Oh No My Ego is Rising and My Friends are Leaving
AKA I Made a Board Game in a Month
A Bruised Egos Game Jam Post-Mortem
I've been feeling the post-jam blues lately so I decided to make a big post about my experiences and thoughts and lessons learned and whatnot. It's pretty long so I understand if you don't read it all. I kind of just need to get it all out so I can start thinking about what's next
INSPIRATIONS
I love board games. When I discovered that Kyle started another game jam, and I saw Ultra Mint as one of the characters, I knew I wanted to make a board game about her. A major inspiration was from a few Level 99 Games board games that I really like: Millennium Blades and Argent: the Consortium. Millennium Blades is a game in which you and your friends play as collectable card game players playing a game called Millennium Blades. Over the course of the game , you buy cards from the store, trade cards with other players, sell off sets of cards, build a hand of cards for the tournament phase, and (of course) compete in a tournament. You can clearly see how this game influenced the way Scrappet Kaiser Princess worked, from the booster pack look of the back of the cards to the simplicity of the dueling system. The only thing I wish I was able to replicate in my game was the climax of each round: the tournament phase, in which you use the deck you've spent an entire round constructing. I don't know if SKP could have had that without adding too much complexity to design around (in a month at least), so I opted instead for making a story-focused climax based on a high score. In Argent: the Consortium, you play as professors at a magical university, sending loyal students to gather resources or information about a secret consortium of voters so you can weasel your way into being voted in as the next Chancellor. From this game, I borrowed the thematic idea of sending out loyal workers to do your dirty work. Mechanically, I also used the idea of each type of worker having a special ability, and how workers don't gain resources immediately. If you enjoyed Scrappet Kaiser Princess, I highly recommend checking those two games out because they're pretty great (although they're a lot more complex and are not solo games). Actually I recommend checking out all of Level 99 Games' stuff because they try to capture that small niche of board gamers that also like video games and anime.
STORY & GAME DESIGN
I always knew that this origin story would be about Ultra Mint's first time getting into Scrappet Kaiser and losing her friends because of it. The original pitch for her actually says that she considers her card collection as her most precious treasure, so I thought it would be very interesting if I could give players the choice as to whether she treasures her collection because of her strong cards or because of her friends. I personally think high-stake stories involving the end of the world is fairly overdone in gaming, so I really wanted this story to be extremely personal and contained, with the main conflict being mostly internal and emotional.
Because I had decided to make a board game, I knew I couldn't rely too much on dialogue to tell the story and I had to bake it into the gameplay. That's why the only actual written parts of the story are the Intro and Endings in the rulebook. I didn't want to clutter up cards with too much reading. Yeah I know the texts on the Event cards exist but I don't think reading those is necessary to understand the Event, and they only add a little flavor to what's already implied by the effect. Originally the Event deck was going to be a set sequence, similar to the event deck in something like Pandemic Legacy, so I could completely control the way the story is told. But because I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to present the game at the time, and to make set up a lot easier, I opted to only have one guaranteed event card. A lot of design choices were made to be simpler actually, because I knew the audience would mostly skew toward video gamers instead of board gamers, and I feel like the game is definitely more successful because of that.
Another successful aspect is the story. Even in playtesting with friends who had no idea about the Bruised Egos concept, they always get into the mindset of Ultra Mint and go hard on boosting Ego to replace their friends with more cards. (Although maybe it's a cultural thing, because I teach English in Japan, and the students I've showed it to generally try to keep their friends instead.) But yeah, the general game arc tells the story of how this group of friends falls apart: In the beginning of the week, Mindy hangs out with her friends, working with them to earn money or sneak cards from the store. Best friends Mindy and Jessa are inseparable. But at some point mid-game (if the player decides it to be), Mindy looks at her binder and thinks "I want more." She decides to abandon her friends to play Scrappet Kaiser in the alley with some weirdo. Her friends are still stuck working each day, while Mindy plays card games and brags about how good she's getting? Well of course they would get tired of it and leave. And on the final day, Jessa confronts her. The Starter card isn't important to Jessa just because it was a gift, but also because it was one of the few things she actually bought (because she tends to steal a lot for Mindy). Whether Ultra Mint loses her closest friend is up to the player, but because she has Dog Bower in Bruised Egos, it's likely that Jessa is still her best friend there (although I suppose that's not official canon lol)
You all probably already know this, but playtesting is very valuable. While the general structure of the game remained the same as the original concept, certain character abilities and the store definitely wouldn't have been the way they are if I hadn't gotten a bunch of friends to try it out. In early prototypes, I had Mindy decide which photo she would remove from the binder. In playtesting, I found that Spiff was almost always the first to go, with Penny being the last. So I made it random, and I buffed Spiff's ability. In another prototype, a popular strategy was to send Link to the store and buy a bunch of cards, while everyone else worked the Lemonade Stand. I had to adjust how the store worked (sending cards straight to the binder) AND buff Mindy and Jessa's ability to make it more enticing for them to visit the other locations. Some criticisms I couldn't really do much about (at least without changing quite a few things), like Penny having no reason to leave the Lemonade Stand. But that's fine. Penny likes baking anyway.
