Designer Diary: Tenpenny Parks, or Building the Amusement Park of Your Dreams

It's amazing to see how far things come and evolve!

Hi there, I'm Nate Linhart. I live in the Chicago suburbs, I am a board game enthusiast and amusement park lover, and I am the designer of Tenpenny Parks by Thunderworks Games.

Beginnings

Like most people in the hobby, it all started when my friend showed me Settlers of Catan all the way back in summer 2011. I'll admit that I was a little hesitant to play a board game in this modern age of technology, but gave it a shot — and was I ever glad that I did! That sparked me to dive deep down the rabbit hole of the board gaming realm. I have played so many great games since then and became addicted to the hobby. But something was still missing...my own design, as I have always been one to want to create something others can enjoy.

In 2016, I got the inspiration to start working on my first-ever board game design. As a child, there were few things more exciting in life than spending the day at a theme park. I also loved playing video/computer games, especially where you get to create and build things, so when I first got Roller Coaster Tycoon for the PC and experienced designing my own theme parks, needless to say I fell in love with the game instantly.

When I decided to get serious and try designing a board game, a theme park design-inspired game was the first thing I thought of! I wanted to take all the things I loved about games like RTC and turn them into a tabletop experience.

It's interesting looking back at the design process and seeing what has changed as well as what has remained the same over half a decade later since I started this process.

Design Time!

First, I thought of having a grid representing a person's park. I didn't just want everyone to be making rides for the same park; I wanted everyone to have their own unique experience. That initial concept is still a central component of the game today.

But how do I represent rides in the park? I'm instantly drawn to games with polyomino pieces, so it was a no-brainer to focus the design on having each ride be a unique shape that takes up space on the board, and having that puzzle-y tile placement become a main mechanism of the game. Additionally, I wanted to incorporate some twists on the placement mechanism. First, just as RTC had trees in the way of building your park, I wanted this game to do the same, having obstacles in the way. You can remove the obstacle to make it easier to place things, but at the cost of spending your precious limited actions.

Prototype, and...

Final pieces

Secondly, most polyomino games want the tiles to fit adjacently. I didn't think this fit the look of an actual amusement park given that rides are usually spread about for safety, so instead of an adjacency rule, I incorporated the opposite — a "social-distancing" rule, if you want to call it that. This rule states that no attraction can be placed on the board adjacent to another one, but instead must be at least one space apart. I thought thematically it made sense, aesthetically it looked nicer, and gameplay-wise gave something different to the genre. It creates an entirely different fun spatial puzzle than most are used to. It's tricky, especially for first-timers playing the game, but strategic tile placement is rewarded greatly and satisfyingly.

I wanted the parks to show growth as the game went on, which led to the idea of being able to expand your park territory if needed. The park expansion and tree elimination gives players the chance to build their boards the way they want but at a cost of spending workers, while those with perfect tile placements are rewarded by saving themselves more actions and money from having highly strategic, well-placed positioning.

Before and after

Like most games, Tenpenny Parks features end-game goals unique to each player for replayability and to give each player a different experience/goal to achieve. I also wanted players to compete in-game for several rewards, and this game features bonuses at the end of each round for raw emotions displayed throughout the park, which Thunderworks cleverly coined as "Joy, Thrill, & Awe!" Each reward gives a unique bonus leading into the next round for whoever has the highest in that category. This gives players both end-game and mid-game objectives.

I still remember being on the train home from work, with all my friends scheduled to come over on a Friday night for the first-ever playtest of my design. While on the train, I was imagining how the first playtest would turn out that night — and then it hit me! I didn't have any action limitations, which meant that players could pretty much infinitely do whatever they want on their turn. A rookie mistake! Thankfully I thought of it ahead of time and made it so players can spend only four actions on their turn, with a lot of different action choices. Since that first playtest, the actions have been streamlined and Thunderworks smartly turned it more into a worker placement-style game in which spending workers gets you different actions, and the main thing players will compete over with their workers is the heart and soul of the game: the attractions!

From Bidding to Market Carousel

The last major design challenge I faced was in acquiring the park attractions. My many initial iterations included bidding variants on how to purchase the rides for your park. While a lot of fun, bidding/auctioning can create flawed games if a certain ride was acquired at too low of a bid, or if a player overspent for an attraction. Playtesters always seemed to have fun with bidding, but they would notice the same thing — that one game-breaking bid would either greatly hurt/help the other players. It was a problem I had a hard time fixing despite many efforts.

I finally decided to eliminate that bidding mechanism in replace of a new one, despite how much that set back my current design. I eventually came up with the idea of using a market mechanism instead of a player spending an action and money to acquire a ride — but I wanted something distinctive to theme parks to influence the market prices. I eventually decided on trying a market wheel, with the rotation of that wheel impacting the prices. After the design was picked up by Thunderworks Games, they fully embraced the "market carousel" idea by making it a beautiful-looking 3D piece.

Very Grateful!

Thunderworks Games took a chance when they saw the same vision I did at Gen Con 2018 after I presented the game to them. They've done an amazing job since taking over and publishing the design. Keith, Dan, and the rest of the team have put so much work into making this the greatest theme park-building experience possible — and Vincent Dutrait has done a spectacular job with the artwork, really making this game stand out and turn heads for people walking by. It's everything I've dreamed of since pacing around my basement floor six years ago brainstorming how I was going to design this game.

I'm hoping this game provides the ultimate theme park-building experience for fans of the genre and those awaiting an amusement park game like this one! It's a quick teach with short rules, but lots of strategic depth involved with some tight, think-y decisions. The tile placement especially requires thought more than most games to help optimize your remaining space. It is oh so much more rewarding when you fit an attraction into the perfect spot, wrapping around trees and covering several added emotion spots on the park board to rocket up the emotion tracks.

Tenpenny Parks, which I first called "Amusement Park", went from playtests in my parent's basement to Protospiels to Gen Con First Exposure Playtesting Hall to hopefully many people's gaming tables and board game nights with friends/family.

I am incredibly grateful for everything Thunderworks Games has done with this production, making this dream a reality! I know it's cliché to say, but keep on following your dreams, gamers and inspiring designers! Hard work and dedication will pay off. Happy gaming, and enjoy building your very own amusement parks!

Love,
Nate