Part 2 of my quest to figure out a name for this game.

​When I said I was bad at names, I wasn't kidding. I've been stuck on this bit for...   what...  over a month now? I'm having a hard time settling on any particular name. Everything I've heard, whether it's my ideas or stuff that other people have suggested, just seems to fall flat. Perhaps I'm being too picky (yeah almost definitely) but I really want the name to feel right.

But then, what is a 'correct' name? For inspiration, I've been doing research into the names of other games. Specifically, I've been focusing on space-themed games. Going through shelves and lists of games, reading off the names, figuring out how they relate to that game's theme and/or mechanics. And you know what I found?

Many names of space-themed games are entirely random.

I mean, let's look at a few examples:

• Race for the Galaxy. Older game but still fun. The 'Galaxy' in the name says that it's a space game. 'Race'...  hmmm. What are you racing? Race to get to the finish line first? No, not that kind of race. Okay, race to conquer the galaxy first? Well, yes, sort of. But you're colonizing planets and building technologies, so not exactly. Technically it's a race to get 12 cards in play. But that's an end game condition, not a win condition.
• Twilight Imperium. Monster of a game. Is it a space game? Bit of a stretch to say that it's an automatic assumption from just the name. 'Twilight'? Could be time of day. Or could be the closing years of something. Here it might be referring to the darkness of space, but without already knowing what the game is, how can you make that particular deductive leap? 'Imperium'. Power or domination? Okay, that tells me that some conquering is probably involved. But that doesn't really say space to me either. This could just as easily be some ancient power struggle on Earth.
• Quantum. I was recently introduced to this game. From the name, I'd assume it has something to do with physics. Energy levels or something? But no. You're flying spaceships (dice) around into formations around planets so you can control them. The name doesn't tell me anything about the game at all, much less that it's a space-themed game. Hrm.
• Space Base. Fun game, if somewhat on the random side. It's got 'Space' right in the name, so we definitely know what this is. 'Base'...  hmmm...  yeah, I guess the cards represent various space stations and ships and such. So, this is a better example of a name?

While I haven't conducted an exhaustive search by any means, I think it's a safe assumption that the majority of these games have names that are not particularly descriptive. Now, I'm not saying that makes them bad games by any measure, just that the name doesn't tell you much about what's in the box. It's mostly there to give people something to refer to when talking about the game.

So, does it really matter what name I pick? Well yes, it still does. Even if the name doesn't describe the game's mechanics or theme, it's still supposed to be indicative of the general feel of the game. For example, I would expect a game named "Galactic Conquest" to play very differently than a game named "Larry's Space Popsicle Stand". Aside from them both being in space, I would think the first game would be a long and epic space combat game while the second would be a casual silly fun game.

Therefore, I'm looking for a name that is relatively 'neutral'. The only thing it must accomplish is to indicate a space theme somehow. Since my game is quick to play (30-45 mins), I don't want anything that screams huge or epic or heavy. But I'm also trying to avoid anything that sounds silly or cheesy. Nothing combative, nothing slapstick. Not too big, not too small...   so what's a name for Goldilocks in space? :)

I'm gonna have to get some more opinions, maybe put up a poll or something. I wish I wasn't so indecisive over what should be a small thing.

Two posts in one weekend? What's the world coming to?

So, I've been messing around with the player powers in the game. These powers are asymmetric; each player is randomly assigned one power at the start of the game and is not able to change it or get more. Each player power is a once-per-turn effect that gives some unique perk or ability. They're called "Captain Skills" in the game, representing some talent you have that's useful towards fixing up your ship.

For a while now, I've been having trouble deciding what those powers should be. Two of them, the red and blue powers, I've felt have been pretty solid; the power level is about where they should be, though I could see tweaking the costs a little. The other two, the white and the green, have been up in the air for a while.

Until now...  hopefully.

