#32 - Picking the Brain of Sam Macdonald from Garphill Games + Circadians: First Light

I'm actually doing a terrible job of answering questions because I'm sort of just like starting with the question you ask and they're just talking about something else. A lot of board game interviews are self-included tend to begin in the same place. How did you discover Katan or how much did you hate losing in Monopoly? When did you first fall in love with games and what was the first game that you wanted to change the rules for? But today, we're skipping straight past the origin story. As with all good TV series out there, there is a good previously on Breldsbjörðuna, regarding the background of our next guest. Because today, we're going to dwell into game design. Because when we look at modern Garfield games and their catalog, there's a lot of fascinating game designs happening beneath the surface, a symmetry, engine building, interaction, solar design, players' psychology, and systems that somehow feel both elegant and brutally demanding at the same time. And since we already had the pleasure of diving deep into the broader Garfield story with Cem Phillips in a previous episode, today we wanted to focus on something else entirely. We're giving you the meat and bones of board game design. Welcome to Breldsbjörðuna, Sam McDonald from Garfield Games. Welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. Pleasure to be here. I'm excited just to dive in. Let's talk games. Perfect. I mean, we have that shared interest. So, I mean, we want to dive into that as well. But just to start with, just a short getting to know you, because we have had introduction of Cem, and he also introduced you and the differences that you have, maybe different mechanics that you like and such. But just to get a sense of what you're playing right now, what has been brought to your table in the last weeks, and what mechanisms tend to get you are playing table? Yeah, Cem forever my wingman, he's always, he's always putting me under his wing, looking out for me, setting me up with interviews and games and things like that. So, I really appreciate him looking out for me like that. We have this joke in the office, there's three of us that work on game designs that Cem is quite gone gin, and then I'm Obi-Wan and then Zach is Anakin. And we're all sort of like this chain of mentoring each other in a way. The seniority and all of that. Are you going to follow the entire store, where's Plot, where one becomes Darth Vader? Yeah, you got to keep an eye on that, Zach guy, he's, he could go rogue. I've got the high ground though, so it's all good. Exactly. But so, when you bring something to the table in the last couple of weeks, and I mean, maybe not when you, I can imagine playing a lot of prod types and such, but when it's more on your spare time, what are you playing? Yeah, it's funny because, you know, if you look at the games that I designed or have designed up to this point, the games that are published, I should say, you might expect that I play certain styles of games, you know, medium to heavyweight Euro games, victory points, that sort of thing. Yeah. I've done a few games outside of that genre, circadian's chaos order, being an area control game, secret societies being a bidding game, high interaction, but mostly they fall into that camp. But if you actually were to observe the games that I play at my table, they are light card games, party games, trick takers, all that sort of thing, I think part of it is that, you know, I'm playing these heavy games most of the day, you know, that's my work, and I love them, but this, playing card games is a nice break. But also, I bring to the table what the people that I play with want to play. So my friends, my family, things like that. I went to Japan just recently, and it was a really cool opportunity to look out for games that I couldn't get here, I couldn't get in the USA or Germany, these really clever little games that come in small boxes that are pretty well language independent because the cards are just numbers and colors, so they work. Yeah. And a lot of them are really clever, so one of them is called Robo Trick, which is a three player only trick taking game. It's specifically three players. Yeah, exactly three players. You don't see many of those. No, you don't, and usually for good reason, like a trick taking game works better with four players, you can have partnerships and, you know, three cards played to a trick is not really that many to distinguish high and low and things like that. But this game works exceedingly well because they have designed an AI, the game is called Robo Trick, but the joke is that it's robot Rick, and they've designed this AI Rick, who has these rules for how they're going to play the hand. And they are also the scoring mechanism, so there's everyone's got a hand of cards, like normal trick taking, but then Rick has a hand of cards in front of him that every player can see. So we kind of have information on half of the cards. We can see our own cards and Rick's cards, and there's the rules there for how Rick's going to follow or offsuit or lead. And if we win the trick, we gain Rick's card as points, positive points. So if it's a high card, it's good, if it's a low card, it's not as good. But if Rick wins the trick, then the card that we played, we gain