Designer Diary: Beyond the Sun, or Beyond Tech Trees

Back in 2014, I was obsessed with Sid Meier's Civilization V, a 4X computer game in which players control a civilization from ancient through modern times. I was enamored of its technology tree, its expansiveness, and the intricacies of one prerequisite leading to another.

Being a newbie designer at the time, I challenged myself to emulate the Civ V experience in a board game that could be played in a couple of hours. Note that "technology progression" is not a new concept in board games at all — it is featured in Terra Mystica, Twilight Imperium, Progress, and Advanced Civ, to name a few — but something about these games didn't quite scratch my itch. I wanted the technology tree to be the centerpiece of the game, I wanted it to look like an actual tree, and on top of that, I wanted the players to build the tree together as the game progressed.

I turned to my favorite game, Agricola, for inspiration. In Agricola, players get only a few basic worker placement actions at the beginning of the game. As the game progresses, more complex worker actions are revealed in a semi-random order. What if these action cards were revealed in a tree-like structure? And what if this tree...were to change every game?

Components of the original prototype, with an ancient civilization theme; the technology tree has barely changed

After fiddling around with the topology of the tree and making up technology cards that correspond to different aspects of civilization building, the initial prototype of the game was born. Compared to my other design ideas, the game already worked fairly well right out of the gate, but the ancient civilization theme and the lack of a compelling exploration/exploitation mechanism didn't sit well with me and my testers. Without a full-blown map like Civ V or the nuances of city management — either of which would make a two-hour game into a much longer one — the prototype seemed incomplete.

After putting it down for a few years, the design took a turn "beyond the sun" and into space. Enter Through the Ages and Eclipse, two other board game masterpieces that gave me inspiration. In Through the Ages, there are no maps or cities; population, economy, exploration, and colonization are "abstracted" through cards, events, and a variety of resource tracks. In Eclipse, the resource track markers double as board markers; as players build infrastructure on planets, they take cubes away from the resource track, naturally revealing a higher income for the player.

"Smart" mechanisms like these fascinate me, and I eventually managed to incorporate them into what became Beyond the Sun. Income tokens can be removed through planet exploration, colonization, and research, revealing increasing benefits on the player boards. Resource cubes follow a "life cycle" that starts from the player board, turns into population, moves into space, then is resupplied as players colonize. The galaxy map is abstracted and does not take away the table presence of the technology tree, but still provides rich player interaction as well as the tension of area-control.

With all the moving parts in place, the game started to feel "right". Thanks to Game Makers Guild Boston and a few especially enthusiastic playtesters who "wanted to keep playing the game over and over", I pushed aside all other ideas and went full steam into finishing this game.

Early stage turn-logging with pencil and paper, which turned into a full-blown shorthand system used on Google Sheets live as I watched or participated in playtesting sessions

Two main challenges presented themselves in the next phase of development as I worked to turn Beyond the Sun into an actual, market-ready game. First, the balancing of various technologies — since the technology tree is dynamic, it is impossible to test all permutations of it. Careful turn-by-turn logging, active observation of playtester behavior, and my own intuition were necessary to weed out overpowered actions and "tree combos".

Second, the duality of the "research game" vs. the "area control game" — the design isn't a good game if someone can exclusively focus on one strategy and win. This approach is mitigated by introducing "crossovers" between the two strategies. A science-only player runs out of steam as researching gets more and more expensive; they have to control or colonize systems in order to scale up their economy. Similarly, a military-only player eventually gets crowded out when new technologies that provide free, stronger ships and movement bonuses are grabbed by other players.

After months of intensive playtesting, Beyond the Sun made its first public appearance at the 2018 Boston Festival of Indie Games, and the fact that it was only a few votes away from the Audience Choice award — narrowly beaten by two party/casual games that took only five minutes to demo!! — gave me the confidence boost to start pitching the game to publishers.

2018 Boston Festival of Indie Games: The game went through two name changes from Beyond Sol, to Frontiers of Sol, to Beyond the Sun

I was honored and excited when Rio Grande Games, one of the industry's most well-known and respected publishers, decided to work with me to make Beyond the Sun a reality. It was a lot of hard work along the way, and as a first-time designer, I learned the invaluable skills of playtesting organization and documentation, the minutiae of rulebook-writing, and UX design. There is surely still room for improvement, but as developer Ken Hill of Rio Grande said, quoting a famous designer: "Games are never finished. You just stop working on them so that they can be published."

Dennis K. Chan

P.S. Ken Hill has posted part 1 of his developer diary for Beyond the Sun here on BGG. As for the game, it should start reaching retail outlets in the U.S. by the end of October 2020.