A couple weeks ago, we shared our Cherry Picked philosophy to game design. We listed out five questions that guide our development. Since we hadn’t formalized this set before starting on our next game, we thought it would be fun to revisit our current game lineup and fill in the answers for each game. We hope this reveals our design insight and can help aspiring designers analyze the key points of their own games.
Guiding Questions
How does this game encourage player interaction?
What makes this game funny, irreverent, or cheeky?
What makes this game different from anything else out there today?
What’s the thematic pitch for the game?
What’s the mechanical pitch for the game?
Far Away
Far Away puts communication at the center of the game. By limiting player conversations at key points, the game increases the stakes of the conversations that do happen. It also cuts back on the amount of control a player can exert on their partner’s actions. There’s also a collaboration that happens when controlling the ecosystem. Whether players explicitly state their creatures’ behavioral traits or they implicitly define them through silent play, the two players build up the world in a way that is unique to them.
Far Away’s premise revolves around an overly bureaucratic space government. We were intentional about making the Federation Alliance not be evil, but, instead, vaguely incompetent. The humor stems from the disconnect between the severity of the players’ situation and the seemingly careless nature of the Federation. For them, it’s cheaper to replace you than equip and compensate you. This setting also lets us insert some sociopolitical commentary as satire.
Limited communication exists in other games, but Far Away uses it to enforce a theme of loneliness in a way that’s not the same as in games like Magic Maze. The emergent ecosystem is also something special. By yielding more authority to the players, the aliens behave in ways that are different for every group. This less-prescriptive methodology for oppositional AI is more akin to an RPG than other board games. While the reaction to this design is still split, we feel that the special moments generated by this system give higher highs.
Far Away is a cooperative game about exploring alien worlds. You and your partner are sent on a variety of dangerous missions without “non-essentials”, such as landing gear, medical equipment, or radios. Complete the mission before succumbing to hostile aliens, starvation, or the crippling loneliness that stems from being the only two people for lightyears.
Far Away is a two-player cooperative game about exploration and survival. You cannot communicate when in different hexes, so players need to plan ahead and be cautious. The creatures use an emergent behavior system that’s influenced by several variables, but ultimately controlled by the players. Each session is a different mission from a set of premade missions, and each world is procedurally generated through dice rolls and card draws.
Conspire
Conspire is a story game, so player interaction is essential for any sort of narrative to unfold. Constructing the scene and roles is a collaborative exercise. The goals are assigned in private, but these motivate players in the upcoming action. This gives everyone incentive to contribute to the story and challenge what others are doing.
Conspiracy theories can either be hilarious or depressingly unsettling. We framed the game around the former. By encouraging absurdist realities, Conspire sets the tone for players to use their influence tokens to make equally absurd truths. This is almost always silly, dumb, and funny.
Conspire fits in a distinct niche within the story game market. It has a high player count, fast play time, competitive gameplay, and concrete objectives. These are all rare in story games, but the combination is truly unique.
Conspire is a story game about creating stories filled with mystery and intrigue, worthy of conspiracy theories for years to come.
Conspire is a hidden-role story game in which players create a world with a central conflict and the players are the only ones capable of solving it. The setting and role list is made by the group, but each role gets three goals given to it by a single player. The roles are then shuffled and handed out. Then, the players start the story and everyone tries to achieve as many of their goals as possible. Besides talking, players can spend influence tokens to make anything about the world true.
Drink!
Drink! is all about watching other people and being self-aware about your own actions. It also encourages players to socialize in another setting while playing, such as a house party or board game night. It’s intended to be an icebreaker, more than a standalone experience.
It’s magical to tell someone to drink and watch them struggle to figure out what they just did. There’s a lot of stupid giggling during a game of Drink!
Most drinking games revolve around the drinking. Drink! is all about the social interactions. It doesn’t draw everyone into the game, but rather helps facilitate conversation.
Drink! is the perfect icebreaker for your next house party, board game night, or wake.
Players in Drink! all take cards with an action on them, such as “touching your face”. When they see someone doing that thing, they tell that person to “Drink!” Players must then figure out what each other’s cards say. If a card is guessed, it’s won as a point and the person who lost the card gets a new one. The winner is whoever guesses the most cards, second place is whoever drank the most, and the games ends when everyone is in a cuddle puddle.
Catalyst
Role-playing games are collaborative in nature. Everyone’s character has equal opportunities in the story and the entire framework posits a back-and-forth between the party and the GM. The card-based combat removes communication at the point meta-gaming can occur, forcing players to consider the possible actions of their colleagues during these tense moments.
Catalyst’s setting is dark and grim. However, the backgrounds players choose from are silly and humorous. Both these backgrounds and the absurd premade characters, like Bonesaw and Johnny Danger, encourage players to make extreme avatars that are rife for self-parody. Also, many spells allow world-breaking changes. This contrasts with the world to make the larger-than-life player characters pop.
Catalyst differs from many RPGs by offering card-based action selection during combat, classless character development, and a unique, urban fantasy setting. These individual elements may be elsewhere, but the combination is special and greatly enhances Catalyst’s proprietary engine and world.
Catalyst is set in an alternate present in which demons have invaded, bringing with them war, plague, and magic. You play as one of the remaining one-percent of humanity in a desperate struggle to survive.
Catalyst is a GM-driven, campaign-based RPG. It uses a card system to lock players into actions during combat, forcing them to choose simultaneously and then resolve their choices in a rock-paper-scissors-like fashion. Players do not have classes, but instead pick what they were before the apocalypse and learn any skills they want as they grow. The game is set here and now, letting both players and GMs draw upon their personal experiences to create the world.
It’s important to us that Cherry Picked Games feel cherry picked. We clearly love toying with how people talk, whether it’s with mechanics or the fear of being told to drink after speaking. Far Away and Catalyst reveal how we think of world-building: give the players something that’s relatable and that they can contrast against. Most off all, we want these games to feel different. We want our demos and sessions to be the reasons you’re yearning to go to another board game convention. Please share your stories of what made your sessions unique.
— Alex