R&D Progress and Insight

By Ben Stoll

Hey there hexomaniacs! It’s been a while since we chatted. Today, I’ll give you a bit of insight into what’s been going on with Hex from the game design side of things, as well as a glimpse into some of the actual day-to-day insanity that is a part of being in R&D.

R&D Progress Update

Scene: Nighttime in the Cryptozoic Offices. To be specific, in the R&D brainstorming room. We can barely make out two figures underneath fuzzy blankets, huddled over a mess of printed out card images.

“Alright Ben, what about Angry Fae? What’s the verdict on this troop?”

“Angry Fae…Angry Fae…I dunno, uh…yeah. I like this guy ok?”

“Okay, time for bed.”

Dan Clark has worked with me long enough to know that when I didn’t immediately launch into a cavalcade of meticulously crafted yet overwrought game theory in support of or against our latest Sapphire common troop, that we were spent, and it was time for bed.

Yep, I’m proud to say that HEX R&D has been double-timing it lately, working lots of late nights, to try to make sure HEX is as perfect as it possibly can be! Our team is actually quite specialized, and we’ve been making it a priority lately to help maximize each person’s individual talents, whether that’s developer Phil Cape structuring out a set skeleton for one of our designers, or resident rules guru Matt Dunn making sure there aren’t any disastrous rules ramifications associated with the main new mechanic we finally settled on for set 2 (Sorry Momentum, you’ll just have to wait for another block).

We actually spent more time than I’m used to on the early stages of design for set 2. We went back to the drawing board several times while trying to vet some of the proposed new mechanics.

The second set of any TCG is tricky—we want to continue to explore some of the mechanics from set 1 in new ways, as well as show you some stuff that’s totally brand new to HEX, but if we jam too much stuff into set 2 it will get too chaotic and there won’t be enough density in any of the mechanics. Rest assured we have thrown out all of the ideas that we decided just wouldn’t be good enough for our dear precious HEX fans.

With set 1 basically finished, we’re currently in the trenches with set 2 right now and even doing preliminary work on set 3. Set 2 is certainly alive and breathing though–to be more specific, at this point we’re focusing on playtesting draft, making tweaks to make sure the set 2 drafts well in conjunction with set 1, and cleaning up some unfun play patterns and unnecessary complexity Once draft is starting to feel really, really good, we’ll make sure that the rares start getting a lot of playtesting and focus on Constructed.

So…What is it you’d say you do here?

Sometimes people ask me what I actually do during my day-to-day as a game designer in R&D. Outside of some odds and ends, I really spend the bulk of my time doing three things:

Working on the file—making changes to cards, creating designs that the set needs.

Playing Games—playtesting our latest iterations, whether it’s testing the power level of a tier 1 constructed card, or the synergies we’re trying to weave into booster draft.

Talking—this is where we discuss our vision for the experience we’re trying to create. At the most basic level, HEX is a vehicle for a subtle tapestry of emotional and psychological experiences (ones that most of us love!). So, we need to make sure that we’re creating the play patterns, the deck archetypes, the text boxes that will make you all happy. In other words, this step is where we discuss the work we did and how the playtesting went during the last two steps. We come up with some new changes to make to the file, and the cycle begins anew.

It’s this last step that I wanted to give you all an insider peek at today—an example of how we started with a card, then worked together to change it and why. Sometimes a card changes in drastic ways, but want to show you a card that changed only in subtle ways, just so you can see how granular some of our thought process is.

This is what Alabaster Sphinx currently does:

[At the start of your turn, you may secretly choose a troop in your graveyard. If you do, an opposing champion guesses which troop you chose. If they guess correctly, put that troop into play under their control. Otherwise, put it into play under your control.]

I wanted to accomplish a few things when I plugged this design in. I wanted the design to feel like a Sphinx, I wanted a high-tension “riddle” experience with multiple possible outcomes, and I wanted a rare that explored the design space of returning cards from your graveyard to play in Diamond. Here is the text box that I started out with:

“At the start of your turn, void two random troops in your graveyard, then secretly choose one of them. Target opposing champion guesses which troop you chose. If he guesses incorrectly, you may put the chosen troop into play under your control.”