I hit upon this iteration of the white power a little while ago, though it's taken several playtests for it to feel right. Even now, I'm still thinking the cost could possibly be adjusted. But the ability itself feels good to play. Once per round, I can mark off one area on my ship for only the cost of activating the power, but I lose on gaining any of the marks on my tracks that that space would have given me. While this doesn't sound that great on the surface, it's actually quite potent. Getting around the ship quickly is one of the challenges of the game, and this helps by shortening your path by one step for each time you use it. Additionally, the players get bonuses for completing specially-colored areas of the ship, and this can help there too. (Sure you don't gain the bonuses from the colored spaces when you use this, but the area still counts as 'completed' for the purposes of gaining bonuses.)

I was apprehensive when I created this new iteration of the green power. Previously, I've been avoiding freely-available game abilities that effectively let you ignore the color of your cubes. Sure, they are there, but they are few and far between. More specifically, players can always pay two energy (one of the game's resources) to treat a cube as a different color, and lowering that cost has always broken the game. So anything that does similar must also be broken.

Except...  this ability might not be broken. The power basically says that you can reclaim a cube you previously used during that same turn. Normally you would use that cube right away, but there's always the possibility of storing the cube for a future turn. Later in the game, during turns where you draw a huge number of cubes, this effectively means that you get a wild cube. On the surface, that sounds broken. But in practice, it doesn't always go that smoothly. Sometimes you don't draw the cube color you want at all, and you can't recover what you didn't spend. (Sure, you can use a color change effect to spend a cube as something else, but when you recover that cube it goes back to its original color, the cube does not 'remember' it was altered.) Or you could possibly need two cubes of a color, but you only drew one; for a cost of two of a color, you can't spend the one cube and then recover it to spend as the second cube, you must have the entire cost already in hand.

I'm still playtesting, of course. (Sooo much playtesting...) But so far this new idea seems to be holding. Either that or it's overpowered, but the other abilities are also overpowered so it balances out? We'll see. But I'm hopeful that this is the point where I can stop tinkering with it. One step closer to a completed game. :)

So, I had a rather unpleasant discovery lately.

I've taken to checking the BoardGameGeek website occasionally, making sure that my game's name remained available. Sure, there are other games out there named Nebula. There's an old game from 40+ years ago simply named "Nebula", but I wasn't worried about that. For recent games, I see "Nebula Rush", "Via Nebula", "Eclipse: Nebula", "Nebula's War"...  any many others. But those are pretty much just older games, expansions, games that never really got any distribution, or games that were different enough that I wasn't worried about any confusion. (Via Nebula is the only one that I had even heard of, and the theme of that game is so different from mine that I figured there's no way there could be any confusion.)

And then, it happened. I searched BGG again a few weeks ago, just after I got back from Atlanta, and there it was. There's a game simply called "Nebula" coming out in 2023. While the description is light on the details, what little I could find makes it seem like that game has just barely enough in common that one could possibly be mistaken for the other, at least at first glance. And that's what I can't have. Sure my game would have been named "Nebula: Pull & Write", but in a way that might even be worse, as my game could be mistaken for a roll and write version of the other one.

No good.

So, I guess I'm on a quest now for a new name.

Problem is, I'm *terrible* with names. It took me forever to settle on the name and final theme for Manaforge. And I guess I'm stuck jumping through that hoop again here, trying various permutations of scape or sci-fi themed names and making minor tweaks to my game's theme to make it match up. Ugh.

At least I can be a little liberal with my game's theme. Space and sci-fi? Definitely. Stuck on a damaged spaceship? Yes, I've put too much work into the 'ship' layouts and graphical design to back out now. Repairing using random raw materials? Check, that fits the game's mechanics. Floating in a Nebula? Eh...  there's some room for change there. So it seems like the setting could be different.

• Stuck in the gravitational pull of a black hole? Good tension there.
• Drifting close to a star that's about to go supernova? That works too.
• Surrounded by an asteroid field? That plays into the 'random resources' mechanic of the game very well.
• In the middle of what was a space battlefield? Also plays into the random resources idea, lots of good bits to salvage from your surroundings.

Void Drift. Shattered Space. Dying Star. Cosmic Salvage. Stellar Ruin. Lightspeed Wreck. Lots of ways to throw words together, but none of them have really clicked for me so far.

