:strip_icc()/pic1406778.jpg)
/pic1594719.jpg)
The Spawning of a Theme
I started designing Salmon Run in 2010. Back then, and until recently, it was called Pond Farr (pun intended). At that time I was working on a medieval siege warfare game when I started to reminisce about all the fond memories of playing board games with my brothers in my youth. I wanted my nephews and nieces to have a similar experience and decided to make a game that was simple enough for them to play but with enough depth that I, as a gamer, would enjoy playing.
With that in mind, I brainstormed for a theme, looking to nature and animals as a universally appealing theme. They like animals; I like animals. It made sense to me. There are lots of games about animals, so I tried to think about something compelling in nature. I then thought about mass migrations: birds, caribou, etc. For some reason I thought about salmon and their struggle to spawn. Salmon are not the most popular or glamorous animals, but their life-and-death struggle to spawn – swimming hundreds of miles upriver past waterfalls and hungry bears and eagles – is quite a story. You have a seemingly unremarkable hero on a long and exhausting journey, fraught with danger and powerful villains (bears and eagles). The ordinary hero perseveres and overcomes overwhelming obstacles to die in self-sacrifice for the next generation. Needless to say I found my theme.
:strip_icc()/pic1411197.jpg)
Pond Farr prototype
The theme begot the mechanisms. The journey of spawning salmon lent itself to a race as it has a definite start and finish with plenty of obstacles and a naturally increasing tension. However, I didn't want the game to be just a quick sprint to the finish, like most race games. I needed a way for the game to emulate the struggle and the fatigue of swimming upstream for hundreds of miles. After all, salmon are in more of a marathon with short speed bursts than an all-out sprint. I wanted to reward pacing and timing while punishing recklessness. Thus, I needed a fatigue mechanism.
/pic1412106.jpg)
While the fatigue mechanism controlled the pacing of the race, the movement cards controlled the direction. The race is somewhat linear, so the movement cards are simple: swim forward, swim left, and swim right – with left and right really being diagonals as the race takes place on a board with a hexagonal grid.
I knew from the start that the salmon would have to maneuver around rocks in the river and over waterfalls. The idea for movement cards on this hexagonal board originated with the mechanism to jump over waterfalls, which I "borrowed" from a small abstract game that I had designed a few months earlier. In that game, two directional vectors are combined to result in a new vector; in Salmon Run, two movement cards are combined to jump over a waterfall. Thematically, jumping takes a lot of energy for salmon, so having players add a fatigue card for each time they jumped made sense. This made for nice spatial decision-making for players when designing the board: the shorter path over the waterfall, or the longer route around it without fatigue.
/pic1412103.jpg)
The core of the game was developing nicely. Another feature of the game that developed quickly were the bears. I wanted the bears to feature prominently in the game and thought they would be a good way to add player interaction since racing games (and especially deck-building games) can become multi-player solitaire affairs.
I also wanted the bears to be a prominent tactile presence on the board, so from the beginning I thought of them as mobile obstacles that players could manipulate. In real life, bears eat salmon. This practice obviously wouldn't work well game-wise, however, so the dilemma came in determining what the bears would actually do to the salmon in the game. After a few failed ideas, it dawned on me to apply the fatigue mechanism to the bears, which was a simple and consistent solution. The bears would add fatigue to the salmon's deck. Plus I could rationalize this decision thematically since the salmon must exert themselves to escape the bear.
The bears would be activated by the Bear card that would be part of each player's movement deck. This made the timing of when to use the bear important. I also received some good advice on the Board Game Designers Forum (BGDF) about allowing the bears to move on any terrain. (Special thanks to Richard James.)
/pic1412104.jpg)
Current Affairs
The next game feature did not flow as easily. I wanted to simulate the power of the river and the struggle of the salmon against it. I put an arrow on each hex on the board to show how the river's current moves downstream. In early versions, the current would activate after each round, sending all the salmon backward. This made for a slow and frustrating race. I tried a few tweaks, but nothing really worked. Eventually I decided to put the power of the current onto a card, then place that current card into the starting deck. This both lessened the frequency of the current and gave the players decisions as to when to play it. This was a tremendous improvement – but not a perfect solution as with everyone having a current card in his starting deck, the game was still too slow. Players were getting sent over waterfalls repeatedly, gaining fatigue after fatigue.