as negative points for ourselves. So if Rick's going to win, we want to play low. And if we win, we want to take Rick's high cards, not his low cards, that's a point scoring opportunity. And it's a really, really clever system, and the trick taking rules are just standard trick taking rules, but it works incredibly well, very fantastic. So that's one of the games I've been playing. That's very cool. So then as you say, I mean, it's three players specific, but with Rick, it's four player, basically. That's right. That's right. It simulates the fourth player. But interesting, because I can imagine that you're playing your opponents, but also the AI with knowing how he's going to play the different AI rules, so how he's going to follow and how you might want to trick that. That's right. And at times, Rick feels like he's your partner, and you're facing the other two players. And at times, it's 3v1. Come on, Rick. What are you doing, you know? Very clever. Did Jim know that he was going to set you up to promote another game when he won? I'm much more comfortable promoting other games. I got time for one more. I could tell you one more game that's been in my table as well. Absolutely. It might not even be a Japanese design. It's a game called Dropalter, so like Dropalter Guest. Dropalter from 2023. Okay, it might not be a Japanese designer, but it's from Oink Games. But this is a deck-stereoty game. Yeah, what's this guy who designs these heavy Eurogames talking about? Dexterity games for. But the hook is just so, so good. Each player has a hand of these five random objects. There's like a little cube, there's a ring, there's like a little key, a shell, and this other square thing. And they're going to put all of those objects in their one hand. And we're going to shake them up, and then we reveal a card. And that card is going to depict one to four of those objects. And you need to open up your hand, just one-handed, and dump those objects from your hand onto the table. Get rid of those objects. You can't drop the wrong ones. If you drop the wrong ones, you're going to have to pick them up. Once you've dropped the exact objects, then there's a little ghost, a little poltergeist in the middle, and you pick up the ghost. And that's just a way of us figuring out who did it first, right? If you did it first, then your reward is you get a point. But what's the point? The point is a tiny little bell that you then have to put into your hand for the next round. And if you ever drop a bell, you lose those points. So the person that's really, really far ahead, it's first to five points, five thousand in hand. But you're sitting there with all your bills in hand, and all of a sudden you're being really slow and really cautious, because you don't want to drop those points. So it's just a really fantastic, kind of organic catch-up mechanism. And it just creates all this laughter. It's such a simple rule set, but it's genius. Yeah, I mean, we have kids in an age where there are a lot of games in that aspect, where it's more about the experience. It doesn't have to be, I mean, you can have heavy games that gives an experience, but usually a thing with heavy games is that it takes up so much time as well. I mean, just from describing this, everyone can understand it in 30 seconds, and then everyone can play it, and you'll keep playing it, and you're done in 10 minutes, and then you can play again with another filigame. So I mean, those, they really have a really well-suited place in the gaming community, but I can also agree with what I would have guessed would have been what Sam plays, is that there's always a big Euro game on the living room table, from the games that you've designed. So how much would you say is, like, how do you say, like, play one game a day of a heavy prototype game, or do you have to go through several ones, or I mean, because I guess if you play games most of the days, it's quite tiresome if you have to play all the games all the time. Yeah, that's a really good question. We kind of go in these different waves in seasons. There are some moments which are really intense in the game design job, and they're intense because we want it to be. We're applying that pressure to ourselves. It's not really an external pressure. I mean, it would be if we were like really, really behind on time, we're sort of ahead, which is nice. But there are these points when the games, like more needy. That's the way I want to put it. Maybe there's a parallel with kids. There are certain times when the kids don't require much attention. They kind of play on their own, all that sort of thing. But there are times when the games are really needy. And there are different problems to try and solve. But also, it's at that honeymoon stage for you as a designer as well. It's like, oh, this game that I haven't quite figured out yet, but it's really, it's enticing me. It's luring me in. It's got promise. I want to fix it. I want to solve it. And so when we're working on games that are at that stage, where we're sort of courting these games. They're exciting us, but they're also. So annoying us, like there's these things I haven't fixed. It's really hard to take them off your mind. And so in those stages, we will just spam those games for the whole week. Like we will play them, we'll talk about them, we'll brainstorm, we'll sometimes