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My main question: What happens if you mix mechanisms that you like in one single game? I decided to give it a try.
Since I already had some experience of working with games based on associations of ideas and imagination, I decided to use these two elements as the main mechanisms. However, I shifted the emphasis. For example, the best thing I like in Mysterium as a player is looking for common patterns on different cards and noticing similar associations. As a ghost, I always give people two hint (dream) cards because I think that's much more interesting. Of course, you do not have to play like this. Much of the time, players receive two cards only after they made a mistake the first time. But for this game, I used this idea as a core mechanism.
I love games with a traitor. I'm a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game, especially because you have to keep your role secret, no matter what. I also like when a traitor has (mostly) an accomplice in such games. The accomplice was not in the prototype at first, showing up in the design later.
Then, I had to decide how to make teams, how roles are distributed in the game. I like the method used in A Fake Artist Goes to New York and SpyFall, with your affiliation to a camp determining whether you have information or not.
Now, when I'm writing about it, it seems like a recipe. In actuality, I simply mixed several elements in my head and made the assumption that it might work. When the basic idea was born, I was intrigued and wanted to try it as soon as possible.
First Tests and Changes
Here is the main idea: Players have a hand of cards with detailed illustrations, like those from Dixit or any other game based on the association of ideas. The active player deals a card with a word to each other player; they all receive the same word, except for one player who receives a blank card. (You simply don't know who.) Then, proceeding clockwise, each player must place a card in the middle of the table. Obviously, the card must match the word that they received as best as possible. As soon as everyone has played two cards, players analyze all cards, then launch a discussion to try to find the "conspirator", i.e., the player who received a blank piece of paper. Lastly, the active player announces the word and victory points are scored.
It was not difficult to make a prototype. I used a deck of cards from Mysterium and wrote words on pieces of paper. Everything was ready, and I decided to drop by the nearest board game store. I was lucky because there was just the right amount of people to test the prototype. Soon, I noticed the first problem: If you're the conspirator and you have to go first, you do not have any information about which card you can play. I found a solution after leaving the store as I already knew that the game required a narrator, as in Mysterium. The narrator should be on the same team as the "conspirator", and the narrator should always go first to help their teammate, should that teammate happen to play right after the narrator.
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Creative Element
I discovered that some people were going to get together at Oleg's place, Oleg being the co-designer of Mysterium, on the weekend to play board games, so I asked him whether I could come show the prototype. Usually, they do not do this because they play published games, not prototypes. I ended up going and was surprised and pleased that everyone liked it very much.
After this test, I realized that playing with prepared words does not work well because as a narrator you can end up with cards that are far from the meaning of the word. It is better when the narrator chooses a word on their own after considering the cards in their hand. Aside from that, this change raises the replayability to a new level and adds a creative element that I always enjoy in games.
Development
We kept on playing the prototype at IGAMES Studio, so the game was approved and handed over to the development team. It was time to start working on its graphic design, but we still had time to find ways to improve its gameplay. I decided to contact our old friends from [person=107766]M81 Studio[/person], who had worked on the Mysterium expansions, to ask them to draw illustrations. They had just finished working on a big project for another studio and were ready to proceed.
Illustrations are critical in the game. I actually planned 168 illustrations, which is quite a large amount of work for a single artist. Therefore, the studio hired several artists to work on the design in order to accelerate the pace. Working closely with them, we constantly found new ideas that eventually turned into sketches, and then details were agreed upon.
One day, as I was looking through already drawn pictures, I noticed that two artists mixed several ideas at once — it was my mistake. There were now two cards with an octopus, two with a portal, and several more similar. Of course, they all had a bunch of other details, had different stories, and style, but the central objects were repeated. I was upset because the illustrations were already at their final stage.
Fortunately, the next playtest scattered all my concerns! In fact, by chance a very cool thing was found, which was used in for further illustrations. The main idea was that the player who does not know the word written by the narrator always tries to copy the cards of the narrator and other players. In this case, the simple copying of one element can play a bad joke on that player, which often leads to truly comical situations, making the task of the narrator and their accomplice more difficult — and more interesting.
