A Game Design Div III by Luke Townsend
Hampshire College, 2020
Seek the Horizon
Retrospective Essay
A Rising Sun
This project was born of inspiration, hard work, and lots of trial and error. Over this year-and-a-half process I've learned a lot about design intent, iterative design, and a fair bit about myself, as well. Like I stated before, this project started just under two years ago in my second semester as a third year student at Hampshire College. I began this project as an independent study with Ira Fay in which my goal was to get an early start on the exploratory process for my Div 3. However, even before this, I was planning on making a strategic game, as that's where my gaming roots are deeply set, back to the early days of my first gaming experiences.
I grew up learning to play chess with my father, he learned from his father. In our family, chess was a shared, father-son experience, somewhat of a tradition. Immediately I grew to love the game, reading books about opening moves and endgame strategy, and searching videos of chess matches online. Like wildfire, it spread throughout my mind, consuming a vast majority of my free time. I knew I would be hooked for life. For me, chess was about outplaying your opponent, thinking several turns ahead, and developing a continuous, adaptive strategy; all of which I found to be quite good at. I obviously wouldn't be able to create such a popular and everlasting game like chess, but I knew the kind of game play I wanted players of my game to achieve and thought it quite replicable with enough effort and time.
Independent Study; Not Getting it Right the First Time
Rarely does one go to create any sort of media and get it right on their first trial. Through blunders and errors, the gem of success can be seen, you just have to reach through these mistakes and grab hold. I, like billions before me, did not get it right the first time.
I started somewhat in the middle of top-down bottom-up design plans, without plans to go either which way. Like Einstein theorizing special relativity, I too had the stroke of what I thought was genius during a rather dull session playing a video game called Smite. Smite is a MOBA (multiplayer online battle arena) that my friends and I play - the important part of this is how the map is constructed.
Smite's Conquest map is split into three separate lane sections; duo, mid, and solo. Three separate sections, with one objective at the end. My idea was to emulate the different lanes with similar objectives at the end, but with a strategic cost-to-benefit ratio that forced players to plan their turns ahead, as their movement was limited. Limited movement was something I knew I wanted to play around with as I was pretty sure I was making a strategic board game, and not a competitive 1 vs. 1 system like chess. Thus began my work. I liked the idea of having three lanes like Smite, but also wanted there to be more of a world to explore, and I wasn't sure I
could get this effect with just three lanes. I thought if I expanded this to three sets of three lanes, I could really bring my plan into motion. The benefits of tripling the lanes would be to further encapsulate the idea to the players that they're moving their player pawns around a small world, and not just a "battlefield" - like Smite. Additionally, I felt like this gave me more space to play with, which was excellent as I didn't really know what I wanted to be in this world.
The initial design was to create a sort of triple Venn diagram, with the inner lines would create the lanes, and the outer lines would be the boundaries of the world, still able to be traversed of course. The very center of the diagram would be used as a starting point that players would move out of to start their adventure.
I quickly put together a map design I liked and a rules set that I could work with for now, while allowing a lot of room to grow and be changed over time. Cycling back to what I mentioned earlier; I really wanted to play around with limited movement in a way that players would be forced to really plan out their turns for the whole game. My solution came to me pretty quickly; limited movement not for each turn, but for the whole game. You could move your character up to a certain distance over different spaces of the board, but the more you moved on a given turn the less you could on any turn for the rest of the game. For example, if you are allowed to move 100 spaces through the whole game, and you have 10 spaces one turn, you have 90 spaces of available movement left for the whole game. This restriction creates interesting challenges for the player that I wanted to try and focus on.
However, obviously this design didn't work. If it did, this website would be about that game instead of Seek the Horizon. Now, rather than discuss what didn't work, I'll discuss what did. Before I do however, I want to preface this with that I don't think the two months I spent on this game was a failure. I still learned a lot that led me to my final product, as well as designs that I could definitely use for other products. While certain decisions didn't work this time, it doesn't mean they won't on other projects.
In brief, the main take away from my Spring Independent Study was that I liked limited movement; more so a limitation per turn rather than the whole game, and having a lot of interesting game choices for the player to make with the limited movement.