But then, I guess I was pretty set on what I had. Gonna take me a bit to change course (ha!) on that.

Is there anyone out there that's good at names? I could use some more ideas. :)

We have returned home safely from our trip to Atlanta. ProtoATL was an amazing convention! I'm happy that we got to reconnect with old friends, meet new people, make new contacts, and of course play lots of games. I got to try out a lot of other designers' prototypes while I was there, and while some were definitely better than others, the point is that I was able to offer feedback that could hopefully make their games better.

Of course, Nebula got played too. I managed to get in 7 playtests of Nebula while I was there. I'd like to think the game went over well; I had many players compliment the game when they were done playing, and I even had a couple of players approach me days afterwards to tell me that Nebula was one of their favorite games of the con. Success!

Of course, Nebula was not without flaws. I had to make an on-the-fly rule change to the game's goals, as that mechanic was confusing players. This will end up being an overhaul of a relatively small mechanic, so hopefully I can make it better and easier to understand this time. I also received a ton of suggestions for visual improvements to the game, which I passed along to my graphic designer; hopefully we can settle on the game's look and feel and get all of the visual confusion ironed out in the process.

I'm still crunching through all of the feedback I received on Nebula. Working on making a list of what changes I'm going to make next.

​Oh, and I'm suffering from con crud now. Yuck. Hopefully I'll be well again soon. Lots of work left to do on this.

Quick post this time.

We're currently gearing up for a game prototype convention at the end of this month. It's called ProtoATL, and it's located in Atlanta, Georgia. We've been to one of these before, and it's totally worth it. Lots of other designers, playtesters, and publishers all gathered in one place. Great opportunity to get lots of crunchy feedback on Nebula, meet new people, and develop lots of useful contacts. While it's most useful for designers looking to get their games signed by publishers, there is something useful for everyone there.

I'm currently busy prepping my game for the convention. Making some last minute game tweaks, printing out promo materials, making sure I have enough spare supplies in case I need to make changes while I'm there, and gathering pads and forms to take notes and get feedback. Not to mention planning our route and food and such.

With some luck, Nebula will come back better than it is now. Or, at least, I will have ideas for improving it. (I'm not really sure what would constitute an improvement; I'd like to think the game is pretty well off as it is. But I know it's not perfect.)

​Game on!

"Perfect is the enemy of good."

- Attributed to Voltaire

Another design post. Been a while since the last one.

I've hit an interesting point in the design of Nebula: I've stopped focusing on improving the game's major mechanics (which I feel are in a good place) and I've been more working on the game's 'balance'. In this situation, balance to me means that all game starting configurations have a roughly equal chance of winning, that all the powers and ship layouts and tracks and everything are close to equivalent in point-earning potential. Sure, I can't make it exactly equal, but it doesn't need to be; as long as any imbalances are unnoticeably small I'm in good shape.

However, I keep finding large flaws in that balance. This ship layout is too strong, so I apply a nerf, and now it's too weak. This power is too strong, so change it out for something else. This ability is uninteresting, maybe I can swap it for something more fun.

This has been my thought process for the past month or so. Stuck in this loop of endless tweaking, trying to find the perfect blend of evenly-distributed potential and enjoyment. And each time I make a tweak, it takes days of playthroughs to fully grasp the impact of the change.

Seems like lately, I've been seeing signs that everyone else thinks the game is done. "When can I buy this?" or "When's your Kickstarter date?". Even at one of our recent weekly playtests, a fellow designer flat out told me "You need to publish this now."

Welp. Once again life is trying to tell me something by beating me over the head with it until it soaks through my thick skull. My pursuit of the perfect balance is apparently getting in the way of completing this project.

With that in mind, I finally pulled the trigger on Nebula. I've started consulting with a graphic designer (same one as Manaforge!) in order to figure out how to organize the mess of information in the game into an understandable whole. As part of that, we will eventually decide on the size of each of the game's sheets, which in turn will specify the dimensions of the box. We will also determine what room there is for any artistic embellishments, which will tell me if I need to hire an illustrator to do art for the game (most likely yes). And with the game component specifications, I can do to manufacturing companies and start requesting quotes, which will also give me a price and timeline for running a crowdfunding campaign.

