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Initial Design
The genesis of Sorcerer City began with a simple "what if": What if I combined a deck-building game with a tile-laying game? How exactly could that even work? I had played games like Orléans, so I knew about bag building. Why couldn't players build up a deck of tiles?
Early on, I thought of the idea that players were building cities. Each player would begin with the same starting deck of twelve city tiles, but they could buy two new tiles each round. In order to get value from the deck building, it made sense that players would need to tear down their cities, shuffle their deck, then rebuild their city again. In this way, bought tiles would be useful, but would also come out at random times. I liked the idea that players could customize their cities and their strategy based on the tiles that they bought.
Still, in what universe would it make sense that players needed to build, tear down, and rebuild their cities again and again? I needed a theme that would help shape the arc of the game, and I found inspiration in Harry Potter. I like the imagery in those movies of how streets rearrange themselves magically. Maybe players could be wizard architects who could literally levitate city blocks and move them around. Every round of the game, the players could rearrange the city blocks in a new way, trying to make an ever more perfect city.
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A really rough prototype to see whether the idea works
So far so good, but it became clear quickly that the game needed a timer as some players might carefully ponder every tile placement much to the frustration of the other players at the table. I needed to take the AP out of the city building and instead add an element of tension. Thus, your city tiles counted only if you could build them in time. Sorcerer City has a two-minute timer, which is plenty of time in the first few rounds, but that two minutes can become tight indeed once you have a deck of 25 tiles, especially with monsters in them.
Did I mention monsters? Yes, once I picked the theme, I knew I wanted monsters. After all, what high fantasy game with wizards doesn't have dragons and goblins? Monster tiles are basically negative tiles that make your city building harder and more stressful. I didn't want the game to be strictly about efficiency, about who could buy the most tiles or the right tiles or place them the most perfectly. I wanted an element of surprise and risk. I struggled with how monsters would enter players' decks. Maybe players could buy monsters and add them to other players' decks, but that seemed confrontational. Eventually, I decided that all players would receive a monster each round, so monsters were something everyone had to figure out how to prepare for.
Which resources are players producing in their cities, and what are they used for? Money and victory points seemed obvious, but I wanted at least two more resources. One potential problem with my design was that there wasn't going to be much player interaction since players are building their own cities that don't affect each other, so I decided that one of the four resources would be influence. The player who produced the most influence each round would win victory points and a special reward. The special reward might let the player kill monsters, give away monsters, gain free tiles, or buy tiles more cheaply. In this way, players are directly competing with each other for the most influence.
For the last resource type, I wanted a wild resource ("raw magic") that could be turned into one of the other three types. Raw magic would give players flexibility in their plans. They could turn their raw magic into more money if they needed more money, or victory points if they felt they were falling behind, or influence to try to compete for that majority. All players would secretly pick a card to designate what their raw magic would become, then reveal their card at the same time. This added another type of player interaction: bluffing and second-guessing as players tried to figure out what their fellow players would likely choose.
Finally, as I put together my prototype, I decided that the market of available tiles for purchase should be arranged by color. I wanted two tiles of each type to always be present so that players could freely choose any strategy they wanted.
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First full prototype
Rush Before Gen Con
In April 2017, I finally finished my first prototype of Sorcerer City, and the first playtests went well. I knew I would be going to Gen Con in August 2017 to promote my game, Whistle Stop. Could I really develop Sorcerer City in four months and get it ready to pitch at Gen Con? That seemed lightning fast, but I believed in the game and didn't want my combo of deck building and tile laying to be scooped. I wanted to try. If I failed, at least it wouldn't be from a lack of trying.
One of the most heartbreaking discoveries I made in the first month was that the tiles for my prototype were too large. I thought I needed my tiles to be big as I wanted the icons and text on them to be readable, but in playtest after playtest, players ran out of room to build their cities; the game was almost unplayable. I needed to shrink the tiles by 25%, which was a painful change as I wanted to keep the text and icons the same size, which meant lots of custom tweaking on each tile graphic. Then, I had to cut out all of the tiles again.
In the end, I'm glad I decided to fix the size issue early as it was the right call and made playtesting much easier later.
