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2. With more time on hand after those shows, let's now look into Finished!, which I believe is Friese's greatest design to date.
3. Your goal in Finished! will feel familiar if you've ever played Klondike solitaire or something similar: Sort all 48 cards — which are numbered 1-48 — in order. At the start of the game, shuffle all cards other than the 48 to create a deck, place the 48 on the bottom of the deck, then begin play.
4. This set-up matters because the 48 card serves as your clock. In your role as an office flunky, you've been tasked with sorting files, and each time the 48 passes through your hands, an hour has also passed, and you must drink coffee to stay awake in your fluorescent-filled 9-to-5 tomb. If you run out of coffee — and you have only seven — then you have failed your filing function, which might as well be a resignation note because you are clearly terrible at your job.
5. Your attention span must be limited — or perhaps the person who wrote the office filing protocol assumed that filers would be feeble-minded and you have fulfilled those expectations — because you can handle only three files at a time. More specifically, from the deck of files at the start of the game, you will draw exactly three file cards and place them into your "present" area, which is called "present" not because you get a thrill out of opening the files, but because this is your present activity, that is, this is where your focus is required and the only place where you can do things.
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Actions, yes, but nothing to do...
For Every Action There's No Free Action
6. Each file card depicts something, typically one action that you can take with files — but to take that action you must spend one candy. Again, whoever wrote the office filing protocol was correct in their assessment of your skills because you can do almost nothing unless you consume a sweet to motivate yourself to do something. Sweets and coffee are the only things pushing you through the day!
7. You start the game with seven candy, and you can acquire more candy in two ways: First, some file cards depict a candy on them, and when you draw a candy from the deck, you add one candy to your personal stash from the candy reserve. Second, if you manage to place three or more file cards in numerical order, say, 16/17/18, then you process those cards, you receive one candy from the reserve for each card after the first — so two candies in this example. Seriously, you must have the focusing capabilities of a six-year-old because you're rewarded for doing what any normally functioning person would do automatically for no reward. Friese should have called this game "Skinner Box", but that name doesn't start with "F", so it was out.
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So many files! How did I get all of those in play on the second turn?
"Then Shalt Thou Count to Three, No More, No Less"
8. Let's go back to the beginning of the game: Draw three cards from the deck, then take a candy from the reserve for each candy depicted on those cards, then lay them face up into the designated "present" area on your desk. Do you want to use one or more of the card powers?
9. Maybe you can spend a candy to use an action to draw a card from the deck (e.g. #14 and #27), thereby giving you more things to work on at once, which is usually a good thing; after all, if you could lay out all 48 cards at once, you could easily sort them and be done for the day, goofing around with your co-workers until closing time, but rules are rules, so stick to the filing protocol.
10. Maybe you can use an action to draw one card, then put another card back on top of the deck (e.g., #22, #33, and #39). If you put a candy card back, then next turn you'll get another candy from that card when you draw it again, thereby replacing the candy you spent to take that action and leaving you in a net neutral position regarding your sweet stash.
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Using #42 to jump the line
11. Maybe you can push those files in the present aside for a few minutes, that is, push them into the future (e.g., #16), so that you can work on something else. Yes, one action lets you do this, with you pushing the "present" cards away from you into a "future" row, then drawing three new cards and working on those instead. You can even do this multiple times, creating many rows of future cards that function in a FILO style.
12. A different action lets you push something into the future more selectively, with you taking exactly one card from the present, then sliding it into the future where it will stay untouched for now (e.g., #12 and #19). Think of it as copying text, then holding it in reserve while you go to a different browser tab and scroll to exactly where you need to paste it, only to get distracted by a Slack notice that you need to respond to immediately on Facebook, where you see a note from a friend who's ill and you want to respond to that with a cute GIF, and —no, no, no, don't forget you still have that text in reserve waiting for your command-V to release it! Paste that card in the future, then get back to work.