Ugh, so many moving parts. I'm wondering if part of the reason I'm hesitating is because I've been through this once before and I know how much of a pain some of the process can be.

But no matter. If I don't break this loop the game will never be done. And that is really the key; the goal should be progress, not perfection.

Of course, I'm not going to stop balancing. Manaforge had a couple of its cards get a complete overhaul right before the game went off to be printed, and I suspect Nebula will similarly have some breaking changes go into effect at the last minute. I've got a game design convention coming up in a month and I'm sure I will get some useful feedback there, maybe something to push me over this last bump. But I can't let any of that stop me from making sure the process is moving forward.

This year. I know I've said it for the past couple of years, but this time it has to be this year. Look for a Kickstarter campaign this year. Even if I have to launch it on New Year's Eve (oh please no don't let it come to that), it must be this year.

Success, I'm coming for you.

Happy 2023 everyone!

Only a week in and it's been an interesting year so far. I've been stuck on a problem with Nebula for a little while now and I think I might have solved it. The current issue I'm seeing concerns the game's balance. This problem is manifesting in two ways.

The first problem came to light when I noticed that the final scores when playing the game are too high. Now, normally that wouldn't be much of a problem; just adjust my expectations of what a 'good' score should be. However, the underlying problem was that it was possible to make too much progress in the game. The players should never feel like they've accomplished everything there is to do. Finishing all of the objectives should be something you just barely accomplish with no resources to spare. Completely filling the ship tracks should be limited to just one track, not two or more. Filling up more that one tech ladder shouldn't be possible (unless you're playing the blue power, which specializes in gaining tech points). But playtesting the game I noticed that any and all of these would happen frequently.

The culprit there was due to power creep. Without realizing it, I had been slowly increasing the amount of resources available to the player. I added in the objectives, which necessitated adding in rewards for completing those objectives. I tweaked a couple of the tech powers, so that it's not possible to get a power that is completely worthless, but in doing so made them stronger. (A couple of the income powers were like that, if you got them on the last round when income would not trigger again; I changed that so you always get something, even if it's small.) But for each of these tweaks, the players would get a little resource boost. And those boosts added up. The solution was to go through the ship tracks and remove some of the extra resources there.

The second problem is that the ships are not consistent with each other with respect to how powerful they are. Sure, the various ship layouts will never be the same. Some are large, some are small. Some are easy, some are more difficult. But all of them should have roughly the same amount of potential for progress. And I'm not quite seeing that. Playing a few games on each layout and averaging them together, I noticed that a couple of the ships consistently scored higher than the others, and one scored consistently lower. And not by a small margin...  we're talking +/-10 points, where the range of 'good' scores I'm targeting for Nebula is around 60 to 70 points. If the difference were just a couple of points I probably wouldn't worry about it, but a ship layout automatically adding 10 to your total is an unacceptable imbalance.

I'm still working on correcting this. I've been focused on the Kraken ship (shown above) so far, as it tended to underperform, but I will be addressing the other ships soon. The Rhox and Xyxzx ships, in particular, seem to have higher than average scores. It might just be a matter of removing some of the candies from the board (looking at you Rhox), or reducing point values or icons in various spots (you're next Xyxzx), but regardless of the actual tweak needed I anticipate a lot more playtest-fix-repeat cycles before I'm done.

Now, I'm very aware that 'balance' is a rather nebulous (ha!) concept when it comes to board games. Many games have certain cards, player powers, strategies, etc. that are known to be weaker or stronger than the others. And while a small amount of imbalance might be unnoticeable or at least ignorable, when an imbalance gets so bad that 'everyone' knows about it, I feel that that detracts from the fun of the game. I'm trying to avoid that, a gross imbalance problem.

And that requires a lot of playtesting. I think over the past few weeks I must've played Nebula solo 50 times. And I'm sure I will need many more tests before I am done.