I didn’t like the complexity of the original text box. Although the two text boxes are of essentially equivalent length, I see there being an extra step involved in the first sentence of the original that makes the ability harder to parse upon first read–First the start of turn trigger has to resolve and randomly select two troops, then I have to secretly select one with that new information, rather than just me selecting one as part of the start of turn trigger.

Perhaps more importantly, the original design feels less “sphinx-like” than the second, because the troops being guessed about are voided randomly. I feel like if you’re taking on the role of a Sphinx, you want a sense that you’re in control, that you’re the one sitting behind the riddle, rather than the riddle just presenting itself. So with the latest execution allowing you to be the one who “chooses” the answer to the riddle, I think you capture that experience more. Additionally, you actually have more control over what you might bring back. Finally, we also made the triggered power a “may,” in case you don’t even want to offer the riddle at all.

The other really large mechanical difference is in the possible outcome. In the original design, nothing too bad really happens to the Alabaster Sphinx player—half the time (in theory) you hit your rez, and half the time you get nothing.

In the current design, your odds of success, and your ability to maximize your cunning, increase as your graveyard fills up, which adds a fun little bit of scaling to the design and makes the Sphinx player feel like he’s in the more powerful position (rather than in a 50/50 feeling position). But additionally, I really like the way the riddle plays out more: The Sphinx is more likely to win, but if he loses and the opponent guesses his riddle perfectly, he loses big! This is how I imagine an encounter with a Sphinx should be—the Sphinx usually stumps everyone, but when that one lucky hero solves his riddle, he actually defeats the Sphinx in a big way (not just staves him off for a turn).

Beyond making a better story and being less complex, I also like this execution a lot more from a mechanical standpoint. As mentioned above, it is much higher tension, because instead of “I get a troop or I get nothing” it’s “I get a troop or you get a troop.” The more polarized the outcomes, the higher the tension. And tension is fun—in the right places of course. The current design manages to ultimately be higher tension, but simultaneously allows for more control from the Sphinx player, so you don’t have to trigger the high-tension moment if you don’t want to.

Although those two text boxes appear somewhat similar, I actually believe the current one tells a better story, tells it more cleanly and with less complexity, and creates a more fun gameplay experience (in this case due to more tension). These three things are always huge components of good design that we want to cultivate.

FUN TIDBITS

Enough about the Alabaster Sphinx, what about something tangible from set 2? Will Brinkman tried to sneak a shot of our R&D board, but I lept in the way to protect our precious secrets. But, hey, why not show you some other fun behind-the-scenes in-progress stuff?

Before we’ve really locked in names and flavor and art, we tend to just come up with an idea and then plug in a “placeholder” name for our cards as we test them, that suggests the mechanical or thematic direction of that card (or in some cases suggests the latest recursive joke in R&D). As I was glancing through our Card Editor software, I pulled out some playtest names currently plugged in for set 2 cards for your viewing pleasure:

Overtime Bot

Nexus Charge Airship

Electric Bugaloo

Fuzzy Necrophage

Crush Monster

Butt Elemental

Human Dude Not Necrotic

Snoodles & Klaus, Best Friends

Wall of Bears

Spirit Shielded Bro

Hellbunny Demon Speaker

Large Pants

Sapphire Rare Action TBD 4

Fish Hands

And I will tell you right now, Hellbunny Demon Speaker may just be too busted powerful to make it into the final file!

UNTIL NEXT TIME – ASK ME SOME QUESTIONS!

It has been a true joy to peruse the fan sites, the forums, and to get to communicate with some of you, and this will let me communicate with you a little further! What I would love to do is a little AMA (Ask Me Anything) in the forums linked to the discussion of this article starting at 1 PM PDT. Post a question about design, development, or anything else R&D related, and I’ll go through and answer as many as I can before someone tells me I have to get back to work!

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