13. After all, while you can set tasks for yourself in the future, you can work only in the present.
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Pushing #3 into the future in the hope that #2 will appear
The Past Was Once Your Present
14. Once you decide that you're done sorting files in the present — and without paying any candy at all, you can move those present cards into whatever numerical order you want, with low to high being typical — you set them aside; in game terms, you send them to the past, clearing the way for you to get back to work on future files (should you have any) or to draw three new file cards from the deck.
15. If you send cards to the past and more than three cards are now sitting in the past, you must add them to the bottom of the deck in FIFO order until you have at most three. Again, focus is required!
16. Another action lets you draw the rightmost two cards out of the past and back into whatever you're working on in the present (e.g., #8). Maybe you just filed 43 and 45 in the past, then 44 comes out in the present. What luck! Now you can spend a candy to activate 44, pull out those two "past" cards, and create a 43/44/45 sequence sandwich that will net you two candy when you ship the present cards to the past. You've gained a candy and put those cards in order!
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Pushing #3 into the future again!
17. Still another action ships two cards of your choice from the present to the past, then adds the top two cards of the deck to your present (e.g., #41), and yet another action lets you take all the cards from the present and ship them directly to the bottom of the deck, bypassing any cards sitting in the past (e.g., #42).
18. As I mentioned before, each time you ship 48 to the past, you must drink a coffee — and this requirement creates both restrictions and opportunities for you. If 48 is in the recent past, then you can't return cards from the past to the present because you'll drink another coffee when the 48 goes to the past again.
19. If you use the draw-one-place-one-on-the-deck or the push-one-card-into-the-future actions, however, you can delay that coffee drinking only as long as your candy supply holds out and those actions keep turning up. Why? Because each time you use an action, you must place a candy on that card, and that candy stays there until the card goes to the past, at which time the candy is returned to the reserve. If you fail to turn over an action, then the 48 shoots into the past; run out of candy, then down goes the coffee. Time is passing, and you're moving closer to death — I mean, losing the game.
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Two rows of future work above the present and gutted past
"Sugar Solves Lots of Problems, That's What I Think"
20. The status of your candy stash is crucial to your success, and in your first game or two, it's difficult to know whether an action merits using. Yes, drawing cards is almost always good, but is it "one candy" good? If you have 4/12/14, then you have exactly one card that you can draw — the 13 — that will pay for itself through the creation of a sequence. Drawing something between 4 and 12 is okay, but so is scooting around your office on a rolling chair, and that's not going to get you closer to winning either.
21. What will get you closer to winning? Getting all the files in order. As in Klondike solitaire, when the 1 appears, you immediately place it in the "finished" pile to the side of everything else, then draw a replacement card and put that in the present instead of the 1. If you draw the 2 after the 1 has been set aside, then the 2 goes in the finished pile and you draw a replacement. You want to place cards in order within the deck because if you have, say, 16/17/18 in sequence, then once the 16 is placed on the finished pile, the next two cards will follow automatically.
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Progress in the present? Still no #2...
22. The challenge, of course, is determining how much order is enough to get all the cards finished before you run out of coffee and lose. Which brings us back to the question of how much organization one candy is worth — and the answer is, as you might expect, it depends.
"Who Controls the Past Controls the Future"
23. The trick to Finished! is that it's not-so-secretly a memory game. The first time you go through the deck, you might focus on actions that pull cards back from the past (so that you can make sequences) or you'll use the #2 (which draws two cards for one candy) and #47 (which lets you draw one card for one candy up to three times) so that you can have lots of cards in the present.
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Pushing ahead #3 one more time!
24. Once you're going through the deck the second, third, fourth, etc. time, however, you can draw on your knowledge of the card order to determine when to take which actions. Putting cards into the future, for example, pushes them behind (or after depending on how you want to think of it) the cards that are now going into the present; putting cards on the bottom of the deck does the same thing.
25. Instead of manipulating only single cards in the present — draw one card, draw another card — you can ideally take larger actions that when combined with the small ones creates more order — even if sometimes it's just pseudo-order as when you move, say, 17/28/29 in front of 19/31/35. The new sequence of 17/28/29/19/31/35 isn't strictly in numerical order, but having 17 in front of 19 and 28/29 in front of 31/35 is better than the other way around.