The good news is that this level of balance tweaking means that the major mechanics of the game are pretty solid. I'm very much hoping that this is the last of it, and soon I will be able to start moving from polishing Nebula as a game to turning Nebula into a product.

Crowdfunding this year? I would like that a lot! I keep saying to myself every year that this is the year to publish my second game, but this time it feels like that might actually be in reach. Here's hoping!

Two posts in a week? What's the world coming to? :)

This is an idea that came out of a recent online playtest I did. One of the players commented that the objective system I had before, where certain colors of ship sections would get boosts to their victory points, felt like a wasted opportunity. As in, while the objectives before accomplished the purpose of giving the player some sort of direction at the beginning of the game, there wasn't actually all that much incentive there; under some circumstances the players could simply ignore the point value of the objectives and just pursue whatever scores them the most on the map.

Now, in way that makes sense. I originally designed the objectives to be simple to understand, and to provide the players with a nudge in a particular direction, one that they could ignore if the so chose. But, after thinking it over a lot, I realize that the player had a point; there was an opportunity to do something more interesting.

And so, here is the result.

There are two parts to this new mechanic. The four colored boxes on the left correspond to the ship section colors. The number of checks in each box denotes the number of ship sections of that color that the game wants you to repair. Each time you repair a section of one of those colors, you are considered to have 'scored' an objective, up to the number of checkmarks on that color.

For each objective you score, you gain a mark on the track on the right side. This has two effects: this gives you victory points at the end of the game (listed below the track), and unlocks the ability buttons in the gold area below. Each padlock gives you the ability to use one of the buttons, but the buttons are not in any order; each padlock lets you use any one of the three buttons, still subject to the rule that you can't press a button more than once. (So with three padlocks checked off, you can use all three abilities one time each, but you pick the order in which you use them.)

I haven't played this version with playtesters yet, but I have played it solo many times. This new version is significantly more challenging. Since you know how many of each color of section you're going for, it really forces you to plan out your possible routes through the ship at the start of the game. Of course, the colors of cubes you draw from the bag don't always align with what you need, so there's also the puzzle of trying to figure out how to accomplish your objectives with the resources you have. I think this take on it requires more strategic planning for the players.

Once big drawback is that I'm having trouble actually describing how the mechanic works to other people. And one of the rules I've heard about game design is that if you can't properly explain a mechanic to the players, then it shouldn't be in your game. (If you understood the paragraph above that describes how many of what section colors you should repair, then congratulations! It doesn't seem like everyone gets it on the first try.) I hope it's just a matter of finding the right wording and sticking to it, but I think that will take some work and maybe a little bit of luck.

Regardless, I'm happy with this new direction for the game. The points need balancing, and the abilities might change a little, but overall I think it's an improvement.

Quick blog post, just to show off...

Introducing the newest ship design, straight out of the shipyards, the Kraken!

Playing with some new ideas for making a ship unique. The special mechanic for this ship is that it has 'airlock' spaces at the edges of the ship that let you jump from any airlock to any other. And they are conveniently placed near the ship sections, the most important areas on the ship to repair. However, they do cost energy to use, so they're not exactly free. They are still faster and easier than having to make your way across the map normally.

I'm also playing with the ship layout, placing ship spaces slightly off the standard grid to help sell the 'squid' appearance of the ship. (No additional mechanics needed, purely aesthetic.) If this works well then I might consider trying to apply this concept to other ships.

The point balance feel a bit off for this, but that's pretty typical for a new ship. It'll get ironed out with playtesting.

Who wants seafood? :)

Wow, it's been a looooong time since I posted. I guess I just got out of the habit of it, what with everything that's been going on. And it has been a very eventful year. New job, family issues, health issues, and tons of distractions. The amount of time and energy I've put into designing has suffered quite a bit.

