen.  If too many bad things happen, Nimbles is captured.  Even though the player is performing the actions of the guards, and the guards' actions are extremely limited, the player still feels as if the guards are active antagonists.

System Mastery

A key aspect to a successful solitaire game is system mastery--that is, the player's ability to improve his or her performance through practice and learning.  This encourages the player to play the game multiple times and gives the player a feeling of accomplishment.

Let's look at a bad example first.  Say there's a game called Roll High.  In Roll High, the player rolls a die.  If the player rolls a high number (4+ on a d6, for example), he or she wins.  If he or she rolls low, it's a game loss.  Not a very compelling game, is it?  No matter how many times the player plays the game, no matter how much the player studies, he or she will not be able to improve his or her performance.  (Well, aside from practicing specific dice-rolling methods that are typically considered cheating.)

One of the reasons my game Derelicts of Sin: Heresy fails as a solitaire game is that there is little reason to play more than a couple of times.  Once the player has experienced all of the different branching paths (and there are only a few of those), the gameplay is very straightforward--conserve oxygen as much as possible, and try to place the location tiles in such a way that the engine room and the bridge are close to each other.  There is no system to master, no skill at which the player can improve.

Utopia Engine, on the other hand, is a fine solitaire game.  The mechanics are interesting and unique, and it takes practice to figure out their intricacies.  The game is also difficult enough that a player may not QUITE win on his or her first few attempts, but will have gotten so CLOSE to victory that he or she is compelled to try again.  And once the player masters the system enough to win consistently, he or she can then try to improve on his or her own high score.

In Soviet Russia, Decisions Make YOU!

The most important thing to remember is that solitaire players want to make difficult choices. They are not looking for a hand-out or an easy win. They want to weigh the different options against each other and decide what is most important. It is an exercise of the mind, so be sure to give the player difficult decisions with a wide possibility of outcomes. 

DO NOT make a player's actions dependent on randomness. I know that I said that solitaire games should include randomness, but that's not what I mean. What I mean is: The player should always have a choice about how to proceed. Monopoly's dice-rolling movement mechanic is terrible, because it takes the action decision away from the player. "What do I get to do this turn? Oh, I rolled 4. That means the only thing I can do is move 4 spaces along this track." BORING. 

What you want to do is give the player things to do, but mask the precise OUTCOME of those decisions. The player can move, shoot, hide, heal, or loot, but he or she does not know IN THAT MOMENT that he or she is about to draw an Overrun card that will buff all the enemies, so he or she may not realize that moving or hiding are better options than shooting or healing. That uncertainty provides tension in the player's decision making, which makes the game interesting.

I hope this was helpful for you!  Now go forth and make awesome games.  :D

SaltCon! Part One

This weekend, my wife and I attended SaltCon, a board game convention in Salt Lake City.  It was our first convention of any kind, so we weren't completely sure what to expect.  It ended up being a lot of fun, and we walked away with three board games, none of which we had to pay for.

They had a game library set up with over three hundred board games available.  The first game we tried was Dominion: Alchemy, the only expansion we haven't tried.  Another gamer, a fellow Dominion fan, joined us.  We played with five Actions cards from the base set and five from Alchemy.  I can't say I found it terribly interesting, to be honest.  Most of the Action cards require Potions to purchase.  I'd be okay with that if Potions were costed at, say, three coins or less, but four?  For a card that doesn't do anything except help me purchase four of the available Action cards?  Those Action cards had better be good!

But they really weren't.  The guy who joined us, Ben, picked up a whole bunch of copies of Familiar, which is "+1 Card, +1 Action, Each other player gains a Curse."  My wife tried Herbalist, which is "+1 Buy, +1 Coin," and has an ability that basically allows you to float a Treasure card on top of your library.  When you place Herbalist in your discard pile, you can place a Treasure card you have in play on the top of your library.  There really weren't any Alchemy cards on the table that I thought were interesting, so I went with a Mine/Remodel strategy, hoping to use Mine to turn my Coppers and Silvers into Gold and purchase as many Provinces as possible.  Towards the end of the game, I used Remodel to turn my Golds in Provinces.  I was also able to use Remodel to get rid of five or six of the Curse cards that Ben was so happy to put into my deck.  I still had nine Curses by the end of the game, though, which allowed Ben to edge me out by a few points for the win.  I was kind of annoyed; my wife and I tend to avoid aggressive strategies, in general, and Curses in particular.  It's just not fun to have a deck full of cards that do nothing but prevent one from winning.  At least twice that game, I draw a hand of a Victory card, three Curses, and a Treasure card.  What can you do with that?

Anyway, I didn't really see much in Alchemy that would encourage me to purchase it.  It doesn't innovate, at all, beyond making the Action cards more difficult to purchase.  Dominion: Intrigue made Victory cards more relevant and interesting.  Dominion: Seaside played with time with Duration cards.  Dominion: Prosperity pushed the power level with Platinum and Colony, and a lot of high-priced Action cards.  Dominion: Alchemy just doesn't do anything interesting or unexpected.