ART
It's not as prominent in the Digital version of the game, but the style of the board game is supposed to be hand-drawn. Like the main board is supposed to look like a hand-drawn map that Mindy drew, which is supposed to really make you feel like Mindy planning where each of her friends will go each day. I also opted for the slightly sloppy hand-drawn style because I'm not that great at drawing imo, although I've learned quite a bit this year, especially in the week and a half of drawing I did for the game. (Annoying promotional side note, but as part of one of my goals to get in the habit of creating art, I've been doing this weekly photoshop puppet show adaptation of the Pokemon manga if you want to check it out.) But yeah, the art for the title screen was like the last thing I drew for this game, and it's the art that I'm definitely the most proud of. I had asked my wife to draw the photos because she is a much better artist than me, but because she was so busy with work, I ended up doing all the drawing and only having her color the scrappets I drew. I'm glad I ended up doing all the drawing though, because the consistent art style ties everything together nicely, and I feel like I've leveled up my drawing skills!
It wasn't until I saw this Nani stuff pop up in other games, but I didn't know Kyle had created his own little collectable card game. I mean, I have the vod sitting in my YouTube Watch Later playlist, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. If I had known that, I still probably would have created my own little card game franchise, because then I would try to cram some of those mechanics into the system, which would have clogged up the game design, probably. I wonder though... Anyway, the monster design was really fun! The main design goal for these monsters was to avoid memes if possible: partly because I haven't kept up with the streams, but mostly because I wanted the cards to be funny on their own. There was a period of time last year when I decided to try doodling a few monster designs a day. Some of those monsters I named for the game and they appear as is (Dainty Shocks, Shy Bean, and Aiyai Captain are a few of these). Some were changed to look tougher or creepier to fit the strength of the card they were on (the original Slendelien was a lot more friendly, Fuzzy Tuber didn't have tentacles, and Darrip looked more sad and had more of a Foster's Home vibe). At one point, I asked any friends who playtested it for name ideas and I only got three: Dark Justice, Beelzebud (bee-el-ze-bud), and Funky Monkey Card (which I changed to Funkeemon Keycard to make it funnier). But for most of the rest, I spent half of a day thinking up names. I've had the Special and Starter cards named from the beginning, and since I had Griswald's Knees as a Special card, I decided to go all Exodia on it and add the rest of Griswald into the Store deck. I don't have too much to say about how I came up with most of the other names aside from finding names that were fun to say but were also weird (Cough Noir, Baby Filkiss, Froark). Near the end as I ran out of creative steam, I did the JJBA thing and looked through my music folder for interesting song titles to make names. "Godzuki" is a Sufjan Stevens song (skit is a more accurate word), "Idiot Boksen" and "He Who Flattened [Your Flame Is Gettin' Torched]" are Danielson songs, El Bañana was inspired by the Gorillaz song "El Mañana," similarly Vee in 20 Years is a letter change of Moses Sumney's "Me in 20 Years," and Black Hole Guppy is a Charly Bliss reference (the song "Black Hole" is from their album "Guppy"). ... I guess I didn't have to list all of those, but maybe people would have found that interesting. Oh and to the one guy I saw in chat that noticed: Yes, Zengou is wearing a Scooby Doo collar.
But yeah! It makes me really happy to see all the positive reactions to the scrappets I drew. Seeing how so many people were drawn to different scrappets feels really good. If you must know my favorite one though, it's Froark.
GAME JAM & RATINGS
This was my first game jam and I had a blast. It was great seeing so much variety in the different games. I was a little surprised at how so few games showed the reason why their chosen character was high ego or low ego, as that was the most important aspect to me when making the game. I'm not sure how much I should say about other games, and I wasn't able to get all of them to run (I went by Kyle's stream for rating those ones) , but if I had to choose a personal top 5, this would be mine:
1. Dungeon of Alexandria - Really fun game with really fun vibes. A well-deserved win.
2. Izil's Adventures: Blackfeather's Legacy - It's so much fun to explore in this game. I think the only issue that would need addressing is having a way to fix a stuck boat. It'd be fine if it's inconvenient, like maybe having to raise the anchor and have Izil physically push the boat, but yeah. I had a lot of fun with this, although I never beat it (one of the treasures didn't show up for me)
3. Executive Cobra: Origins - I love how different each route is, and the story is pretty well written, and each line is loosely connected. I think Judith is my favorite route with CJ as a close 2nd. The first puzzle in Max's route was kind of rough (I avoided watching this one on stream because I wanted to read it for myself). I just wish a battle system wasn't required because that's the weakest part imo.