But I haven't actually stopped designing. Slowed, definitely, but not stopped. Nebula wants to be made, and that I occasionally get pings from various people asking me about the status of the game just proves that. This is what I've been up to all this time:

• The idea of a tech 'tree' really took off. I went through a bunch of iterations of it, trying out various layouts, adjusting the amount of complexity, seeing if I could make it more interesting and appealing. And you know what I learned? Simpler is better. While adding a tech tree was the correct solution to bring together all of the various disconnected elements of the game, it also shouldn't overshadow the main point of the game, which is repair ship -> get stuff. The most successful iteration of the tech tree so far is where I pared it down to just three independent lanes, shown above. No track prerequisites or unlocks.
• The number of currencies in the game jumping from two up to four was not a positive change. Originally I had cubes and energy, and then I added command points and tech points specifically for interacting with the tech tree. (Tech points gave you new abilities, and command points determined how often you could use those abilities). Yeah... no. Keep it simple, stupid. So, command points went out the window. And, while tech points are still there, there is no more hoarding of them, no more counter you slide around to track how much you have. Tech points now must be applied as soon as you get them, just like any other track icon. (The only difference is that you can choose which track to put them towards.) Instead of command points, the tech tracks now have single-use 'buttons' that you can 'press' (by crossing them off) to activate their abilities. Much less fiddly.
• To add more variety to multiple playthroughs of the game, I felt it necessary to add three additional variables. First, each player gets a couple of free tech points on one of the tracks. Second, each player gets one 'skill', which is a once-per-round ability mechanically similar to the single use abilities on the tech tree. There are four such skills in the game. And third, there are now 'objectives', which basically make ship sections of a particular color or colors more valuable; these bonuses apply equally to all players. All three of these variables are randomized at the beginning of the game in a pre-game 'round', where players draw three random cubes from the bag and must decide which cube to apply to which variable.
• The main sheet is now separated into two halves. This accomplishes two things: it allows me to print the ship layouts separately from the tracks (less redundancy on the sheets), and it establishes a 'standard' size of the sheets in the game. By doing so, I was also able to squeeze the tech tree onto a sheet of the same size. So, three sheets, all the same size, equals three pads of sheets all the same size in the final product. The box might end up a little taller than expected for a game of this type, but what it gains in height it easily sheds in width and length. The overall volume of the shipped box should be quite a bit smaller when I'm done.
• Even though they might look similar, the ship layouts have been completely rebuilt. I realized that some of the creative limitations I had been placing on my ship designs were unnecessary when I made one ship that broke the mold, so to speak. (The Aaraka ship is short, extremely wide, and utterly flat; no crawlspaces at all.) With that boost in design space, I went back and rebuilt two of the older ships, and I'm currently taking a close look at the others to try to decide if I should rebuild them as well with some new ideas or just scrap them entirely and try something else.
• I'm at the point where the game's mechanics are stable enough that I'm starting to incorporate rule guides in the components. The ship tracks sheet calls out the four phases of each turn. The energy tracker has a small symbol guide built into it. Ships that have a unique mechanic now have a callout stating what the mechanic does, rather than forcing the players to read the rulebook for each special rule I build into the ship layouts. Even something as simple as the single-use buttons, with the mechanic that you must cross out the ability to use it, which gives an immediate visual cue that you can't use it again. I'm currently on the lookout for other ways in which the game can help you play it, because I know that it's not a simple game. (The mechanics individually aren't particularly difficult, but there are a lot of them to keep track of.)

And that's just the major stuff I can think of right now. I've made a bunch of other little tweaks and balance changes, and I'm sure I'll make a lot more before I'm done. But overall, Nebula is in great shape.

The only problem right now is that I'm in a bit of a lull. Since the mechanics are solid, the next step is to get in a lot more playtests, see if I can tease out any remaining balance issues. I know I'll never get the balance perfect, but I'm trying to at least expose any large problems. As of right now, I think the various ship layouts might not be balanced against each other. For example, I've noticed the Terran ship often scores pretty high, but I don't know if that's a consequence of the point values being too high, or the ship being too easy to play well, or maybe just dumb luck. (It is still a random and write game, after all.) My day job has been pretty draining lately and it makes it difficult to muster up the energy I need to do playtesting in the evenings or on the weekend. Still, I'll get there eventually.

And, I'm also hoping I'll find the energy to keep doing these posts. Ten months is an unacceptably long time to go between status updates. :)