Hi, I’m Tom Butler, and I’m the designer of Paradise Lost, a game launched on Kickstarter in April 2019 by my company, Green Feet Games. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1637269442/paradise-lost-0

Paradise Lost is now available in retail, so I wanted to take some time to walk through its creation. Hopefully, in sharing the life cycle of its beginnings through to fulfillment, my story will provide inspiration and support for other game designers and publishers.

It was November 2017, I was home for the holidays spending much needed time with my family. Games littered our table along with food and good drink. I love to create beautiful things and then find a way to give them away. Mainly focused on homebrewing in November, I just made a batch of all-grain, german hefeweizen and watched family and friends enjoy my creation. I was right in the middle of mass producing two successful kickstarter games: The Pirate Republic & Patriots n’ Redcoats, and I was itching to get after designing another game. Designing is contagious and it’s one of those good addictions as your work in life is your ultimate seduction.

It didn’t start with theme or mechanic or even a feeling or experience that I wanted to bring to the world. It started with a perceived need in the marketplace.

What's The Problem

My design process starts with a problem I was trying to solve, masked within a question: Was there a game that could introduce new people to the hobby but attract seasoned/casual gamers’ interests as well? Just as important, could the game be historically relevant where players are also learning about casts of characters from across all literature? My company focuses on having historical narratives fused within the DNA of the game.

Designer tip: As the saying goes, a problem well put is already half-solved. The power of the question is the first stage of my design process.

So perhaps I was onto something, like creating a new category/genre of a game. One that introduced new players to the hobby but could keep seasoned/casual gamers coming back as well. To keep casual gamers interested, I believe the flow phenomena is a great model that explains their motivations and I design heavily with it in mind.

Flow Experiences

I studied flow in graduate school, in particular, Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hikers--those that have hiked the AT, all 2,180 miles, unassisted. What we found is when the challenge presented met a hiker’s skill at hand, they have flow--positive shared experiences. Best of all, they wanted to experience it again and again from the activity. In my view, that’s the appeal of games that people will call gamer’s games. They have a great amount of flow baked into them. Read more about flow here: https://www.fs.usda.gov/treesearch/pubs/22314

It was a tall order as most games fall into compartmentalized boxes of game types and these two categories don’t cross streams. You are either a gateway game or you are not. But could both operate in the same space? Should they?

As if designing games isn’t challenging enough, I’d argue the hardest game to design is a gateway game; those that have high replay value, cool components, play in under 45 minutes, and good for mixed age groups. And now, you are looking to take the best of a gateway game and meld it with the best of a gamer’s game--bit more complexity, more narrative, more strategy--a hybrid of sorts--that must find the sweet spot to resonate with both audiences.

Could this hybrid game create novelty in new gamers but have enough meat on the bone for seasoned gamers to also take notice? Before trying to sing such a game into existence, my approach to game design breaks down into three phases:

1) Know the problem you are trying to solve

2) Understand the current environment

3) Develop an approach to solve that problem in the current environment

I spent most of November-December 2017 in phase 2, Understanding the Environment, by researching all the great gateway games out there. What made them tick? What was their essence? How did they balance the simplicity while intriguing new gamers to come back for more? Then, I focused on the great euro games I had played, and canvassed medium weight games on Board Game Geek (BGG).

For phase 3, Developing an Approach, I finally decided on deduction. I was going to solve this problem by making a great deduction, hybrid game that appealed to both audiences.

Find The Fun

Deduction games are a thing of beauty with audiences that span the spectrum of love’em or hate’em with not much in between. The fun is a hard “clever” fun, to borrow a term from Nicole Lazzaro, a master of studying player fun.

Nicole Lazzaro’s 4 Fun Keys to Create 4 Most Important Game Emotions (http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/the4-keys-to-fun/) — *Nicole Lazzaro’s 4 Fun Keys to Create 4 Most Important Game Emotions* (http://www.nicolelazzaro.com/the4-keys-to-fun/)

Take Clue and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective and other deduction greats that culminate with a “whodunit” mystery where all players start with incomplete information and move along the game experience to reach complete information.

Could you take some of that hard “clever” fun and mix it with other types of fun? Perhaps resource optimization and bake in some Euro-esque mechanics to get after Lazzaro’s other fun types? I would focus on developing three of the four keys to unlocking these emotions in players: My challenge was really just a wide open door of opportunity—don't expect someone to come drag your butt through it. You got to commit. Commit.

And commit I did to the game having easy fun--curiosity and fantasy, hard fun--achieving a goal, and people fun--amusement from competition. My challenge: Create a gamer experience that moves from incomplete information to complete information while making them drunk...drunk from 3 types of fun.

