Designer Diary: Revive, or How to Design the "Ideal Game"

Lead your tribe and revive civilization five thousand years after the fall of humankind.

That is the premise of Revive, a game I began designing four years ago with Helge Meissner and Anna Wermlund.

At that time, the fall of humankind seemed quite far off. It was before the Covid pandemic, before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, and at a time when Margaret Atwood's work was still considered fiction. After a late game night, Anna, Helge and I (Kristian) discussed what elements we really liked in games, and what we thought should be in the "ideal game". We talked about how we all liked civilization games, and how much more we enjoyed building things rather than having things torn down. Elements we thought should be in such a game were technology trees, asymmetric and customizable player powers, a sense of exploration, multi-purpose cards, and no destructive player interaction. We also wanted quick rounds and a variable set-up, encouraging new strategies each game. At the end of the evening, we decided that we wanted to design this game.

Anna: "I certainly enjoy playing 'mean' games more than Helge and Kristian do, but mostly for shorter games. One thing I dislike in long and heavy strategy games is when you know two-thirds into the game who will win or who will come last — and with still one-third of the game remaining you have no real chance to change this. That is something we worked hard to avoid in our game."

Helge: "For me, high interactivity by other means than area control and destruction is something I enjoy. I think we incorporated that in Revive."

For our next game night, I made a first prototype. The core mechanism was that of playing cards in different slots around your player board. Where you played your card would determine the effect of the card. This element would remain a core mechanism throughout the design process. Each card has a resource action on its top edge and a special ability on its lower edge. If you play the card in the top slot, you get the resources; in a lower slot you get the special ability. The idea was to create a clear dilemma: You have these cards, but you can activate only two of the resource effects and two of the special abilities.

Another thing we implemented quite early was that the cards have various colors. Each card slot can be upgraded with slot modules of those same colors. Whenever you play a card in a slot, you also activate any matching slot modules. This adds to the dilemma: Perhaps you have this green card, and you really want to play it in a lower slot to activate its special ability, but you have good green slot modules in the top slot, and it would be nice to activate them.

And thus began the four-year process of testing, designing, and redesigning Revive. The earliest files in the Revive folder on my computer date to 2018, and the names of the more recent files are revealing: Cards85.pdf, and Playerboards135.pdf. The numbers represent the number of times these components have been completely reworked. This is why I avoid making pretty prototypes. The more time I spend on polishing the art for a prototype, the more reluctant I will be to make changes.

Back to the cards: Being the core mechanism of the game, we thought it would be nice if the cards represented your citizens and throughout the game you would recruit more of them. We tried some standard deck-building variants, but the randomness inherent in standard deck-building did not go so well with the strategic nature of this game.

Finally, we came up with a system of rotating cards: When you "hibernate" (which is basically an advanced "pass action"), you move all of your played cards to your resting area, then retrieve all cards previously in your resting area to your hand. This means you have two alternating "work shifts" of citizens, switching between the two whenever you hibernate. There are ways to move cards from one "work shift" to the other, which could be useful if you, for example, want to combo certain cards. This system is deterministic and predictable, meaning you have full control over your cards, and this suited the game much better than any of the more random mechanisms we tried.

Helge: "Kristian elegantly glosses over how many fundamental changes these cards have seen! He doesn't mention those long periods of trying out variants where *all* actions were triggered by cards. And that version where the slot determined the action, and the card provided resources. And what about all the balancing and pruning to avoid potential loops and everlasting super-turns, while still keeping the card effects strong and interesting?"

Then there was exploration. In the computer game Sid Meier's Civilization, our favorite part is the early game in which you move your settlers around, trying to find the perfect spot for your first city. We wanted that for our game!

For a long time we experimented with domino-shaped tiles that were built on top of each other to form a 3D landscape. Players tried to form connected areas of terrain; the larger the terrain, the better the building you could build. We ran into a lot of problems with this. Most importantly, adding to a terrain didn't feel good when you knew that other players could easily benefit from it. In general, players need to see how their actions bring themselves closer to or farther from their strategic goal. They need to feel control and ownership of what they do to improve their situation. This mechanism might have worked well in a quicker, tactical game, but not in the long strategic game we wanted to design.