/pic1412110.jpg)
/pic1412105.jpg)
New special cards were added for variety, ranging from better movement cards like "Double Swims" and Wild cards that let you choose your direction to more interactive cards like the "Eagle" and "Rapids". These two cards went through many iterations over the course of playtesting. They needed to be properly balanced in power to make them viable alternatives to the established cards of the Bear and Current. Eventually they developed into cards I was satisfied with. All of these special cards gave Salmon Run enough variety and decision points to keep gamers interested while creating an intuitive, entry-level deck-building mechanism for newer players.
:strip_icc()/pic1411199.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic1411200.jpg)
Early prototype fixed boards
Where the River Flows
Another significant development in the creation of Salmon Run was the board itself, which began as a fairly simple fixed board. I knew that a modular system would be better for replayability, but I wasn't sure at the time how to properly make one and I was concentrating on the base game.
As I playtested Salmon Run more and more, though, it became apparent that a modular board would be vital. A path-dependent system on a fixed board led astute players to learn the ideal paths on the river, whereas a modular river system solved this problem by creating new paths for each game. The added benefit of modular boards was that I could rate each board by complexity, allowing players to vary the difficulty of a particular race as desired. This decision meshed well with my desire to have a game for both families and gamers.
Another nice effect of using modular boards was that, in addition to its difficulty, the game's length could also now be customized. Players can use fewer boards for a shorter and simpler game and more boards for a longer and more tactical game. The longer the game, the more that deck-building and fatigue become a factor.
:strip_icc()/pic1412096.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic1411198.jpg)
Final prototype and production modular boards
Pond Farr, Farr Away
Perhaps this diary makes it sound like development was an easy process. In truth, some things developed quickly while others were quite difficult, with the game as a whole going through many iterations and refinements, and the balancing of boards and special card powers being a long and often tedious process. Along the way I received a lot of good advice from other designers on BGDF.
Eventually, after numerous solo and family playtests and retests, it was time to have people I didn't know try the game. Nervously I brought it to the board game group at my local game store, and to my relief it went over well. This was especially heartening as a few of those testers had done a lot of playtesting for some well-known publishers. The crucial next step was to send the game out for blind testing from multiple sources. I got a lot of great feedback and streamlined the rules further. I would especially like to thank Grant Rodiek, designer of Farmageddon, for all his invaluable help in this regard.
Now confident in the merits of my game, I did research to find a publisher that would be the best match for my game. Obviously it needed to be a publisher that accepts outside submissions but also one whose games are similar in complexity and target audience. I submitted Salmon Run to two companies, crafting an email to describe the game as a whole, what made it unique, and why it would be a good fit for their company, while also including a few game photos and a copy of the rules. I believe this tailored approach was key.
One of those companies was Gryphon Games, and weeks later I received an email from Gryphon's Joanne and Rick Soued saying that they were interested in my game and wanted a prototype copy to try out. Elation ensued. (The other company never got back with me, but that's understandable as I'm sure they are inundated with game submissions.) The nice folks at Gryphon tested my game thoroughly and liked it enough to offer me a contract a few months later. More elation ensued. This was an amateur designer's dream come true! I feel incredibly fortunate to have found a publisher so quickly and am also incredibly pleased to have partnered with a quality publisher like Gryphon Games. Working with Gryphon Games gives me great confidence that my design will be produced with components of the utmost quality.
:strip_icc()/pic1412115.jpg)
Two promo cards offered via Kickstarter
All of this occurred about a year ago. Since then, Salmon Run has undergone another year of playtests and refinements. Its name has changed from Pond Farr to Salmon Run. I ran great demonstrations and got a lot of great feedback at Unpub 2, a great program for unpublished games run by John Moller and Darrell Louder. Artist Eric J. Carter did a fantastic job on the production artwork!
Thanks to everyone who helped make this possible.
Jesse Catron
/pic1634163.jpg)
:strip_icc()/pic1625150.jpg)
/pic1537847.jpg)
/pic1616566.jpg)
/pic1438751.jpg)