Designer tip: It doesn’t matter what you know. It matters what you can accomplish with what you know.

Those looking for serious fun usually need much greater complexity in the game and we would steer clear of that. However, most of the really good gateway games only did one of these four, fun types very well. Rarely, did they have two and certainly not three types of fun. Take Ticket to Ride...fun, simple rules, short duration. Or, great easy fun but not much hard fun and people fun and about as not serious fun as you can get.

Again, these are constructs we use to make sense of the world and are not a silver bullet approach, but they do help organize thoughts and frameworks to use when designing games--to ultimately, make your fun engine, yep, more fun.

Bottom Line

In the gaming industry there were no fantasy whodunits, with multiple paths to victory, with tactical movement, with resource management. There were no deduction games where you can’t just win by being the most clever but you have to be strategic, all while reconstructing your final answer into the climax of winning the game.

Right then. Let’s do this.

Game Design 101

Games either come out with an invented new mechanic, or games simply expand and combine upon established mechanics in new ways.

The first prototype of Paradise Lost in 2017

We relied on inspiration from Clue, Tokaido, Glen More, and many card trading games. Clue, the game everyone knew and loved at some point, but most just plain outgrew as the nostalgia wore off and the player's skills outgrew the challenge—i.e., no flow experiences. Tokaido, the gateway game that didn’t feel like a game at all but a trail hike giving you a zen-like experience. Glen More, for its rondel track and tile laying. Card trading because we believed that would increase the player’s interactions, i.e., people fun and help build multiple paths to victory.

Let the playtesting begin. After developing the game with several iterations, it was time for the first round of playtesters--my family and friends. It was well received but had the right amount of problems that any first prototype would have as no first prototype ever survives first contact.

Game designer with daughter and friends. Cat, clearly not interested.

Why? Because you have designed a complete game that is not good, not a good game that is not complete.

That’s why game designers that have already reached 10,000 hours threshold (see The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle) like designer Vlaada Chvatil and his blockbuster game Codenames…(rumored he designed the game in one day) sure can, but I wasn’t there yet and most of us aren’t. Far from it.

New game designers have a hard time understanding and confronting the realities of their game design situation, a.k.a. the Stockdale Paradox.

In February 2018 we took Paradise Lost to a playtesting forum at a game designer’s retreat in Atlanta, Georgia where heavy hitter game designers included Gil Hova (http://ludology.libsyn.com) and other prominent people in the industry. I got great feedback from like-minded designers.

In particular, strip away everything that does not enhance the deduction aspects of the game. The bottom line is to find clarity about what is vital to your game and what is not vital by not squandering your time and energy on the wrong things. You get a great, “not-to-do” checklist of sorts from these conventions as long as you can stay out of your ego.

For instance, we had a market and market place with trading mechanisms, and complicated tracks for keeping mana and coin--both resources heavy in gameplay--and we were losing sight of the core feeling we wanted players to have...hard fun, that made players feel clever.

Developers To The Rescue

You must come to an understanding that without other designers and developers critiquing your game, you’ll never get it to a level of good to great or even, have a chance for greatness that lasts.

Once we made these changes, I turned the game over to our developer, Eric Engstrom with Grey Dolphin Games. https://greydolphingames.com/. He led the development and playtesting with the outside world.

Designer tip: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. You have to measure the demand signal for your “something” with the target demographic of the outside world.

He would help me cultivate the mechanisms that could tease in the other fun types. His inputs culminated with taking the game to Protospiel Chicago in September 2018 and getting some great player feedback.

On top of playtesting, he helped provide the right amount of input randomness--informing players before making decisions. Now players paid unique costs to ask questions at the four Oracle stops with the roll of the six-sided die and thus, we created six different outcomes for how you would need to gain resources to ask questions. This change led to variable strategies to win the game as players could plan before venturing into the next realm.

Sometimes a developer can only take a game so far in your direction and vision. What I needed next was another set of eyes to help develop the Villain’s Hideout mechanism. In particular, players understood how to deduce the weapon and villain, but reconstructing the villain’s hideout was initially too complex for new gamers.

We found a second developer, Dr. Julia Coppolla, who would further refine the game by introducing Wildland locations (which gave player’s agency along the board by turning stops into any location they wished) streamlining the Villain Hideout mechanism, and solidifying the variable player powers of each character. We also brought in more people fun by increasing player interaction at Truthseeker stops. Rather than limiting interaction to deduce information from just the four oracles, we now have it front and center in the strategy of each realm.

It was here where we also took a deep dive of the 2009 board game Tobago, and greatly appreciated the mechanism of recreating the deduction. Tobago has a mechanism where each person plays in determining where the treasures are hidden. We wanted that similar feel in Paradise Lost by introducing the Villain’s Hideout. We adopted and iterated this mechanism with the tile laying of the Villain’s Hideout.

