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"I want to watch Peter Rabbit!", my two-year-old son requests...for the hundredth time. Full of excitement, my son immerses himself in the woodland world yet again. At the edge of his seat, he wonders, "Will the fox capture the rabbit this time?" The obvious answer is no, of course he won't as was the case the 99 times before this because the dumb fox never learns. It's a story with a fixed outcome, and once you know what's going to happen, it's not exciting anymore — but board games are different.
Oh, I'm sorry, who am I again? My name is Hurby Donkers (yep, that's my name), and I'm a Dutch boardgame designer. I like all the good stuff in a board game: Challenge, depth, player interaction, and most of all, suspense.
The latter is something a woodland setting has plenty of. It must be thrilling to have to go out there in the woods looking for food, not knowing what dangers might lurk behind the trees, so I set out to translate this excitement into a board game, to have players feel what it's like to be that scared tiny animal. But make no mistake: In a board game with player-controlled animals, the fox does learn, so next time you set out to eat that nut, be sure that he'll be awaiting you. You'll be screaming "Oh, Fox!" before you know it.
A Tough Nut in a Soft Shell
My goal was to create a game that draws you in and keeps you immersed in the world it presents. In other words, I aimed to have all mechanisms be as elegant as possible so as not to subtract from the experience. To bring the concept of the hunter and the hunted to life, I wanted players to have to crawl into each other's minds in order to not merely guess but actually to predict their actions — a game that is soft on the outside and tough on the inside, if you will, or, you know, easy to learn but hard to master. With that in mind, the first draft was made about a year ago.
A fox in squirrel-clothing
There was always going to be one predator animal hunting down multiple prey animals. I didn't want players working together as holding hands would have made the prey animal players feel too safe, so they were all going to play for themselves, looking to save only their own skin. Each player would receive one face-down role card, of which one is the predator. The predator player then reveals themself by taking the predator token so that others know whom to watch out for. In older versions of the game, any player could be the predator, which is heaps of fun but turned out to be a bit too hardcore for most players. Don't worry, though, as this is still included in the game as an expert variant.
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The progression of the animal card
Each animal could use its trigger ability a different number of times in the first version on the left, but this was quickly discarded. While the general concept of the animal card stayed the same, their abilities did not, and we tested tens of ability ideas before settling on the ones you can find in the final version of the game.
The forest for the trees
To have a sense of environment and adventure, I felt that the game needed a spatial element, so I created a board with different locations in a forest that players could move to. These locations would hold the different food types that the prey animals were after, to give the players a sense of direction as well as valuable information to deduce each other's identity with.
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The progression of the board
Since creating the first version on the left, I must have tried over fifty different configurations. Artwork aside, it is ironic that the board is almost exactly the same. Sometimes the first idea really is the best idea.
Foxing around
Prey animals would need to be able to hide themselves, so the movement over the board was going to be hidden. I guess the obvious first thing that would come to mind is hidden movement with pen and paper, with players secretly writing down their location. However, I wanted none of that. It's been done before, but more importantly, I think it's fiddly and not pretty to look at. Furthermore, the movement should not be completely hidden as there is no suspense if you don't have the faintest clue about where everyone is and you give up trying to find out. That would just be random.
Hang on, let me interrupt myself again by stating something important to me in game design: I generally don't like it when lots of random stuff happens to you. Event cards and dice rolls that determine an outcome are common perpetrators of this. I love to get outplayed by another player, but having aspects of a game determined by randomness keeps me from feeling invested in it.
Right, sorry, moving on. Because my goal was to have players be as scared as possible, they needed to feel the possibility that they were figured out, while also entertaining the thought that they were not. You know, suspense. For the predator to figure out anything, as much information as possible should be out in the open. I felt that simultaneous action selection was especially important for this game because the last thing I wanted was downtime between turns taking away from the immersion I so carefully tried to craft. Thus, players would have a hand of movement cards, from which they would simultaneously play one face-up card each round for all players to see. The cards were square and could be played in four directions. All cards that are played remain on the table for the remainder of the game so that players can always look back to see what others played in previous rounds.
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A full set-up of the game
Your identity is one of a composed set of five animals above the board, so immediately you can see the possible identities and abilities of other players. The action cards you play form a face-up row in front of you, which allows you to easily track the actions of each player.
So that's how it works — but how does it feel?
By analyzing a player's movement cards, you could deduce that player's identity:
"That player is visiting a lot of locations with nuts, so they must surely be the squirrel!"
However, you can also put your opponents on the wrong track:
"Even though I'm not the squirrel, I'm visiting a lot of locations with nuts, so they'll surely think that I am!"
And most importantly, it creates suspense:
"Do I have the nuts to eat that nut over there, or is the predator onto me?"
As sly as a squirrel
Still, the game needed more, and I haven't yet explained the most important part. To allow for true mind games, I gave each animal a special ability that could be triggered only by playing a trigger movement card. Others don't know your identity, so when playing such a card, they also don't know which special ability you just activated. On one hand, this made deduction a fair bit tougher because it wasn't as straightforward, but on the other, it made deduction deeper because it gave away more information.
Furthermore, by giving each animal a special ability, the animals each had their own feel, further increasing the sense of immersion. Also, I really really wanted to include special powers just because, so there's that.
Anyway, the addition of trigger cards meant that the player pawns would not move as that would immediately give away their positions on the board. When I explain the game, most players look at me funny when I say that the pawns don't move until the very end of the game. They don't move. They don't. Nope.
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The trigger card
That Dutch Nut with the French Name
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And with that, I knew that Oh, Fox! was going to make it. Oh, by the way: The game wasn't to be called Oh, Fox! back then. I had "Froschlest Faschlad" as the title — or "Forest Facade" when properly pronounced — but as you can see, we imagined it a tad difficult to pronounce well, especially for non-native Dutch speakers like ourselves. I leave it up to you to imagine what sparked the idea of "Oh, Fox!" as the title, okay?
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The Nutcracker
Together, we proceeded to polish the game. We playtested as much as we could, visiting friends, boardgame clubs, and boardgame conventions. While Michel was busy illustrating the game and getting it out there into the world, I worked on processing feedback and nutting out mechanical problems.
In a nutshell: The core mechanisms felt very much carved in wood and held up to the end, but getting everything else just right appeared to be quite the tough nut to crack, as I imagine it often is with a lot of game designs. In the case of Oh, Fox!, for the majority of its development, it was too difficult — not so much to learn the rules, but to play the game successfully.
So the biggest challenge was to have the game be more accessible, without sacrificing any of the deeper gameplay that I love so much about it. We tested and tweaked and tweaked and tested and tested and tweaked the game, making sure to gather as much feedback from as many people as possible in the process. To any of you reading this: Thank you! Eventually, after having turned everything about the game upside down and inside out, it all magically fell into place. Looking back, I fully believe that we crafted the best version of Oh, Fox! that we possibly could, and I'm very proud of the result.
So, what's next? At the time of writing, Oh, Fox! is in press and will be available at SPIEL '19, ready to kick nuts. I very much hope to see you there. Thank you for reading!
Hurby Donkers
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