Designer Diary: A Pleasant Journey to Neko, or A Journey to Game Design

Hello everyone, I'm Citie Lo, designer of A Pleasant Journey to Neko. I'm from Taiwan and now based in Berlin, Germany. I test my games with some publishers or groups here, like Spielwiese. You guys definitely do not know me, because A Pleasant Journey to Neko is my first game. I do both game mechanisms and illustrations for the game. To be more precise, I do everything myself as a standalone studio.

I started my board game review blog in 2012. From time to time, not only do I review a huge amount of games, I note any new ideas flashing through my mind, so that I have design notebooks to record something fresh and rough. And I hoped one day I could make them real.

Several years ago, I started to organize those ideas after I played more and more games and wrote more and more articles. I found that gradually I could make a complete prototype and draw roughly initial rules after I'm conversant with almost all kinds of mechanisms. So I try to start from my dice game because I really like dice game much. I especially like the dice games from Stefan Feld. (Yes, I'm a big fan!) You fight for the dice luck, but still you can use them strategically.

I usually write down every idea flashing through my mind in this notebook, sometimes with a rough sketch

Main Mechanisms in A Pleasant Journey to Neko

1. Dice drafting

The first idea I introduce in this game is a new drafting system for dice. Actually we can't call it new, but you haven't seen it in dice games. At least I haven't tried any yet, but you might have tried 7 Wonders or Between Two Cities, those kind of drafting games before. You draft cards and tiles turn by turn until you have specific items in hand or have played certain items in front of you. But how about dice? Does this way of drafting also work for dice? I was curious and soon made my first prototype. Without a second thought, I drew ocean creatures on cards and grabbed some dice to test.

My first attempt at dice-drafting: At the time, each player had their own color of dice, but the final version has only one color

It works like this: Each player rolls six dice. They pick a die at the same time from the dice they just rolled by counting on "3". Place the die aside and move the remaining dice to the next player in clockwise order. Again, players pick one die at the same time from the dice they just caught. Repeat the procedure until each player has six dice again. So the problem is: Which number should I take? Can both big numbers and small numbers be good? After more and more playtesting, the answer is more clear.

After drafting dice, you use them to bid on cards

Unlike cards or tiles, which are mostly concealed, dice are not. You see everything after rolling dice unless you distribute a screen to each player. I decided to leave the dice public for strategical and tactical reasons. Players should have an insight into which dice are in play and what they really need. That's why players should count on "1, 2, 3', then pick a die at the same time.

This mechanism worked very well after the first few playtests. I tried to make both small numbers and large powerful. Balance between big and small values on a die is important, but taking care of the changing values in everything is also an issue in this game. It impacts the value of which die you would like to take as you think about whether to use it for bidding or activate the hub or card effects. You might need different values of dice but not only small or big values.

2. Bid with dice

Another main mechanism: Use the dice you pick to bid on cards. This is also one of the ideas from my secret notebook. Most bidding games use money or items (e.g., meeples) to bid, but can you imagine bidding with dice? This was what I was curious about and wanted to try in a game.

At first it worked well when I tested it the first few times. And for sure, if you always pick big values on a die, you'll win the bid easily. This is a big problem and definitely creates balance issues, so I decided to do some adjustments to make it more balanced, such as punishing the player with the largest sum of dice or requiring you to have small-value dice to activate hubs and cards.

This is how you bid on cards, with each player choosing a side of the card as their "bidding slot"

Another way to balance the dice is a new bidding method. When you bid on a card, you must at least match the number of dice currently being bid on a card. For example, a player has used two dice (a "1"and a "3") to bid on a card. If you also want this card, you must use two dice, even though you have a "6", which beats the sum of those two dice. Thus, you might decide to use a "6" and a "1" to bid on the card. This way of bidding ensures that you can protect your bid even if you have many small-value dice.

I didn't change much here, with the dice-bidding becoming the essential part of the game without frequent modification or testing. Players have to decide which dice they want to use for bidding and which to keep for activation. You have tension between the need to sacrifice dice on a bid (since you must match the number of dice used on a bid) and the value fluctuation of everything else. If you think you can make powerful combos or drill more points from it, don't hesitate to sacrifice your dice and go get it. Evaluation and investment are keywords for the game.

3. Hub combo

Here I try to create something new, like the concepts of hub and ship lane by using cards. Initially, there are only effects on the card. Some of them you need to use a die to activate. After some testing, I found that small value dice are too weak, so I tried to connect each card I bid to form the ship lane and make more interactions between small-value dice and cards.