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Comparison of tile sizes: the overly large first tiles vs. the smaller later tiles
As I playtested furiously over those four months, I added new rewards, new monsters, and new tiles, and I adjusted individual tile costs. One of the nice things about a deck-building game is that the tile cost is an easy way to balance out various tile powers.
Near the end of those four months, I did a blind playtest that lead to two important changes. Players liked monsters, but they felt not all monsters were equally hard. Players who got hard monsters felt they were at a disadvantage to those with easier monsters. I ranked the monsters into two tiers, with the easier monsters in tier 1 (with players receiving them in the first two rounds) and harder monsters in tier 2 (for the final two rounds). This helped balance each player's monster experience, and it fixed the problem of a player getting destroyed by an early hard monster.
The second important change involved the influence rewards. The first place player received victory points and a special reward; the second place player received either the points or the special reward; and everyone else got nothing, which seemed overly harsh. Some players who had a rough round would lose out on influence and not have much money to spend. I realized everyone needed to get something, so now everyone not in first and second place got an extra buy or 5 money, which was enough to let players buy a nice tile that could help them. To further help players who wanted to pursue a money-heavy strategy, I added a new feature in which players who produced 20 or more money automatically got an extra buy. In this way, players who produced 40 money could use it in a meaningful way.
With all of these changes, I was ready to pitch my game at Gen Con!
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Ready to pitch!
Development with Druid City
Sorcerer City was a big hit at Gen Con. I had a chance to play it with Robb and Christina of Blue Peg, Pink Peg, and they loved it. I showed it to five publishers, and four of them expressed interest. In the end, I decided to go with Druid City Games, which showed the most passion for the game and had a similar vision of what the final game could be.
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The awesome cover
James Hudson at Druid City Games sent my game to the Eisner brothers, Ben and Tim, who playtested the heck out of the game and suggested still further refinements that took the game to the next level of polish.
They suggested the market tiles should be arranged by price, not by color, as needing to react to what was available each round seemed more interesting. In my old way, players could safely buy whatever colored tiles they wanted; in the new way, players had to adapt their strategies more often.
Even though I had made a lot of changes to monsters, it still wasn't enough. Ben and Tim found it hard that every player could be getting different monsters. What if all players got the same exact monster every round? At first I resisted the idea, but I gave it a try and realized it was much better for two reasons. One, it made the game easier to learn and players could shout out for help if they couldn't remember what a particular monster did. Two, giving all players the same monster made the game feel even more fair. Players couldn't complain they got the hardest monsters since everyone got the same monsters.
Given that Sorcerer City was going to Kickstarter, James needed lots of stretch goals, which meant I needed to create more monsters, more rewards, and more tiles. One big need in the game was more expensive tiles that offered big benefits, the sort of tiles that players save up to buy and that can really change their strategic focus. I doubled the number of those expensive tiles, increasing replayability. I also developed a set of starting wizard tiles. Each player would start with a unique wizard tile in their deck that would give them an exclusive benefit.
Almost ready
As we neared the finish line, James brought the game to PAX South, where he played it relentlessly for several days straight. Players liked the game, but one issue became obvious to him: Players who fell behind tended to stay behind. I had noticed something similar in my playtests. Because of the economic aspect of the tiles, players who produced a lot tended to produce even more the next round. The game needed a catch-up mechanism.
Such mechanisms are tricky as they have to be beneficial enough to help players in last place without feeling like too big of an disadvantage to the other players. One solution was to add a third place for influence, with the third-place player receiving whatever the second place player didn't choose: points or the reward. This meant more players would receive points/rewards each round. Another suggestion from James was that the player in last place should get a free tile. That sounded good, but I realized the free tile needed to scale as the game progressed. Thus, the last-place player would receive a free tile from the first (cheapest) tier of the market in the first round and a free tile from the fourth (most expensive) tier in the fourth round. This has worked well, and while not a full game-changer, the extra free tiles have been appreciated by last-place players without tipping the balance too far against the first-place players.
Could a game combining deck building and tile laying work? Yes, and I am proud of the result. Hopefully, you will give Sorcerer City a try.
Scott Caputo
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