Designer Diary: The Ares Project - A Father-Son Perspective

First, thoughts from the son:

I have been a gamer my entire life. I have been through Euros, wargames, minis, cards, tabletop RPGs, and computer games over my career, and every kind of game played a role in the creation of The Ares Project. This game has gone through many incarnations and rule changes to reach where it is now. The current game bears only a passing resemblance to the original. Despite this, I feel it still has a lot of the original soul and spirit that gave the game such life.

The best way to tell the story of the game seems to me to simply talk about my favorite game elements and tell a few rambling anecdotes. The Ares Project began when I was 13 and my dad said to me, "Brian, we should make a game that is like a computer real-time strategy game (RTS) but as a board game. What do you think".

I responded, "Sure! And let's call it The Ares Project; I've always liked that name."

Since then the game has changed a lot, but it has always kept those two elements: a boardgame version of an RTS and the name. After that came the brainstorming. After a couple of months of design we had our first prototype; it was awful, but it did teach us many valuable lessons about game design. We made the changes and played again. This went on for years, playing a few games, tweaking it, playing, tweaking. It went on so long we actually began to become confused on which rules were in and which were out, having to resort to the rulebook in our own game.

The combat system is what has had the most changes made to it, resulting in a system which is my pride and joy. The way units lined up for battles changed so many times throughout development I don't remember them all. It started with a token for each unit that was lined up, which later became groups, and then finally the forces. In addition, the way the forces were lined up changed a lot, including just lines, a very complicated board, and a long modifier chain. The system we settled on is a bit of all of these, and is a combination of the favorite combat ideas from both me and my father.

The evolution of Battle, from individual tokens to sleeved cards to Artscow cards

I have always loved asymmetrical games. I know many don't, but to me having a side to fanboy over and having a different approach to a problem is one of the best parts of a game. Warmachine, Magic, and Neuroshima Hex! – three of my all-time favorite games – have this element of different sides and it helps to keep them fresh and original. When we designed our own factions, we wanted to have this feeling while still keeping the central game play the same, and we feel we have achieved that.

The factions came very late in development, as the Terrans were the guinea pigs for us to create the core rules, and then the factions went on top of that. We originally had only the three factions – Terrans, Xenos, and Kahoum – in the game, but we had kicked around the ideas for a giant robot faction every now and then. When we pitched the game to Zev Shlasinger of Z-Man Games, he played it and said we absolutely needed to add in a fourth side. When we mentioned the giant robot he loved it. Luckily we had a family trip to Japan that summer, and 14 hours on a plane later Colossus was all but done. We really like the diversity the four sides create, and I hope that the game's factions each create their own fanboys.

Well, I have more to say, but my dad is pulling me away from the computer, saying that I am too nostalgic. I will leave you on one last story. Originally the Terrans had a vehicle called the Ambulance that would heal your units after a battle. After a couple of years, however, I suggested replacing it with the Tac Nuke, which we did. I always thought that was funny and I hope you don't think of us as terrible people for it.

I hope you enjoyed this. If you have any questions or comments, I will be happy to answer, and if I think of more stories, I will post them as well.

Enjoy the game,

Brian Engelstein

The abandoned "Battle Mat" system - sort of like Axis & Allies

And now, the father:

As the father I guess I was supposed to be the more responsible party in this design process, but more often than not I would come up with some crazy idea and Brian would bring me back to reality. At the same time, working with him was a great bonding experience and taught us how to compromise and work together. Our relationship changed between the 13-year-old Brian and the 17-year-old version, for both better and worse, but learning to work together as a true team was tremendously rewarding for me.

I also just learned that "fanboy" is now a verb. You can indeed "fanboy" something. This was confirmed by my daughter. Go figure.

Enough! Some more about the game:

Brian is right about the whole Battle process. That was by far the system that went through the most changes. The battles are the punctuation marks during the game, and we wanted them to allow for decision making and skillful play, and give an opportunity for the technologies and other features, like scouting, that we wanted to incorporate.

But in general, the big design lesson I learned from this experience is that cutting stuff out, and slimming things down is much more important (and much harder) than putting stuff in.

For example, in the original version a "war" was fought over a "planet", and you played three matches. For each match you had to go through your deck twice, and the planet would give special rules to that "war". For example, there was a world with high winds that penalized air units. If you destroyed the enemy base during the first time through your deck, you scored three points; during the second deck, two points; and if you controlled the Frontier after all cards were exhausted, you earned one point. You played three Wars (if necessary), and the player with the most points won.

This had some cool features, but it took way too long and the game outlasted its welcome. We cut back to one deck with three matches, then tossed the three match system completely and went to just a single match – but it was still missing something.

Colossus faction play-mat

Fortunately, Zev at Z-Man provided the missing something. In addition to asking for an additional faction, he wanted it to be playable by up to four players, not just two. During a long car ride we proposed and tossed out system after system after system. The problem we were worried about was the same one that plagues many "conquest" games. If two players go after each, the third can sit tight, then move in to pick up the pieces. In addition, we didn't want players knocked out too early. Plus we wanted the system to work regardless of the number of players.

Finally we came up with the idea of making The Ares Project a "king of the hill" game and adding the Scoring Cards mechanism. If you controlled the Frontier you could earn points. It was a simple mechanism, but allowed for some interesting situations. It also gave you the option of going after someone's base to steal their scoring cards, but if they hadn't earned any there was no reason to do so. Thus, we eliminated the incentive in a multiplayer game to knock another player out, but doing so can be a viable option toward the end of the game and lead to climactic battles.

What's more, this same system helped the two-player game. Originally whoever held the Frontier at the end of the game won; the Scoring Cards added a new dimension by giving players a sense of urgency if they don't control the Frontier and their opponent is racking up points.

There were many things like this that we did to streamline the game. Lots of good ideas got left behind, but what remains is, we believe, a polished product with just the right amount of "chrome" to differentiate the factions.

In general, my advice to aspiring game designers (although I'm hardly qualified to dispense advice) is to challenge every element of your design and see what can be removed. Keep pruning!

We hope you enjoy the game! We've got more family productions in the works as my daughter has some terrific ideas. With luck we'll get to post another designer diary soon!

Geoff Engelstein

Xenos faction play-mat