This image has two different ship lanes, and two cards connect together to create a hub, which you can activate with a die or ship

In this game, when two cards connect together, they create a hub via the left or right edge of a card. A hub shows a value and a resource icon. You can use the designated value of a die to activate the hub. You can also move a ship to a hub to activate the effect. Here I use only "1" and "2" in a hub, which definitely makes small-value dice powerful and works very well. I especially like the numerous combinations between two cards (hubs), and you can always build variable ship lanes in each game as well.

There is an important resource in the game: fish. You can exchange different things by spending your fish, so it works a bit like a wild item, something I introduced it in the late testing period. Actually it's quite difficult to take care of each kind of resource in this game because you need money to buy the cards you win, you need fuel to move your ships, and you need goods to fulfill the cargo spaces. It's not easy to acquire them all! These issues also impact adjusting the dice, and surely the game takes too long and makes a big burden for our brain due to things happening in this way. To make the game more easier and flexible, I introduced fish in the mid- and late testing period.

Place a die and a ship in the same hub for an extra bonus

Now, each time a hub contains a ship and a die at the same time, you not only receive a reward for the hub but also a fish! Imagine the die represents your workers (fisherman) and when they stay on a ship, they naturally catch fish. This idea makes the game better, and I really like it since you have more operations on the ship lanes and combos.

So far, this is very close to the final version of the game. The structure of the game was confirmed after few tests, so the biggest issue is balance and finally it has been stable. I thank those who helped to playtest A Pleasant Journey to Neko because it's an important and meaningful design to me.

One of last few prototypes

Theme and Artwork for A Pleasant Journey to Neko

Originally the design was a set-collection game set in the ocean. Players collected different kinds of creatures to create a beautiful ocean scene. As more playtesting went on, the mechanisms became more complicated and the scale of the game grew larger. Hence, the ocean theme was not suitable anymore. The game was already heading in the direction of a Eurogame, so I decided to call it "Megaport" since I had introduced ship lanes into the game.

I was drawing a penguin habitat from my imagination

For most of us, it's difficult to visit Antarctica in our lifetime. We all know that global warming changes ecology on Earth. The scene in Antarctica is not immune as well. The issue about eco-crisis arouses my concern in recent times. The ice sheets are melting, living beings will suffer from a collapse of the environment, and the penguins are in danger!

During this time, I was thinking maybe it's the best theme to fit this game: Go to Antarctica and try to let more people pay attention to it. To see the penguins or to ignore the eco-crisis on Earth, in this game or even in reality, we are the intruders (or more precisely, the killers) actually. Therefore, we might be disturbed when doing some aggressive activities during the journey. So I decide to integrate the concept with the interference tiles in the game. Hence, I changed the theme from just a harbor theme to an Antarctic expedition.

The illustration combined reality and fantasy

I started to do the artwork after I settled on the Antarctic theme. The first image I drew from this game is the captain on the cover. The captain image combined my landlord's story and my imagination. My landlord is a ginger. His father is a veteran sailor, and he's told me many stories about his father. I really enjoy those stories, such as how they live on the boat and what strange things they've met in the sea. It's really good material for me to create such a figure concretely, so I drew the captain smoothly and quickly. That's what I want to show on the cover. Following that, I imagined and created the captain's friends or actually the passengers on the journey. They wear different clothes in different colors to distinguish the player colors.

Illustrations for cards

The most difficult part will be the cover and card layout. I try to assemble many pieces from online images of Neko Harbour in Antarctica with my imagination to create a "my version" of Neko Harbour. It looks real but also a bit fantastic just like my dream land. I applied the way of drawing on each card I used in the game. Combining the icons and graphics, I tried numerous versions of layouts and chose the one I liked the most, printing and using it when I playtested the very last few games to see whether the icons are clear or there is any problem in layout.

I designed the mechanisms and drew the images of the game at the same time when I developed the game at a very late period. At this time, everything was just almost determined. I tested the game in the day time, then drew the images in the night time. I experienced two different statuses of creating the game alternatively. Although it's hard to carry both, it made the progress efficient. I like to control everything because I'm really a perfectionist — but one thing that I still had to compromise about is the user experience. Feedback from playtesters sometimes are right, and there were still some things I was missing or didn't see. I thank everyone who gave me precious suggestions. They improved the game and made the game better.

Now, some pictures for you:

Here are the coin tokens from sketch to 3D rendering

I assembled two images to create the cover art

I tried to make the layout both fit the illustration and make the icons clear

I started to introduce the player board and main board after the harbour theme was confirmed; from top to bottom are several changes between versions

3D rendering of the box and components

Proofreading and making the layout of rulebook really overwhelmed me

Finally, the production of A Pleasant Journey to Neko is complete and will show up at SPIEL '18. It's just the beginning, and I still have some games under playtesting at hand. I really enjoy the journey of designing games so far. Thank you for reading the article, and I look forward to seeing you at my booth 5-E112 during SPIEL!