Now, you could win by not just collecting the most resources by game’s end and having the most complete information, but by manipulating the final location of the villain to bypass the earlier claim order conditions. More cleverness,and the game now had enough swagger to now stand on its own with enough uncertainty.

All players now had the right subjective feeling or chance to win or lose up till the very end.

Playtesting of the working prototype resumed with about 50 or so games across different groups until we were ready to bring the game to Kickstarter and the rest of the world.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) Witch’s Rage and Wrath

Thematically, Nimue is a nasty witch. The worst kind. She’s trying to stop all players from achieving victory. This AI was central to game play as sometimes you’d have to work together and sometimes you could stop her actions for the greater good of all players with Excalibur and other players’ effects. There are no shortcuts to game design but there are other ways to speed up the feedback loop while iterating.

I highly recommend using a Monte Carlo simulation during your game design and playtesting process. A Monte Carlo simulation is a computerized mathematical technique that allows game designers and developers to simulate a range of possible outcomes and probabilities that will occur for any choice or action from your mechanisms. It shows extreme possibilities of outcomes.

The simulation greatly assisted with balancing the Witch's rage and ensuring she did not dominate the game, where you felt her actions were too harsh and that she would win the majority of the time. By balancing the many stops, we were able to quickly tweak the many location stops to deliver the right outcomes. We also didn’t want players just collecting fire and ice scrolls the entire time (alternate ways to bypass villain and weapon whodunnit) and win by making the game a simple pick up and delivery. Therefore, with a good Monte Carlo, our playtesting could focus more on player’s experiences of mechanisms that were already balanced as the former instead of the later. You get better feedback if you can narrow your playtesting down by using simulations such as Monte Carlo. Thanks Adam Buckingham for this contribution.

Art, Illustrations, & Gameboard

The game has to make you feel like you are “there”--living in the world you created--or as close to that immersion as you can get. That’s where the artists and graphic designers come in. They’d take lead on the easy fun by bringing the fantastical world to life with a common struggle uniting all players—I’m in Nimue, the nasty Ice Witch’s world, and I might not win, but she’s certainly not going to beat all of us. Not on our watch.

That common curiosity was brought to life by the rules novelty of actually becoming a hero of earth’s timeless fables, but even more so with the artists’ creations.

Aesthetics won’t break a game, but without it you can’t compete on the level of the greatest games in the world. Ania Kryczkowska https://www.facebook.com/aniakryczkowska.art/ is renowned in the gaming community and her art is breathtaking.

Jeff Brown brought to life the game board. Nick Avallone lead all the graphics for the game. Without these three, the game could never have become that hybrid that truly solved the problem I was trying to solve.

Just like you have to find the soul of the game, you have to let them find the soul of the art and graphic design. Give your artists and designers a lot of rope to humor your imagination and theirs.

For the gameboard, we started with a round track, then a square track, and finally decided on something ambitious and new: a pentagon game board that would simulate the five realms as you journeyed into the Witch’s realm while embracing the rondel mechanism.

To make it fantasy, I wanted to keep the historical aspects close by. So not just the characters but the realm stops would have to be true to fantastical literature. It was ambitious. Most players aren’t comfortable when you don’t present the standard rectangle board as is the industry norm--it is foreign to them. That type of divergence can be very divisive but extremely rewarding when players can appreciate it on its own merit.

The reaction to anything new can be brilliant or disastrous. Early prototypes were two-piece game boards and others one-piece but we were convinced by the game manufacturer that they could deliver a one-piece fold out of the pentagon game board.

We found out post delivery that some of the USA shipment had damaged game boards while our Europe stock had no damage. To offset this reality, every USA game now comes with a neoprene mat game board.

You must have some agility baked into your design and production as black swan events do happen. What is a black swan? It’s an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Just because the majority of games freight ship without problems in this industry, don’t fall victim to putting too much weight on the odds of past events (see Black Swan by Nassim Taleb).

Without agility and being able to pivot in this industry, you're treading water and that’s really just delayed drowning. Our back up plan to keep us from sinking was neoprene game board mats.

Kickstarter backers enjoying their first game.

Black swans are a part of life, and game production is not immune to them. You should dare to take risks and push the envelope of not just design but production as well.

Side note: It was the Black Swan stops in Paradise Lost that became the greatest catch-up mechanic and was pivotal to creating multiple paths to victory. High risk, high reward for players.

Game Iteration Never Ends

For the deduction sheets, many players wanted a bit more redundancy with identifying stops along the realms. Rather than referring to the stops in the rulebook or looking at each stop on the game board’s image, you can also find them named and in color on the deduction sheets.

