This is the first in a three-part retrospective series on Far Away. Over the next couple weeks, we’ll explore the development of Far Away and the lessons learned along the way.
In three years, Far Away went from an idea on a poll to an internationally sold game. It’s been an incredible journey thus far, with the best yet to come: real people getting the game. We wanted to take a meditative breather before the final stretch and reflect on how we got to this point. We’ll try to keep the navel-gazing to a minimum and focus on some lessons that may benefit aspiring designers in the audience.
Far Away has always focused on the two-player co-op part. From the beginning, we wanted a two-player game that had more depth than a little card game. We also needed it to be a bonding experience for couples; not something divisive that one person would grow to resent after repeatedly losing. This gave us a clear audience: this fictional couple sitting down in the living room to play a game. They want something as an alternative to Netflix. That’s going to be Far Away this evening.
It's shocking how helpful it is to have a vivid pair of players residing in your mind. You can design against their reactions. Solidifying that audience forced Far Away to evolve out of an asymmetric, real-time, dexterity-ish game. That was a weird design, to say the least. It never saw a playtester, but imagine one player stuck in a base playing Pipe Dream while the other ran around fighting creatures. At some point, combat had a deck building mechanic and vaguely resembled War. The whole thing was a mess until I got those weird mechanics out of my system and went back to want those fake people actually wanted from a game.
I don’t remember how we decided on the space theme. I absolutely adore Alpha Centauri, so that was certainly in my subconscious. Primarily, we viewed exploration is an inherently fun mechanic. Who doesn’t want to put a new hex on the map? It’s immensely satisfying to see the world grow before your eyes. And since it’s an alien planet, we’re not beholden to our mundane world.
Jake and I spent a couple days just researching and world-building our weird ecosystem. We put together a rather cohesive universe that no one will really see. This informed every creature and every piece of hex art. It was also fun. Those early jam sessions are the best times of the design phase. We nerded out over sci-fi rabbit holes while pinning together a mood board of gross monsters. It’s the additive phase of game design, when everything is welcome and exciting.
Eventually, you have to stop speculating and make a game. We settled on something that had about 75% of the current mechanics and began playtesting. I assembled a box filled with notecards, bottle caps, and Pandemic Legacy pieces and sat my friends down to play. Early tests are always helpful, but some core insights from the handwritten-card phase turned the game into something special. I’ll shout out two people here for their impact on these playtests: my friends Chris and Scott.
Chris gave me the idea of not always being able to talk to your partner. He said something about building the game around the loneliness inherent to being the only two people on the planet. I thought that was the most intriguing perspective I’d ever heard. From there on out, loneliness was front and center. It might sound trite, but playing with the full communication discipline makes Far Away an intensely emotionally experience.
Scott and I had a creature-laden planet. Everything wanted to kill us. We hatched the idea to manipulate the creatures into fighting each other. We riled up same dangerous beasts, ran away, and spooked other critters towards the killing field. We created an unstoppable band of super predators that, at first, fought together out of necessity, but soon became self-aware about their destructive potential. We lost after getting pinned and mauled by our own horde. We both looked past the pop tabs on sticky notes and saw richly detailed carnivores with distinct personalities. From then on, I knew we had to design the creatures in such a way that these moments of emergent behavior were encouraged to flourish.
Far Away three core pillars became co-op, creatures, and communication. That not only gave the game direction, but gave us an elevator pitch. Jake busted out the first wave of hexes, cards, and creatures so we could order a prototype from The Game Crafter. We played the first “real” game at PAX West. Even in a hidden corner of the expo, people found us and fell in love. We were ready for Kickstarter.
The best thing we did was hire RUN Studios to produce the Far Away videos. They killed it. If you watch our other Kickstarter videos, you’ll notice the gap in production quality is staggering. Why? It’s because I got a different day job. It’s easier to fund Cherry Picked Games with a tech writer’s wages than with those of a tour guide. Kickstarters are a risk: if you don’t make your goal, all the costs of the Kickstarter are sunk. As a tour guide, I could never gamble thousands of dollars (a month’s earnings) on a video.
We timed the Kickstarter launch to coincide with the first day of SHUX 2018. After a late-night spent triple checking everything, we flipped the switch from the convention center’s café (since the center did not have public Wi-Fi). Jake and I spent 14+ hours a day preaching the gospel of Far Away at that con. The in-person response was great and we raised a fair sum online. However, we left Vancouver feeling physically, mentally, and emotionally drained.
I was a wreck. Kickstarters are always stressful, but this was the toughest yet. Our goal was to share something we think is awesome and not hemorrhage money doing so. It’s heartbreaking to see people oppose that goal. Every time someone left a negative comment about the game on some channel, I’d drop whatever I was doing to address their concern, just to avoid others seeing a negative reaction festering nearby. I also received personal messages filled with bitter vitriol over shipping costs (I’d love to never again be cussed out over the effect of not using a fulfillment company). I know the negativity is the price of being on the internet, but it’s still shocking to me that Far Away inspired such a strong negative reaction in a select few. It makes you lie awake at night wondering why you even try.
I came up with an analogy for Kickstarter: it’s like having depression. It’s constantly weighing you down (will you make it?), though there are spikes of joy (reaching goals) and sadness (negative comments). You’re constantly trying to figure out what levers to pull that’ll fix everything (maybe Facebook ads will fix this pledge stagnation). And everyone has some advice even though they have no idea what you’re going through (have you tried demoing the game at Mox Boarding House?).
Funding does greatly ease the pain. It’s a wonderful feeling to see a campaign successfully conclude. You get to resume the fun part: making the game. We spent our allotted production time redesigning how creatures are presented to the world, writing eight missions, and refining the core gameplay to be smooth and intuitive. Jake redid all the artwork to match the palettes and tones we’d arrived at over the months. It’s quite maddening to repeatedly check 800 pieces for graphical and textual consistency. It’s also heartwrenching to find a flaw in a proof from your manufacturer at the final hour and lose weeks of progress.
On the surface, all this refactoring delayed the game slightly. To be more honest, Jake and I had more personal life issues and conflicts behind the scenes. I’m not a fan of the constant whinging about personal drama that manifests in pockets of this community, so I’ll skip the details. During Far Away’s development, we had between the two of us: deaths in the family, housing changes, relationships end, personal career shifts, and one incident of getting hit by a car. It’s all fine; just meant things like mission 4 was outlined on a plane to a funeral or the text for mission 2 was written while I was alone in a metal bar on Christmas day.
I am so incredibly grateful to the people in my live that supported me during this. I’m also incredibly thankful for Far Away’s backers. They have never once complained about the game slipping from an October release. I just want them to be happy when this game reaches their table.
Now, we’re waiting for Far Away to reach Seattle. I’ve already allocated vacation time at work to pack and ship every single copy to backers around the globe. None of this means we’re done with Far Away. We’re reaching out to reviewers for content. We’re scheduling demos at retailers around the area. We’re working with distributors to get Far Away in every store possible. It’s equally exciting and terrifying to release our game baby into the real world. Regardless, we’re confident the years of work that went into Far Away will be felt by players as they explore their own little worlds together. We know that couple will be happy they chose to play Far Away.
—Alex