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Another push to the future? Or am I falling prey to the sunk-cost fallacy?
26. The more you play Finished!, the more you realize that the cards aren't in order from the top of the deck to the bottom, but rather they're in order in a circle, and the actions let you manipulate cards through various positions on that circle, with the circle shrinking over the course of the game as cards are placed in the finished pile. The more cards you remove, the easier it is to manipulate cards in the circle — but the more frequently the 48 comes around for you to dodge and delay.
27. Admittedly you could play Finished! with the cards face up once you've seen them the first time through, but the memory aspect seems critical to the player experience. The challenge isn't simply to put the cards in order. Again, you could spread all the cards on the table if that's all that mattered.
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Still no #2 — and now #6 will be placed ahead of #5. Argh!
28. No, you are challenging yourself to remember what you've handled when and which cards come prior to which other cards, and you must juggle many things in mind at once, with you needing to prioritize certain memories over other ones. What's important for you to remember? Do you even know? Productivity experts say that the best to-do lists have only a few items on them, and through more than one hundred games of Finished!, I've found that having 3-4 items on the next round's to-do list is typically enough to achieve long-term success.
"We're Getting Clearer All the Time"
29. Tension in the game escalates perfectly because you often have only a couple of cards, if that, in the finished pile the first time you drink a coffee. With one round of eight complete, you've accomplished...almost nothing. (Similar to how when I had completed one-eighth of my life, I had accomplished almost nothing. Similar to how I’ve written this many words, yet still haven’t gotten to the point!)
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YAAAS! I've spent almost everything, but the #13 pays off. What's more, after drawing a replacement (#11), I can now put #6 on the deck. Bonus!
30. But now you're armed with knowledge of the deck. You can recall (perhaps) that you need to push the 5 a couple of card blocks later so that the 4 can be placed aside, then the 5 (for otherwise you'll need two passes through the deck — which means two coffees — rather than one before you've finished the 5); and you need to push the 13 forward to make a sequence, gain candy, and line those cards up; and you need to use the 36 to move that block of cards forward.
31. Oh, and more than anything else you want to be cognizant of the blocks of cards themselves, that is, the groups of three cards you reveal each time that you refresh the present. Even with little to no candy on hand, you can make small adjustments to the card circle by ensuring that you're not drawing the same three cards each time you pass through the deck. (Another hidden lesson from Klondike solitaire.) If I draw 17/20/38 and don't change anything, then draw 21/24/26 and don't change anything, then I draw those same cards again on the next pass, I'm spinning my wheels.
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Once the future becomes the present, #3 is finished, with #6 being drawn as a replacement and landing in the spot after #5
32. If, however, I use a "draw one card" action at some point prior to those blocks of cards passing through my hands, then I'll instead draw 20/38/21, which I can change to 20/21/38. On the next pass, I might draw 21/38/24, which again I can change. Minute progress is progress nonetheless, and sometimes the effect of your actions won't become apparent until the future. Four rounds in, you're sitting with only ten cards in the finished pile, then — ziiiiip! — eight more cards drop in on the next pass through the deck.
33. The candy ratio in the higher-numbered cards is lower than in the lower-numbered cards, so you need to have sequences in place to cover this loss of candy generation or else you're going to stall in the final rounds or not be able to forgo the smothering effect of 48.
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Hitting 48, with one "extra" card to start shifting card trios
Final Thoughts
34. Finished! is a brilliantly engaging puzzle-based solitaire game that blends the familiar with the new, a game that grows more engrossing the more familiar you are with the cards and the patterns that they create during play.
35. Is this what Friese set out to do with this design? I have no idea, but when I'm assessing games, I try to figure out — based on what's presented in the box and in the rules — what the designer wanted to do, in addition to how well they achieved that goal. What doesn't work in the design compared to what they were trying to do? What could be better? What experience does the designer want the player to have, and does this design deliver that experience?
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All is in order here...