This design approach provided the cognitive ease needed to ensure a positive game experience. Nevertheless, to ensure the game was even more inclusive such as colorblind friendly, we also added images of each stop on the deduction sheets.

Unfortunately, some reviewers didn’t get the new deduction sheets before their reviews were published, nor did the majority of backers, as it was a post-production change not identified in any playtesting or earlier reviews. Why? You owe it to the industry to iterate post fulfillment to show you are still committed to your design and your tribe of fans.

Historical Piece

My wife being from the Slovak side of the world suggested I bring in some Russian folktales. Ivan Tsarevich is one of the main heroes of Russian folklore; usually a protagonist, he's often engaged in a struggle with the villain, Koschei a.k.a the Immortal. Tsarevich is a title given to the sons of tsars.

So what? The United States has three time zones and Russia has, well, eleven. Perhaps not a bad net to cast when generating more buzz across the world about your game.

Designer tip: Anyone, regardless of their level of expertise can have great ideas...if you are listening. As the quote reminds , “Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the Ark, professionals built the Titanic.”

I asked her to be my full-time Marketing director with brilliance like that but she loves teaching kids the joy of dance too much.

Miniatures

You can’t really neglect this new truism in the board game industry. We offered the first bronze minis I believe found in any game I’m aware of. It was a great addition to the collector’s edition of the game.

Rulebook

One of the eight heroes & his variable player power

Jamey Stegmaier’s principle on rulebooks is to prioritize clarity and a low barrier to entry for new players; the cost of printing the rulebook is secondary. I couldn’t agree more. The rulebook could have easily been 8-12 pages with offsets that would include smaller font, small size examples, fewer illustrations, and removing the historical fables explanations.

We refused to be a company signaling to the world: get out your magnifying glass to read our rules, so we can jump over dollars to chase pennies. Maximize saying it with pictures versus small printed words.

Our primary rules editor had a real life debilitating emergency and we were lucky to find Dr. Sam Hillier (http://www.philosocopter.com) to finalize the game’s rulebook. Again, a bit of luck and a bit of persistence created a win/win for future game development relationship. Sam is now lead developer for our next game, Unforgiven: The Lincoln Assassination Trial.

Final Thoughts

Creating anything, such as a game, is a long, slow dance. You need to be good at making something, distributing something, and building awareness for your something. If you fail at any of these three areas, your project fails. Much building awareness post-kickstarter falls into the critics, players, and the gaming industry.

Be ready for the good, bad, and ugly of critics and players. Attacking your design choices is just as big a part of your reviewer’s forte as is complimenting them. Then, really reflect on their face shots (criticisms) and their that-a-boys (praise). Before you undertake your next project, please watch this video.

More than any other video I’ve watched on game design, Dan Thurot, deconstructs the most important aspects to consider on your journey to create a memory making, fun-engine.

I think as a critic (my man crush aside) https://spacebiff.com/about/ he also gets it right by playing games no less than 3 times before making a verdict. Challenge your critics to do the same.

Designer tip: There is no trophy or crowds cheering you on the extra mile and there is no game designer writing a book called accidental achievement. Remember, your game doesn't want to be made, so you have to listen to that self-doubt and put it in check. Let your intensity and passion for why you are doing this shine as that drive inside you always begets innovation and even creativity. It’s the catalyst. That’s how your thoughts and yeasty ideas begin to then outweigh your fears and adversity of not creating your something.

Most overnight successes are 2-10 years in the making. Making games like Paradise Lost is no different. If you achieved your objectives, move onto the next mountain to climb.

Something can be your life but not your livelihood. Creating experiences for others to enjoy is mine. While all tastes are subjective, the game has hit the mark with the majority of players so far. Not so much for some critics. That’s the mixed bag of the industry but if you’ve stayed true to your purpose, pat yourself on the back, and then go get after it.

Final Final Thoughts For Real This Time…

Paradise Lost was not a common “everyone has one” deck builder, roll-and-write or 4x game. We were trying to bring something unique and new to the industry, pleasing both types of gamers—gateway and seasoned alike by getting them intoxicated on 3 kinds of fun.

By the way, about that beer my family enjoys, well the first time I brewed my wife said if your beer continues to taste like this Tom, you’ll need to find a new hobby.

Iteration is not just found in game design. You can get the art right, the mechanics right, the gameplay right, and it still falls flat in the eyes of some. That’s the beauty of any creation both for critics and those that are in the arena as Teddy Roosevelt reminds:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena...who spends himself in a worthy cause...and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Every single day is a new opportunity to show the world that you can go dare great things as publishers, designers, developers, and gamers! I believe in you.

Green Feet Games Designer Blog

Paradise Lost Design Diary