just be looking at a computer screen or at components for an hour just thinking about how to fix problems and then spitballing with really bad ideas. But then lots of bad ideas end up coming up with a good idea, like talking with gem through all these different things we could do, just throwing stuff at the wall. So those days are really intense when we've got a game that is at that stage. But games don't stay at that stage forever. Once we've solved the biggest problems that the game has and the general flow is kind of working and the core mechanisms are there and things like that, the theme is there. Then we can just play the game every now and then. And we're playing for different things. We're playing for like balancing issues, we're playing for like scaling, like how does this play at two players, three players, four players, how do we adjust the setup and the other rules for the different play accounts without it being two, two different and experience, you know, all these extra rules for two player, we don't want to have that. So when games are in that phase, we can kind of leave them for a while and just pull them out at our leisure and just keep thinking through those kind of those smaller, more minute changes each time we play them. So yeah, we've got lots of games that we're working on. We're always actually working on five, six, maybe seven. It's quite a few, but they're at different stages in the process. So we get to enjoy, you know, when we've got a new design that is at that needy stage, we've got the commission just to jump in and kind of leave everything else. And then we get it to this point where it's a little more stable and then we'll put the other games that we've got on the rotation. Yeah, but looking at a lot of your games, I mean, you have this different mechanisms, usually different mechanisms together in a very, very interconnected way. So when you talk about these problems that you have to solve, what are the most usual problems that you face during creation and game designing? And I can imagine it's not the same problem in every game, but looking at the games you've created now, is there some common like step that you always have to get over that is more difficult? Yeah, that's, I need to think about that. That's a really a question. Yeah, we can come back to that later if you want to. Yeah, common problems. I think just as a quick answer, the first thing that comes to mind is figuring out the end game trigger for a game. Because I'm perhaps a little contrary in that I'm not a big fan of just saying, hey, the game is four rounds. Yeah. And, you know, each round, each player gets three turns. And so you've got 12 turns, math out how to play these 12 turns to the maximum efficiency. And there's no nothing extra to squeeze out of that, you know, you can't give an extra bonus turn and things like that. Like wingspan, for instance, where you have your tubes, everyone's gonna place now. And that's one of the things I noticed with your games. There's always this tension. I don't think that there's ever been a time where we played any of your titles where I don't end up feeling if I lose that I wanted one or two more rounds. It's not like I felt that I needed 10 more rounds to win. It's always that I wanted one or two more turns. And that really is an indication of a good end game trigger that it's balanced. But you always have the tension of, okay, the last corner of sand is gonna go out to saori last soon. I have to speed up. So it sounds like that is something that you tried to have in every game. Yes, totally. And even though it sounds like it's a bad feeling to feel like, oh, I'm not quite fully satisfied. I wanted one more turn. That's a great feeling because it means that you want to come back. And you can pursue mastery. You're like, exactly. It was possible to get more points. It felt like there was something just out of my grasp. If I come back, maybe I'll be a stronger player and I can sequence things better. And then I'll be able to hit those points. And I really hope that that is always just in front of you like tomorrow, but you never reach it. That's kind of the goal. And it's kind of actually reflects my music taste as well. Like I love when a song has a really awesome bit that you're like tapping your feet, you're loving it, you're loving it. But then they don't repeat that bit. And you have to listen to the song again to get to that bit. Like that's just kind of my life to come back to it. Just fully progressive, you know what I mean? Absolutely. I mean, coming back to that sensation, I mean, it's a two-sided coin because if you win, you feel like I did the right thing. I took the gambling chance of ending it early. And then on the other side, if you lose, it's more as you describe the feeling of, oh, I want to play it again to see if I can maybe win this time instead of because if you have a stacked rounds, that's not dynamic. It's either, I mean, it could possibly be the same thing, but the risk is that it's either overstays its welcome or ends too soon, even though because the ending mechanisms that you have are driven by the players. So everyone is racing simultaneously towards this end game trigger. So it's really mostly a positive feeling of I want one or two more rounds. Yeah, and also I feel like in these kind of round end game games, you know, after