4. Scratch's Inferno - This game actually grew on me quite a bit. I had a few growing pains with the controls, like I kept walking into enemies while I was attacking them, but once I got used to it, the gameplay is very tight and the game, while a little hard, doesn't feel unfair.
5. I Saved the World but Then My Girlfriend Got Turned Into a Sword - The vibe and story for this one was really good. I love how there's actual reasoning for Bibi's sword form being tied to Haver's ego. I just wish they had more time to polish up the battle system.
The long ones I couldn't get around to playing before rating closed, so I imagine Minerva's Lost or Isle Izil or Mint's Ultra Adventure could be personal top 5 material. I'll try again sometime.
Speaking of Kyle's stream, I am super grateful to MeBID for creating the digital version. I'm not sure Kyle would have had the patience to read the rulebook on stream (especially because we went first), and it would have been a real pain to explain the rules in chat. With the digital version, Kyle was able to jump in, and we were able to have that great moment when he realizes that he must lose his friends to collect more cards. I wish we had like a week more so I could have made art for each ending or something, maybe added more detail to each menu, but I really like how it turned out in the end. I'm also grateful that, through programming the digital version, MeBID essentially helped clean up the rulebook. I was able to iron out any inconsistencies and clarify any rules questions thanks to them.
LOOKING BACK
There are definitely things I would probably have done differently. For starters, I would probably have started on art earlier. There were a few days after I felt satisfied with the actual gameplay and balance that I took a day or two off from working on the game. Then again, that little break was kind of important because I probably would have burned out, as I was for sure in the process of doing as I was working on the art. As for the actual game design, I wish I could have designed a more climatic ending. Using each card in your Binder for the big tournament instead of going off a point system would have been really cool. If I had teamed up for a digital version a lot earlier, I probably would have figured out a way because I wouldn't have to be tied to keeping the game as simple as possible. I kind of wish I playtested the digital version more before the deadline. I probably would have added clearer instructions about the goal and story of the game, and maybe caught that buck bug that caused Kyle to get an A Rank instead of a C Rank. However, I'm very happy and proud with how everything ended up. I uh, I still watch Kyle's playthrough and read the chat reactions because it gives me life.
If I were to choose another character to make a game about, like if Ultra Mint wasn't an option, I probably would have gone with Alexandria or Executive Cobra. I think those two would have pretty good storylines for a potential board game. Alexandria's would be a sort of push-your-luck game about getting as much treasure as possible until she dies and becomes a skeleton at the end. Executive Cobra's would be an engine-building game all about gathering resources and businesses and making money and raising Ego. Iunno, I still really like what I did with Ultra Mint so it's hard to imagine going with someone else.
LOOKING FORWARD
So what is next for Scrappet Kaiser Princess? I did actually come up with a few new cards, so it's possible that I make a little expansion down the line. For example, a new Starter card could force Mindy to lose bucks at the end of each round. Thematically it would be a rare and fairly powerful card for a Starter, but it would also be really old so the kids would have to spend money to tape it together or else it would be lost. Another Event card I had in mind would be to force any cards bought in the store to go directly to the playground. The flavor being that those cards were stolen from the kids at the Store by the Nestor twins and given away at the playground... I'd have to think a bit more about more card ideas before I release a little mini expansion though. Maybe I could come up with alternate character abilities or something... Hm... I'll think about it.
A few friends have asked me if I would put this on Kickstarter. I'm not sure yet. Sure I really like it and I think it's a pretty fun game, but printing and shipping an actual board game might be too much of a hassle, especially because I live in a small apartment in Japan. The game theme is also a little niche, and it's a solitaire board game as well, so the audience for this game might not be large enough for a mass printing. So yeah, I am currently undecided about putting this up on Kickstarter and getting it printed. I suppose I could put it up on a print-by-demand site though, but I'll have to do some research.
As for other projects, I've got nothing at the moment. I do have a few ideas though. I have an idea for Scrappet Kaiser Princess 2, which would still play similarly to the original. Instead of friends, you summon the scrappets in your binder to gather resources for you. And each one would have their own ability, and there would probably be a lot more locations, and the goal would mainly be to keep your Ego up. But I don't really have a story or emotional hook for that, and I think that aspect should be almost as good as the original at least. I've been thinking about the Bruised Egos fighting game though. There's this 1v1 card game called Exceed (also by Level 99 Games; yes they're my favorite board game company) that simulates a 2d fighting video game. I've been considering making all the Bruised Egos characters in that system, probably combining aspects of (almost) everyone's games... We'll see though
Well that's it! If you stuck around this long, thanks for reading all of this. I very much appreciate you enjoying this little project! Hopefully, we'll do this again next time. See ya!