Having set myself the challenge of developing four games this year, the first decision I had to make was which game should I start with? Do I finish what I started in 2019 with Six Days of Silence or do I give in to the temptation of the shiny new idea of Wayfinders? Obviously I went with the shiny new idea. The Cult Of The New isn’t just a problem for board game players!
As I mentioned in my previous post, Wayfinders was inspired by recently watching Moana with my daughter. Even from the first time I watched it 5+ years ago, the film’s love of exploration had stuck with me. Watching the scenes of the tribe exploring the oceans around them and discovering new islands again caused that immediate spark of ‘I want to make a game of this’.
[As an aside, the true history of Polynesian tribes is fascinating, discovering and settling remote islands long before ‘traditional’ (to Western explorers) navigation tools, instead using natural phenomena to detect their location, bearing, and proximity to land.]
Because of my love of small games and my nature to realise my idea using the fewest components, I of course instinctively thought about 18 card games. Nine cards could be used to create a 3x3 grid to generate a board, each card being split into spaces to travel through with islands and ocean, and the other nine cards could offer variable layouts between games. Other than increasing the number of spaces on each card from four to six, this decision was made very early and has yet to change. This solution has the benefit of being both very quick to set up and simple to manage whilst still offering a board of 54 spaces. But what would we do in this game?
I wanted to encourage players to explore the archipelago and develop their tribe, and the obvious way to achieve this would be for the islands to have resources that can be collected and used throughout the course of the game. I had a few potential solutions of how to achieve this, each with their positives and negatives:
Have double-sided cards with the same island layouts, but with only one side showing the resources which is flipped when explored. Positive: Uses fewer components. Negative: Limits variability between games.
Have the resources printed on the reverse of each island card. Unused cards will form a deck that would be drawn and placed next to the relevant island. Positive: Increased variability between games. Negative: Increases the game footprint and not an elegant solution.
Have island tiles with resources printed on them, that are laid over the cards when explored. Positive: Increased variability between games. Negative: Adds more components.
Have a bag of resource tokens that are pulled out randomly and placed on the island when explored. Positive: Unlimited variability. Negative: Adds even more tokens, potential imbalance of resources between games.
For my first test I opted for the bag of resources, partially due to my concerns about variability, but also because the idea of drawing tokens from a bag sounded very satisfying. With some quick research about the most common materials used by Polynesian tribes, I had my resource types; Coconuts, Fabric, Fish, Stone, and Wood. It was time to set sail!
My first playtests went well, with the core system of rounds and actions working as intended (more on those in the next blog post). The resources however didn't feel as solid, with a few issues: The tokens themselves were too big and overpowered the small footprint of the game, a large number of them were needed (at least 40 by my calculations), and the truly random system led to a more unequal distribution than the other solutions, which could negatively affect the experience of the game.
For my next playtests, I decided to try a different solution. I drew up a number of island tiles and included every resource combination on them. Only 20 tiles would be needed whilst still offering a high amount of variability, so this felt like a good compromise. This system worked well, solving all of my previous issues without causing any more. I'm still open to trying other solutions, especially if it reduces the component count, if my concerns about variability turn out to be overstated.
In my next post I'll be discussing the game length, rounds, and actions of Wayfinders, and how I've attempted a thematic approach to their execution. If you have any thoughts on which resource system you prefer, or on the game or blog post itself, please let me know!
Thanks for reading,
Scott.
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