a certain amount of plays, you know that, okay, by now I need to adapt this strategy for the end game. But in these kind of, how do you say, a specific end game trigger of whatever it might be, it's easier to like, okay, I need just a few more points. Then I will start to trigger the end game or stuff like, okay, now it's starting to trigger it. I need to focus on this before it ends and stuff like that. So it's kind of a push and pull on whether you want to end the game or not, and it feels like you have more control rather than just, okay, this is the last round. But coming back to, as you said that the end game scoring can be a problem, how do you usually approach setting up an end game mechanism? Yeah, yeah, so this is, I'll explain why it's a problem and then how we try to approach it. You know, it's clearly a lot easier to just design the game that has four rounds, three turns each round, and then we know like one for for balancing because we know that in 12 turns we can kind of average out how many points you get put in and things like that. But for me, that is not as satisfying as a player for the reasons we discussed. I like to feel like maybe I could have got more out of the game and not to be like confronted with this feeling that the game is just math. And I know I've got this many turns and therefore a good turn. I should get X amount of points if I'm trying to get, if I'm trying to get to a winning score. I like that greed to be a factor too. Like if this player doesn't do this thing, then I'm going to get one more turn. Do I just respect that that player is going to do the thing and trigger the end game? And so do I do something that's going to allow for that and basically get my best points if they trigger the end game? Or do I play for a higher point selling if they don't trigger it and do something a little bit greedy and hope? That is a really interesting decision for me. I like players to feel and have ways that they can be greedy in a game. They can do something that's a little bit risky that could pay off, but also there's a way that they could choose not to be greedy and respect their opponents. And that becomes a skill in the game. It's not just like what's the best sequencing in the game, but it's also playing to the table, playing to who's there and how strong they are and things like that. And when timing is an element to the game, like a game like architects of the West Kingdom or Wayfarers or whatever, it becomes another skill. Like it's not just how do you get the most points, but how are you impacting and influencing the rate of the tables play and each player has, you know, has a way to contribute to that. And that becomes a new skill to master. So it makes the games harder to master and each game hopefully feel more dynamic, especially if they're playing with different groups where there's actually a different meta game. I played with I played architects with some groups that have a very set meta game that will be really slow. Everyone gets apprentices and they take a long time to build up their engine and things like that. And then you go and play at a different table and they play a completely differently. And these tables are these own little like ecosystems that the table agrees what the best way to play the gamers and it becomes the self fulfilling thing. And they they would argue with each other. If I brought those two tables together, those two groups of people together, they would just completely disagree about what a good strategy is, yeah, architects of the West Kingdom. And I find that a really fascinating idea that which tables write? Well, it's self fulfilling, you know. And I can also imagine since something that I see as a red thread in a lot of your games is that you usually as part of that also have this that there's different ways of scoring. And I can imagine that a lot of games that you play if you have just a certain way of scoring, then even if you have an end game trigger, it can always feel like. I'm dead last. I'm not gonna win this. But a lot of your games since there are, as you say, many different ways of, "Do I get a princesses and building that gives end game score, looking at architects? Do I just go for the cathedral?" or "What is my focus?" That is also, I think, a part of it that I can imagine why there is this tension because there are so many different ways of contributing to your end game score. Is that something that you like in your games? Having this different ways of playing as well. 100%. So the downside of that is that you get to the end of the game and we don't know who won. Because we've got to get our calculator out, we've got to get our scorepad out, and that's a bit anticlimactic. Like that's the downside of that. But the upside, there's massive, massive upside for me that I think it's worthwhile still doing it, even with that downside. And this is this idea of cursed problems. There are problems in game design, that you can't actually ever remove. Like the presence of something good might necessitate something bad. It's like the two sides of the coin. So for me, the good thing is that there are many different paths to victory. And players get to explore and discover different strategies that I have done my utmost best to make them viable. Like, if you're playing one of the games that I've worked on, if you could