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Board Games are evolving. Each year more folks discover the hobby and an increasingly larger number of games are written. The influx of people and ideas are driving innovations, creating new subgenres and raising gamers’ expectations on what a “good” title should include. Working with the publishers who embody this evolution is one of the most fun parts of building the Sovranti platform. A critical aspect of our collaboration is whether we got a game’s unique mechanics right.
After we lockdown the “common” elements of a title - table space, basic rules enforcement, and simple player prompts, we get to tackle these unique mechanics. Think of the unique mechanics as the secret sauce or something special that sets the game apart. First, we break down the effort into a number of smaller pieces. We check existing games on the platform to see if we’ve implemented any of these smaller parts. This is important not only to streamline the effort, but to stay consistent across the platform. It is important that users familiar with Sovranti be able to intuit the platforms UI and feedback.
Elements that are new to the platform get special attention. We build with an eye for the future. Each new component is created with the idea that it might be needed by another title later on. The evolution of games marches on! What makes this title unique might be the standard for a genre later. Every effort makes our team stronger arming them with more tools/experience for the next game’s development.
The chronology of platform functionality can be tracked across our titles:
Sushi Go Party - Shuffling animation, scoring animation and grouping similar cards.
Planet Unknown - Move, flip, and rotate polymino tiles by 90 degree increments on a non square board checking for available space.
Hedgehog Hop - Tile sliding on the table (without falling off) and board recentering.
Truck Off - Use physics to simulate the realistic dice roll despite server side determination.
Never Bring a Knife - Keeping one card visible but the others secret from other players, until they are shuffled and then revealed.
Nuclear War - Combination cards - a card has 2 options for the player to pick from, and they have to decide which one they want once the card is flipped up.
After we get a draft of the unique mechanics in place, we circle back with the publishers of the game to see if we got the feel and intent translated correctly. If we’re inspiring the kind of fun the publishers intended, then we move into the final most critical element of any title on the Sovranti platform: human interaction - how does the game bring people together. That’s our next blog’s topic.
Release Updates
Publisher: Adam's Apple Games
Sovranti Developer: Paul
Exciting news for Planet Unknown! We have completed the base game, and we are moving the base game into full testing. Next up, Paul will begin development of the asymmetric planets and corporations!
Things to look forward to:
Base game testing
Publisher: Gamewright
Sovranti Developer: Eric
To support some of the more unique special order cards, we added some additional framework to better handle how the cards interact with each other. This has allowed us to implement the cards that interact differently like, Takeout Box, Special Order, Menu, and Chopsticks.
Things to look forward to:
Takeout Box card testing
Spoon card implementation
Publisher: Fight in a Box
Sovranti Developer: Chuck
During Tuesday’s Game Night, the Hedgehog Hop game designer, Seppy Yoon, played some games with Dani, our Community Manager. Seppy got to see the new updates including the scoring animation! Now, we will take Seppy’s and other testers’ feedback to Chuck.
Things to look forward to:
Draw pile implementation
Simpler chat messages
Scoring animation with total for each person
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