At some point we left the idea of stacking tiles and returned to the original feeling from the early turns of Sid Meier's Civilization: Trying to find the perfect spot for your buildings. Now, area tiles had various terrains, and your buildings would "harvest" and benefit from all neighboring terrains. This meant that different building spots would contribute to different strategies. In the final version of Revive, each terrain advances your marker on the corresponding machine track. You unlock reward spaces along your machine tracks to gain custom machines, and the machines can be activated to modify your other actions.

The old saying "Kill your darlings" is very relevant when working on game design. It basically means that in any kind of creative process, it is easy to fall in love with an idea, and it can be hard to get rid of such an element, even when you realize it does not align with the game's core concept.

For quite long, we had such a darling in our game: Each player had a technology board with lots of empty hexagonal spaces. Various technologies were shown along the sides. To activate a technology, you needed to connect it to your "power core". You made these connections by picking "connector tiles" from a common display and placing them on the hexagons . We (or at least I) fell in love with this mechanism, and it was a love affair that went on for too long. I liked the spatial puzzle, and I liked the idea of this — but to be a puzzle, it also meant that it wasn't obvious which connector you should pick...and when players had to pick a connector (perhaps trying out several to see which one was the best fit) it slowed the game down. Playtesters seemed more interested in the decision of what technologies to unlock.

At some point I had to acknowledge that this mechanism was not helping the game. We simplified the process and cut the logistics — but I still secretly hope that one day the connectors and I might meet again in a different game. That is how I have learned to deal with killing my darlings: It helps to say to myself that I can always return to that idea in a future prototype.

Helge: "Plenty of darlings were harmed when making this game! 3D terrain, a novel scoring track, resources growing on the board (not literally) — all sacrificed for the better of the game. Tough, but worth it! And, as Kristian says, the chaff of this design might turn to seeds of new ones!"

Anna: "Now I'm curious, Kristian. Do you have a graveyard folder on your computer for all these dead darlings, or do you just hide the bodies in your closet?"

We worked on Revive for more than three years, and over this period we discussed and developed a lot of thoughts and ideas about the game's universe and its tribes. We decided that we wanted to communicate this to the players, and this led to the idea of including a small campaign. We use the campaign to introduce players to the lore of the game world and its tribes, while gradually bringing in new game elements.

At some point we got the idea that each tribe could represent a philosophical or political ideology. Each tribe would have its own view on what had caused the downfall of humankind five thousand years ago. More importantly, each tribe would also hold its own views on how a new world should be shaped. Through the campaign, players will learn about these six different ideologies, and perhaps learn what really caused the downfall of humankind.

Anna, Helge, and I discussed and came up with the basis for these ideologies, and when I finalized their individual stories, I wanted to describe these ideologies as contradictory to each other, but at the same time make it possible to sympathize with...all of them at the same time. I don't think I spoil anything by saying that we obviously sympathize more with some than others, although I do not know if that shines through.

Anna: "I think we had a lot of fun coming up with these tribes and finding abilities that were both thematically fitting and functionally interesting. I guess my favorites are the Nàdair and Kuniban: Nàdair plants new forest, while Kuniban destroys terrain, making new building spots. I like that they change the game situation for all players, and their presence can make an impact on how a game feels."

Kristian: "I also like them, but I do not particularly condone the philosophy of the Kuniban tribe, though. They are too individualistic and hedonistic for me. I sympathize more with the social politics of the Formica tribe, inspired by eusocial insects. By the way, you came up with Formica's name, Helge, being the biologist you are."

Helge: "The societies of ants, wasps, and bees can also be seen as nationalistic and totalitarian, or since each hive can be considered a superorganism, as greedy bullies. But now I digress!

A tribe I really like to play are the Vukuntur. Their special ability is a falcon that lets them go where no one has gone before. Less food goes to paying range which makes exploring easier, and the falcon can get them out of tight spots, both spatially and resource-wise.

But do I approve of Vukuntur's philosophy? They had a different name and slightly different concept early in the design process, aggressive and arrogant. Now, they just prefer mountains over concrete and stay out of other people's way. When I think of them as peace-seeking and anarchistic, looking outward and onward to build a new world, rather than libertarian and assertive, I like them, yes."

