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A few years later, in the midst of working on several larger games (Tidal Blades and Wonderland's War), I realized I wanted to work on some smaller and simpler games. Set collection is one of my favorite mechanisms, so I set out to create a simple set-collection game using Winston drafting. Canopy started with the mechanical ideas first, but the theme came soon after.
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Forest Theme
The new growth piles — three ever-growing piles that players take turns choosing from during the draft — are a central aspect of Canopy and the way that they increase and decrease throughout the game had a natural and organic feel. This made me think of forests, and growing up and living in the Pacific Northwest region of the U.S., I was excited to make a game based on the local flora and fauna.
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Same Rain, More Sun
The first prototype of Canopy I made was set in a temperate rainforest. I shared this prototype with Vincent Dutrait to see whether he would be interested in illustrating the game. He said that he was, but suggested switching the setting to a tropical rainforest as at the time there had been several other games with temperate rainforest themes. He was excited to illustrate the bright colors and varied species found in tropical rainforests.
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In my experiences working with artists, I've always had excellent results listening to their instincts and letting them draw and create subject matter that inspires them — and this really was true with Canopy, where Vincent created some of the most vibrant, engaging, and lovely art I have seen.
Bringing the Forest to Life
One of my favorite aspects of game design is working to bring the theme into the game. While working on Canopy, I spent countless hours reading Wikipedia and other websites to learn as much as I could about the rainforest ecosystems. I even went so far as to take a trip to Colombia while working on the game and was able to hike through rainforests and see toucans and other species found in the game. My goal with Canopy was not to create a 100% accurate representation of how a rainforest works, but rather to bring as much theme to the game as possible.
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For each card included in the game, I tried to have some aspect of them represented in the design. One example of this is the Kinkajou, which is a tree-dwelling mammal that subsists mainly on fresh fruits. The Kinkajou lets you keep one additional card when you draw from the seed deck, representing their important role as seed dispersers for many plants.
On each card, I also included flavor text describing some unique part of the animal or plant or weather and how it relates to the rainforest. My goal was not for Canopy to be an "educational game", but for it to invite players to learn more about the rainforest and to pique their imagination and interest.
Design Challenges
Trees
Almost from the beginning, I knew I wanted the trees in Canopy to grow, and I had the concept of adding cards to make them taller. However, it took me many months and multiple iterations until I had a ruleset for the trees with which I was happy.
At the start, I had roots, trunks, and canopy cards, but this made it tricky to get the right part of the tree at the correct time. For awhile during development, we played with players growing trees in any order. You could start with a trunk, add a canopy, add another trunk, and finally add a roots. This, however, did not match in any shape or form with how trees grow in nature, and I knew I had to find an elegant way for trees to grow from the ground up.
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Eventually I reduced the tree to just trunk (with roots) and canopy, and I allowed players to build multiple trunks on top of each other. This worked well, but still needed refinement before I was happy with it. From the beginning, I had the tallest tree award at the end of each round as a motivation for players to grow trees — but the rest of tree scoring took awhile to develop. Eventually I landed on each trunk having a point value and each canopy having a value that was multiplied by the number of trunks in the tree. Very tall trees can score a lot of points with the right canopy, but you can never be sure whether you will get one — and if a tree doesn't have a canopy on top, those trunks will not score.
Is the biggest pile always best?
One of the trickiest parts of the design was to make sure that taking the largest pile was not always the best choice. To make that work, I needed to have cards with negative effects or potentially negative effects. I drew inspiration from Reiner Knizia's game Ra when I designed the threat cards. If you have two of the basic threats of fire and disease in your forest at the end of the season, you lose two plants or animals.
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However, if you get a third fire or disease, it spreads to the other player's forest and instead you will each lose one animal or plant. The threats create more tension when looking at the piles and add player interaction as you work to not get any threats but also not allow your opponent to get more than two.
In addition to the mostly negative threats, there are some plant species that you will not always be happy to see. For example, the bromelias score a few points if you have one (2 points), a lot of points if you have two (7 points), and negative points (-3 points) if you have three or more. Early in a season you want to be careful about getting too many because once you have two, you will have to do your best to avoid any piles with a bromelia.
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Design Successes
Working on Canopy was a very fun experience overall. There are a few aspects of the design and final product that I feel make it especially successful.
Two-player gateway game
My original goal with Canopy was to create a fun two-player game that played in 30-45 minutes. I think the final version of Canopy delivers an engaging experience that is still approachable to newer players. Canopy has a good mix of skill and luck, which helps keep it approachable and light. The incredible art from Vincent Dutrait just adds to the relaxing appeal.
Environmentally Friendly Design
My goal as a publisher was to produce Canopy in an environmentally friendly manner. From the design side, I worked to keep the total number of components down and to keep the box size as small as possible. Working with the manufacturer, I was able keep the plastic in the retail game limited to the small tape circles that seal the game boxes. Making a game about the tropical rainforests, I felt it was important to minimize any harm from the production of the project, and I am happy with the small steps we were able to take.
Thanks for reading this designer diary, and I hope you get a chance to grow your own rainforest soon! If you have any other questions about the game, please post them here and I'll do my best to answer them.
Tim Eisner
Weird City Games
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