 My opinion of the expansion probably wasn't helped by the weird feeling my wife and I goy from Ben.  My initial thought was "child molester." When my wife mentioned it to me later, away from Ben, she suggested rapist.  Either way, there was something off about that guy.  

Anyway, we next joined a Munchkin tournament.  It was fun, but obnoxiously, the guy who won did so by playing a card that stole the monster I was fighting (to go from level 7 to level 9, I think) and caused it to fight him, instead.  He was at level 8, so defeating this big monster would win him the game.  He couldn't actually defeat it, himself, though, so he convinced a girl to help him out.  She was at level 9, and was an Elf, which meant that she would also go to level 10 by helping him.  They both won.  I didn't mind losing, and I didn't mind them winning.  I was just annoyed that I didn't even get to kill that big monster and go to level 9 before losing.  It was like my second-place finish was stolen from me, or something.  Anyway, I was annoyed.  Still, the Steve Jackson Games guy handed out a bunch of little prizes, including a cute little stuffed toy that my wife and I took home.

At about this time we discovered that my wife's name had been drawn to receive a door prize.  We were presented with a copy of Karnaxis, a modern economics game.  The designer and his family were there, demoing the game and selling it at a discount price.  We had chatted with them earlier and had planned to try their game at some point.  I had already decided that I wanted to buy it if it ended up being fun, but then we got a free copy.  So, we didn't have to buy it, which was cool.  We didn't have a chance to play it that day, though.  That would have to wait until the next day. 

View the game here.

After picking up the game, we then played Small World for the first time.  We played with gentleman whose name I cannot recall, other than it sounded French.  He had only played once or twice, before, but thankfully we had a volunteer from the con help us out and explain the game to us.  It was a lot of fun.  The idea is to draft from the available races and use them to take over as many sections of the map as possible.  At the end of his or her turn, the player receives coins for each section he or she controls.  The coins count as victory points, although they can also be used to draft the best races.  Cassie was lucky enough to smash face with Trolls.  Those things are really tough to move once they set up their defenses.  She ended up winning by a few points.  It was a lot of fun.  We may have to pick up a copy.

The last game we played that day was called The Resistance.  Apparently it's a lot like Werewolves, which I've heard of, but never played.  It's for five to ten players.  Each player is dealt a character card which they do not reveal; it tells them whether they are loyal to the resistance, or a spy.  All players then cover their eyes, and the spies are allowed to reveal themselves to each other.  Then, the resistance attempts five missions to bring down the oppressive regime.  Players take turns being the fearless leader.  The leader selects several other players to join him or her on the mission.  The exact number of players on the mission varies depending on the total numbers of players and on the mission.  All players then vote on whether or not they accept the assignments for the team.  (If the traitors know that a traitor is on the team, they will vote to accept the team.  If the loyal resistance members are certain that a traitor is on the team, they will vote no, although it's difficult for them to know for certain, so they will usually accept the team.)  On a majority, the team is accepted.

Then, each team member on the mission hands the leader a face-down card, either a red card or a blue card.  These are shuffled so that no one is certain who put in which card.  All the cards are then revealed.  If there is even on red card, the mission failed.  Otherwise, the mission is a success.  The players must try to determine who the traitors are before it is too late.  If they succeed in three missions, they win.  If three missions are failed, the traitors win.  It's a fun and interesting game, and really very quick, but it can get very "yelly" as suspicions are thrown about.  "You're a traitor!  You must be!"  "That's ridiculous!  You're only accusing me to throw suspicion off of yourself!"

I was a traitor, which of course my wife knew almost immediately, because she can read me like a trashy magazine.  Thankfully, not everyone else was as sure.  I was on the first mission, along with the leader (I think his name was Daniel) and one other person.  I can't remember her name.  One of the traitors had a temporary special ability that turn that allowed him to peek at someone's character card, and he used it on the female on the team.  He promptly and loudly accused her of being a traitor.  Then, I slipped a red card into the mission to fail it, so everyone assumed that she really was a traitor.  It threw suspicion off of me quite superbly.  Subsequently, I managed to get onto the second mission and fail it without anyone being sure if I was a traitor.

We almost had the game in the bag, but we got unlucky with the third mission.  One of the traitors--the only one that at this point everyone was 95% certain was a traitor--was the leader that turn.  He failed to accurately predict what the NEXT leader would do, and so he chose his team poorly and revealed that certain players were definitely NOT traitors.  Thus, the resistance was able to complete the third, fourth, and fifth missions and steal the game.

Still, it was a lot of fun, if a little too stressful for my wife.

We then left for a dinner appointment and to check into our hotel.  We hit up the con the next day, as well, but that's a post for another day.