Kristian: "Oh, I also like the Hofstadterians, a religious tribe whose teachings may be loosely inspired by the work of modern philosopher Douglas Hofstadter — check him out! Their concern is protecting all conscious beings, although they have a wide definition of consciousness."

We still had a year left of balancing, polishing, and fine-tuning — and one of the last things that fell into place was the endgame. Ideally, an endgame needs to feel climactic. American musician Bobby Womack supposedly said: "Leave them wanting more, and you know they'll call you back." And although that was said in a very different context, I believe it is still a quite good guide for when your game should end. The game should end at a time when players feel they have completed much of what they planned, but not so much that they don't have anything else to do.

Also, the endgame score should be unpredictable enough to not make it obvious who is winning. It therefore needs to have impact, but not so much that the end score is the only thing that matters. After testing a lot of different endgame conditions, we introduced the alien artifacts and the artifact cards, with secret objectives for the players. These serve multiple purposes: They give players a clear direction early in the game, and — being hidden — they also keep the endgame scoring unpredictable.

Helge: "Scoring greatly influences how a game feels, I learned that much designing this game. The same core gameplay gave us a pure efficiency puzzle, a tactical game of odds, and a brutal all-or-nothing race, all depending on the scoring mechanism."

Balancing an asymmetric game is a lot of work. The game comes with six different tribes, each with their own technologies and abilities. Our most important tool for balancing is the experience we acquire by testing the game hundreds of times. We develop a sort of intuition for how strong an ability should be — what a resource, point, or extra card is worth. We spent a lot of time working on the abilities so that they feel balanced under as many circumstances as possible.

Anna: "It is very tempting to put a little effect or a bonus here and there to make things feel more balanced. I wanted clean concepts: Cards should give one set of advantages, machines a second, and so forth. Otherwise things become samey and unthematic. You did not always make this easy, guys! Felt like herding kittens more than once..."

Helge: "Yes, admittedly, some effects migrated from machines to technologies and back. It got better the more we developed the theme!"

There are so many factors influencing the balance, countless possible different set-ups and endgame scoring conditions, making it impossible to achieve a mathematical perfect balance. On top of this, you have the possible issues with player order because Revive is in some ways a race, a race to gain the most artifacts, and taking the last artifact is generally good. When someone achieves this, all the other players get one last round. We tried several different ways to end the game, and this was the ending that felt the best. This way, the player who ends the game is rewarded properly, while the other players get one last chance to spend their resources.

It may, of course, happen that players do not get the same number of turns during the game. We compensated this by varying the number of resources, each player starting with one more resource than the previous player. Is one extra resource a "proper" compensation for going one step later in the player order? That is actually a very hard question to answer because it depends on a lot of different things. Taking a regular turn would normally provide more than one resource, but now you get this extra resource without having to play a card and occupy a card slot. Sometimes this one extra resource is exactly what you need to be able to complete an important action. Sometimes it means you can play a card for its special ability rather than for its resource.
Also, it is worth noting that the starting resources need not compensate for a complete player turn. In a two-player game, compensating for half a turn would be ideal. Then players take turns being "half a turn ahead". In a multi-player game, it is slightly more complex.

Kristian: "Balancing a game by varying the start resources can lead to an interesting paradox: Say that one extra resource is considered a perfect compensation for taking your turn after another player. Player 2 would start with one extra resource, player 3 with two extra resources, and so on. This may be the perfect balance when a player compares their situation to the player going before them. But the balance may be way off when you compare the first and the last player. Say that you have a game with one thousand players. The last player would begin with 999 more resources than the first player, and that may be a terrible deal for the starting player."

Having tested the game hundreds of times, we have not observed any association between player order and end results, but the true answer to questions about balance and possible player order advantages can come only from real statistical data once the game is released and played thousands of times. However, we do feel quite certain of our decision. For now.

Helge: "This I can claim no credit for. I am too thick to calculate through my options in board games. Anna and Kristian certainly can, and will, argue the relative value of one action over another back and forth forever! I usually just do what looks fun to me. Anna calls it 'finding creative ways to play poorly'."