A New Dawn
With a month left of my independent study, and my old Venn diagram design not turning out to be what I was hoping, I turned to a new design I had been tinkering with in my design journal. Taking inspiration from the very successful Carcassonne, I thought tile played could be worth exploring with restricted player mobility. I had made some mock-up designs for a forest/island tile placement idea that allowed any tile to be connected to any other tile that was revealed, no matter the stage of the game (see How to Play). I knew that placing these tiles on the board and growing the map would be a big draw, as you could also have a different map every time, thus allowing for a high repeatability factor. With enough ideas to go on, I went to work.
The core of the game never changed much from conception to the final product it is now. The supplementary game components changed quite a bit, however. There were ruins to explore, one central town that you had to share, events that you had to overcome in order to continue moving, and a fair number of other supplements that I tried to wedge into the rules that never saw the horizon that is the finish line. From the start however I knew the core would be; placing tiles to expand the bored, moving around collecting something, and winning by acquiring points of some kind.
From there, I spent hours creating these tiles I now refer to as "island tiles". Ultimately, I went with a nautical/seafarer themed game rather than a "mystical forest" theme, as I thought what I already had constructed led to fit the nautical theme more appropriately. As a note, I distinctly took step to avoid ever having this game come across as pirates raiding native lands, as that history isn't something I wanted to centralize around my game. As such, I've tried to make it clear the players are playing as merchants, and none of the components of the game convey any violence that could make people think otherwise. Crew Members join your crew as they are hired, not bought. The choices in quests are overall non-violent, even if some choices are slightly ruder. I want this game to have a positive outlook, not a negative one.
It was during an early playtest that I chose the name Seek the Horizon. Walker Perreault, a recurring playtester and outspoken fan of the game from an early stage, asked if there was ever a point where the map would stop, ultimately reaching the end - or horizon. That comment stuck with me, and while I never added that in any way, I thought of it as a beautiful metaphor for what I was going for. Getting players to feel like they were exploring a world by linking islands together, and not just placing tiles, was the goal, and I think I achieved that.
The Einstein Moment
Obviously, this is a big of an exaggeration, I didn't conceive a new ground breaking idea that changes everything. But it should put into perspective how important this addition was to my game. Before this moment, Seek the Horizon was good, but was lacking a key feature to really put it above and beyond.
Initially, I didn't like the idea of a questbook. I felt like adding it would exasperate players and extend player's turns unnecessarily, but also felt there wasn't much harm in trying it. I wrote out six or seven quests for a playtest and see what happened. Players immediately gravitated towards completing the quests. I was told it was "like playing Dungeons and Dragons mixed with Carcassonne and Settlers of Catan", which was a high praise. My Einstein moment was a success from the first playthrough, even though I thought it might flop - the being the reason we playtest before making assumptions.
Adding the questbook provided a narrative element that I thought would be fun, but definitely wasn't sure about it from the start. Quest tokens present interesting cost to benefit ratios while not punishing you if you aren't the kind of player who is used to planning ahead five turns. This is a factor I think my game accomplishes well - it's a great game for new players, strategic players, casual players, and players that have experienced it eighty times over. This is something I'm very proud as it's hard to achieve, and I'm not sure I could've without my Einstein moment.
Sunsetting Thoughts
This project has been only describable as a labor of love. I started with one idea and came out with something totally different and unique. Players have enjoyed my game in it's entirety. They love the aesthetic of building islands by placing tiles, completing these DnD-esque story quests, they love hiring an eclectic swath of crew crew members, and the experiences I've painstakingly built into the game. Designers should love what they craft. Be it a gourmet plate of food, a meticulously brushed painting, or a stylish new article of clothing, whatever it may be; the designer should love it. However, I'm sure most designers will agree it's a far greater comfort to know that the consumers of your product are the ones who truly love it. I set out on this journey not to design a game, but to craft an experience worthy of the name, and to that extent I have succeeded.
While I am extremely happy with what I've produced, I can't help feel a bit remorse knowing that my time at Hampshire College is coming to a close, and this game still has so much room to grow. I've stated that Seek the Horizon, as it is now, is in its final form, but that is far from the case. I could've easily made 40 more crew members; 10 of them being new legendary, I could've written more quests (which would be priority number one), I could've explored around with new island tiles, introduced different resources that work in alternative ways, and even more. I feel I've only scratched the surface of what's possible with the core of what I've created. While it's a little sad, it's also quite encouraging that I'm able to create such an experience capable of growth. What I've created so far is surface level development; I'd need another several semesters to truly explore all the options that this game is capable of. I'm more than satisfied with this project, and likely will continue to advance it long after my experiences at Hampshire College have come to a close.