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Why Do We Love Games Dealing With the Association of Ideas?
Almost a year later, the work on the game came to an end, but I was still worried because during most of the game, players didn't talk. It was possible to talk only during the accusation phase when you try to find out who the conspirator is — and even then, you could not say the hidden word out loud. It was all embarrassing to me, and I was worried as I felt that we had missed something.
One day, when we got together at Oleg's place to test prototypes, we played the game again. While discussing what players could talk about and what they couldn't, I complained about this problem once again. We began to look for solutions and had the idea that the narrator should announce the word after everyone had played their cards, then everyone should explain why they chose the cards that they had played and how they associate them with the word.
At first, we were doubtful of these changes. Not only did they change the rules for discussion during the accusation phase, they clearly went against the previous rules. We were afraid that it would be difficult for people to put their thoughts together and that it would puzzle them. However, after playing the prototype with these changes, we were delighted. It seemed a whole new game, much more interesting. A new layer of gameplay had just been added, and it was really cool.
We also discovered that the most interesting and memorable moment of the game is the moment when you and your friends discuss the association of ideas that each of you had. When you explain them, just look at the surprised faces of your friends. In most other games, such moments often happen after the game itself and are not a direct part of the game. In this case, we managed to make it a part of the game, which is almost the most important part. This phase requires the full power of your imagination and acting skills, along with the ability to convince others of what you're saying. You even have to accuse others to try to take away suspicion from yourself. All this created a real blast of emotions in every round! Exactly what I wanted.
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3, 4 and 5
The next problem that we solved relatively quickly was the accumulation of victory points. From the beginning, I understood that the difficult roles of the narrator and conspirator called for better rewards than their fellow players. At first it was just 2 victory points for them against 1 for players who would find the conspirator. I also decided to have secret victory points to "hide" who is winning and to avoid distracting players. Of course, in such games, the process itself is much more valuable than the result, but you still need some incentive.
During later tests, I realized that the scoring amplitude was too big, so I decided to try with 5 and 3 victory points instead. However, we noticed that players would often finish the game with the same score. We tried different solutions, but they were too complicated. At some point Oleg suggested a simple idea: The conspirator has the most difficult task, so they should get 5 victory points. The task of the narrator is a little easier, so they should get 4 victory points. As for the rest of the players, they should get 3 victory points.
I liked the idea, and after testing, we saw that it worked. After this, we rarely had draws — and when we do have them, a simple tiebreaker is to say that the player with the most chips (i.e., victory point tokens) wins. The idea here is that a constant chip income should be better rewarded in the long term.
Psychics or Detectives?
Finally the game was almost ready. I was confident about the gameplay, and the work on illustrations was coming to an end. The only thing I had to do was come up with a theme and a plot. This task for such games is both simple and difficult at the same time. Of course, there is almost no plot here, but it is important to give some context to such games.
At the beginning of the development, I imagined that what was happening in the game could be compared with classes in a psychics school, with students needing to pass an exam. We even made some sketches of the cover according to this theme. When the phase of accusation was added, I realized that another theme would be better. Players often look at the first played cards, then at the second played cards. They look for common details and try to understand whether a given player just tried to copy the illustration of other players, or if they really know the word. They suspect, guess, look for evidence, and make allegations. They do exactly what true detectives would do!
By the way, to my surprise, I've noticed that the detective theme is extremely popular among board game developers in 2018. This is not the first time that someone's theme becomes popular, and this is a very interesting and strange phenomenon.