36. Obviously big spoonfuls of subjectivity are scooped into both halves of my assessment of what Friese wants to do and what he did, but in this case I think he came closer with Finished! to what I perceive his goals to be for this design than he has with any other game.
37. Don't get me wrong — I love Foppen / Fool! and think highly of Power Grid, Fine Sand, 504, and other Friese designs, but Finished! feels like a perfect design with nothing to change.
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Card #37 removes all the candy from cards in the present and future, letting you re-use them should you have enough sweets
Re-Finished
38. What's surprising, though, is that the iOS version of Finished! from Eric Snider (link) improves the original design from Friese without changing any of the rules.
39. How is this possible? Well, consider the memory aspect of Finished! that runs through its DNA. The first time you play a shuffled deck, you know that all of the cards are present in some order, but you have to play the odds as to whether an action will be valuable in your first pass through the deck.
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Try again? Why I'd love to!
40. Once you've completed that first pass, then (assuming your memory is of regular capacity) you'll have some idea of what to attempt to do during the second pass — but the iOS version of Finished! allows you to replay a deck if you fail to win, which means that now you'll have a memory of what to do on that first pass through the deck!
41. Yes, you can now use your memory skills to travel back in time and make better choices with the same arrangement of cards, something that wouldn't have been possible previously unless you wrote down the order of all the cards as they appeared, then rearranged the deck for a second game.
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Non-final graphics with 13(!) cards in the present
42. I mean, you could have done that anyway, but it would have seemed indulgently obsessive. Thanks to the power of technology, your indulgently obsessive practices can be engaged with no effort required on your part. (You might not be more mentally balanced, but you will have another chance to put 48 cards in numerical order, so that's something, I suppose.)
43. As in Edge of Tomorrow and Groundhog Day, you now have a chance to relive the past and do better. Is every deck solvable if you work through it enough times? I have no idea, but I found it extremely satisfying to finally defeat a deck (on the fourth try) that presented the even cards 8/10/12/14/18/20 almost consecutively, with the cards filling those gaps (9, 11, etc.) scattered mostly on the other side of the circle. If you didn't know about the set-up ahead of time, you couldn't possibly move things around enough in eight rounds — and even when I did know, it still took me a few tries to win because the cards were maximally distanced and my memory is not great. I would think that I could shift the 9 enough, but I'd run out of actions or candy, then finish the 8 without the 9, requiring another trip around the wheel and thereby guaranteeing failure.
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Statistics screen not up to date
44. I've now played the iOS version of Finished! more than ninety times, and as much as I love physical games and dislike digital ones, this version of Finished! is ideal for me since I often mess up my candy situation (as demonstrated in the playthrough video below) and find the shifting of cards from the past to the bottom of the deck more tedious than meditative.
45. I would love to tackle many tasks in my life in the most efficient way possible so that I have more time for other things. (For one thing, having all the words for this essay spill out in the right order on the first attempt would have been a big help.)
Almost finished...
46. Similarly, I would love to redo tasks and actions that didn't go right the first time. I learn from my actions — or try to anyway — but even so not everything works out the next time or the time after that. Finished! allows you to satisfyingly work through this sensation of wanting things to be right, of rewarding you (with points in the iOS version) for having coffee and candy unspent once the files are in order. As you get better, you can increase the challenge for yourself by starting the game with fewer candies and coffees, similar to how you increase the challenges in your own life by attempting larger projects or trying to complete something more quickly.
47. As you might be able to tell, I find Finished! immensely satisfying, even when I lose. When playing a game, you place yourself within a system of artificial constraints, surrendering certain aspects of your freedom in order to prove that even so encumbered, you can do what you set out to do. And sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can't — but you can try again, and you can learn from your mistakes, and you can do better, and you can find a path that leads to your goal. Then you can do it again.
48. If you want to see even more of the game in action, here's a full playthrough video, with notes for a couple of mistakes I made along the way — mistakes that are impossible in the iOS version, which also contains an "undo" feature if you want to bring the past back to the present even more quickly:
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