Kristian: "One may argue (I guess I did just that) that the only way to achieve perfect balance is to statistically analyze thousands of games and make adjustments until all players have the same chance of winning — but that disregards the existence of metagaming, that is, players adapting to the current strategic trends in a game. In a rich game system, once a player comes up with a new strategy, other players will take up this strategy, and this may render the previous balance useless."

Helge: "Old news to Magic: The Gathering players."

The last thing we put in place was the solo game mode. I worked with Kjetil Svendsen on this as he had already tested Revive a lot, and he knew the game really well. Kjetil is the ideal tester for solo games as he knows how to squeeze the absolute maximum number of points out of every turn. Kjetil also made me realize that I had to make some changes. Initially we thought the game could end after a certain number of hibernations. Having an unlimited number of actions before hibernating naturally meant that effects that provided an extra action became useless. Kjetil tried some variations before we landed on the current mechanism: Keeping track of all your card actions. Your goal in the solo game became scoring the most points limited by a certain number of card actions. The six tribes feel very different to play, and the challenge is to see how well you can perform with each individual tribe.

In 2021 I presented this game to Eilif Svensson, my co-owner of Aporta Games. We have designed many games together over the past years, and I have great confidence in his opinions. We decided that we would publish the game, and while we discussed what artists to use, we agreed that we loved the characters that Martin Mottet had done for The Magnificent. We asked Martin to do the character illustrations for Revive, and while he was on it, we also asked him to do a box illustration. This became a naturalistic painting of a yellow flower — a Narcissus — emerging from the ground in a frozen landscape.

We also knew we wanted to work with Norwegian illustrator Gjermund Bohne, who we have worked with on several of our releases from Aporta Games. Gjermund is a great graphic designer, a great illustrator, and a master of iconography. This game would have a lot of icons, and Gjermund knows how to design intuitive and cohesive icons. This is a craft and an artform that does not get the attention it deserves. I also had an idea for the box cover: To frame Martin Mottet's classic paint-like illustration with Gjermund's raw style. We tried out some variations, but finally Gjermund wanted to do a dark, Giger-esque frame, with Martin's beautiful flower growing through. The contrasts were excellent: Both in colors, in theme and in style.

The corner locations are painted by Ukrainian illustrator Dan Roff. His illustrations are realistic in style while retaining a poetic beauty, telling stories of abandoned places. I immediately knew they were a perfect fit when I first discovered them.

Gjermund also did a fantastic job on illustrations and design for the game board, cards, tiles, tribe boards, and not least the huge dual-layer player boards. And now — as we are waiting to see the final game in print — I am really hoping these player boards will feel and handle as great as they look. That is perhaps the one thing I am personally mostly looking forward to seeing at SPIEL '22 in October. But in general, we are really excited to present Revive to you, and we hope you will enjoy exploring its universe.

Kristian: "On the evening of February 23, 2022, Dan Roff, who illustrated the locations of Revive, went to sleep in his bed as normal. When he woke up, things were anything but normal. His country was being invaded by Putin's Russia. The six months since have been terribly hard for Dan. He has described his situation to me, and I wanted to share a short passage from his longer text, as I think it gives valuable insight to the hardships Dan and the forty million other Ukranians have had to endure."

Dan: "(...) We bought the necessary supply of food and water for two weeks and returned home. That was the first time we heard the air raid alert.

Guides began to appear on the Internet for strengthening windows, in case of a shock wave. They also explained the safest place to be in the apartment. It's called the "Two Walls Rule". In an explosion, the shock wave can break the windows along with the window frame, and the first wall in the way will receive these fragments, while the second wall will most likely protect — unless it's a direct missile hit, of course. In most apartments of the countries of the former USSR, the safest place is the corridor.

Therefore, for the next two weeks, we literally lived and slept in the hallway. Having laid blankets, pillows and a hanging flashlight, we spent all our time there. Blackouts were also introduced in the cities. This is when, at nightfall, everyone turned off the lights in the houses and on the street so that the enemy could not navigate from the air."

Dan keeps posting great art on Instagram as @dan.roff.

Kristian Amundsen Østby