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Detective Club
Finally, it was time to find the title and the cover. I was looking for a title that would be written and pronounced the same in most languages. The word "detective" fits here perfectly and is quite self-explanatory. Of course, there are many games where this word appears, so I was looking for something that would make its title stand out. Since the roles of narrator, conspirator, and detectives change each round, this should be something like a certain community, a circle. I liked the option that it could be a club, a secret community, which is well suited for a detective. Besides, the word "club" is present in many languages. I immediately began to check whether somebody had ever used a similar word-combination for the board game. I was lucky again as the title was free.
While discussing ideas for the cover and the title, I decided that it should be something like a school circle or a secret university community. I recently watched the Stranger Things series and was inspired by it and its universe set in the 1980s. This period and the associated aesthetics are close to me because this is my childhood. We began to work with artists in this direction.
Cover in Two Days
As it turned out, I did not check carefully enough the title availability — I suddenly came across a new game with a similar theme, with a title containing the word "club". Even worse, the cover was using a similar idea. I did not expect that. My friends and colleagues tried to calm me down and said that there was just a little similarity and I should not worry about it. Besides, we were running out of time. I insisted that we should present the game in 2018 at SPIEL.
Despite the support of my friends and colleagues, doubts about the cover did not leave me. In addition, several of our testers said that the cartoon style that I had chosen didn't work well with the gameplay. Oleg also wasn't delighted for the same reason.
The production began, however. We had just sent all the materials to the printer when I got feedback from German blogger Thomas Jacob, with whom we had discussed the press release. He also did not like the cover. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. Now was the right time to take risks, so I decided to try to do something else. We had just two days for this — otherwise we would have to start production with the old design.
Unfortunately our main artist Maksym from M81 Studio was on vacation, so with another artist, Dmytro, we began to try variants. The final variant turned out to be my very first one, that is, the first thing that came to my mind and the first one for which we got a draft. When I saw the rendering of the sketch, I immediately knew that it was the right thing. We were still looking for other options, but I already knew that we had found the cover. So far, it is considered as good variant, and this is a record for me. I mean, I've never before completed such a thing so fast, in one breath.
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Club Beeper
Immediately after we decided that the word given to the players had to be found and written by the narrator, the question was how they should do it, ergonomically speaking, and using contemporary trends of the board game industry.
In the beginning, we experimented with non-permanent markers and plastic cards. Although this option was relatively reusable, it had significant drawbacks. Markers dry up over time, even in a closed box, and the plastic surface gets covered with scratches, and cards can no longer be shuffled. (The narrator does not have to know who will get an empty card, so they have to shuffle them before giving them out to the players.) In the end, we decided to use scoring pads, such as the ones you find in games with difficult scoring. We really liked this solution, especially since it could be stylized as a detective notebook! This thing was perfectly suited to the chosen theme, the thing we were looking for.
However, all this time I also had an idea of how cool it would be to use the capabilities of modern smartphones as an alternative to notebooks. We had limited experience in developing digital applications for our projects, but it was enough to realize that even such a simple feature is a challenge. I liked the idea, though, and decided to ask about and search for possible options and developers. After throwing back all the doubts in the middle of this summer, I became acquainted with a great team of programmers from our city called Devloop. The work has started and is still on. We plan to complete the development of the "Club Beeper" application for iOS and Android by the end of September 2018. Now players have the option to either use real notebooks or download the app and enjoy the advancements of modern communications technology.
Welcome to the Club!
I'd like to thank all those who have been patient and have read this long text to the end. At first, I wanted to make it much shorter, but I thought that it might be useful for someone else. When developing a game, it is always about the challenges you have to go through. During the journey, you have to solve various tasks. You may have moments of despair, interrupted moments of joy when you solve your problems, and of course lots of funny and interesting situations that you keep in mind and are nice to remember someday. As far as I'm concerned, the process of creating is as pleasant as the result itself. I am grateful to all who helped me along the way: to my colleagues, my friends, and my family. You are the best!
I like Detective Club the way it came out, and I am proud of the way we all have made it. We will be have our own booth at SPIEL '18 for the first time. I will be very glad to see you there and play with you this game.
Oleksandr Nevskiy
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