Onward: A postmortem

    Onward changed a lot over the course of development. Initially, the plan for it was to be a deck building card game where players took on the role of competing space-age businesses, trying to prove to shareholders that they were the better terraforming company. Players would assemble a biome through buying exotic creatures, and sabotage other players by introducing invasive species and engaging in hostile corporate takeovers. This would've been a strong game, however, the possible scale of it, the complexity of the mechanics, and the fact that it was far beyond our intended age-range made it unfeasible for our goals. 6-12 was a limiting factor, and it put us at an elementary school reading level and scope of knowledge. Games within this age-range tend to be simplistic in action, feature lots of visual language and bright colors to help with memorization, and have simple rules and turn order. 

    So, we simplified our game a lot. Instead of a complex, multi-stage turn where players would have to select between multiple cards and decisions, all of which would have to be accounted for over the course of the playtesting process, we instead elected to follow a simple process that nearly plays itself. Players draw one card, pick a card with the appropriate graphical symbol on it, and then follow the instructions on that card. Turns were still tactile and involved a lot of counter moving and drawing, but in a more satisfying, uncomplicated way. Initial feedback was extremely promising. While players found the game too easy and chance-based, that was our goal from the start. Opinions on the game softened immensely when we revealed it was made for the 6-12 demographic. I felt like we succeeded in creating a game easily read by the target audience, using symbolic shorthand and bright colors. 

    Work was divided evenly, I feel like. Lucas Bishop is an admirable partner and helped make sensible design choices that allowed the game to be much more successful than it would’ve been if I was piloting. He was also responsible for the creation of the event cards, which was extremely admirable; the cards were extremely complicated for the mass quantity that were made, and he made changes quickly and efficiently in order to better the design through iterations. I worked on the Course cards, made adjustments to them in order to adjust the difficulty, and wrote the Rules sheet layout, drafting most of the changes and initial rules that were refined over playtesting. 

    Playtesting adjustments were simple to make. Due to the fact that a deck of cards is inherently modular, and you can take out and add components at will, it was no problem to make the game skew towards easier or harder results. Initial playtests made the game feel like a child-unfriendly grindfest. Attrition was common and players would pick up crewmembers just to immediately lose them. So, we made resources more abundant. Eventually, that resulted in the game becoming too easy and almost Candyland-like. In order to change that, we removed some of the cards that gave the player additional resources until we were comfortable with where the game was. The use of a deck was massively helpful with playtesting, as components could be easily added and removed in comparison to a traditional board game.

     One important issue, one that I feel like I primarily caused, was the translation of the game into something that could be printed out and played. I created a Course card deck that was entirely too big, and it would’ve made the rulesheet bloat to about 20 pages if I used the images I took of the deck in its entirety. Instead, I elected to give the player instructions for making their own deck and providing visual examples of what each Course Card should look like. I provided a ratio of cards for a 50 card deck equal to what we used for playtesting, along with guidance for what changes a player would want to make if they wanted to make the game easier or harder. This wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was better than leaving the game without course cards in their entirety, which was a complaint during early playtesting feedback.