think of a weird strategy that scores points. So if it's something you can do in the game that scores points, just do whatever you can to max out that thing. Try just like completely focus on that thing. Try and test it to its limits because I can guarantee you I've tried that and I've tried to make it viable. I've tried to make it a strategy that could win on a given day because I think that there's some real for me as a player, there's something really compelling and exciting about pursuing different strategies, trying weird stuff and taking a photo at the end and being like, look at this thing that I did in this game. Was this legal? Was I allowed to do this? That's this one. So I think that's really cool like to put that in your games if you can, where weird stuff can win. But obviously you don't want it to be the dominant strategy. So you need to have it so that that given certain conditions and against the table that is playing a certain way that it can win, that it's viable. But if it becomes dominant then we've got an issue, right? So this is why I like to put these different strategies in the game and in order to necessitate that, we need points from lots of different areas. But that does ask the players to experiment with different things and they don't have to. Like they could just keep coming into the game, say a game like Ezra and Nehemiah, they could just keep coming into the game and playing the red strat. They might really like the red strat. Well, there's a blue strat, there's a gray strat and there's all combinations of blue plus gray, blue plus red for them to experiment with. If they want to they can keep playing the red strat. But we've put these things in our games for the players that want to experiment with different strategies and some of them might take a little bit longer to get good at. But I can guarantee you that we've tried our best to make the weird stuff, the different strategies viable. And that's something that's really fun with game design is just allowing for that. And I mean, looking at your designs as well, because what also is apparent is still love for a symmetry. A lot of your games doesn't look like it has to be so similar to, oh, a symmetry girl. And that I mean, that must be a big challenge when it comes to balancing a game. You have this component of different ways of scoring, you have a dynamic and game trigger and then you also implement a symmetry. How do you manage to have all these in one game? Yeah, it does create some some nightmares as well with with design. So there's sort of like there's sort of two forms of asymmetry and well, there's multiple, but the way that I'm going to frame is this too. And we'll always have one of these in there and that's emergent asymmetry. So that's asymmetry that just comes about from players taking different paths. So it's not a symmetry that you would start the game with, but you players will do different things. They will hire different apprentices. They will build different buildings or whatever it is. And then they end up with different scoring conditions. We love this in our games like most of our games will have a type of card that you can somehow recruit or build or whatever, which is then going to say, you're going to score a point for every two of these things, right? And players can collect those cards. It's nearly all of our games. And what it means is the players get to decide what's going to score for them. So they become asymmetrical. The way that I score, it's not that I'm just scoring different amounts of points for the things that I've done than you, which of course I will. But like, I get to score the walls that I've built more because I've done this thing and you don't, you know? And so I think that is really interesting because what's happening is the player gets to decide their direction. And once they've decided their direction, they're going to keep leaning into that thing. Yeah. Which is cool. So we'll always try to have emergent asymmetry in the game. But also the the main type of asymmetry that people actually think about when they talk about asymmetry is starting asymmetry, right? Where I start with some form of player power or it might be more than just a player power. Perhaps it's a way that I break rules. Maybe it's where I score different things like that. I start with a player power and so do you and so does the other player. And we can do things either slightly differently or up to vastly differently depending on the design. And why I think this is really cool is again, it's about that replay value. So I like talking about downsides and upsides. The downside is that like, well, these games need to be played a lot to really get the most out of them. And even though that sounds like a good thing, people don't have the time. And there's so many games that are going for people's attention. So me to say, oh, you know, by your fifth play, this game becomes amazing. It's like, that's quite a cost for players to actually have to play the game that many times. Yeah, I mean, just just looking at people that love your games. I mean, you come with a new game every year. So I mean, five plays a year and then all the games in the backlog, it's it's going to be a lot of players. You have a vacation for. I thought that's exactly right. Yeah, but it's a big ask to ask about players to to get the most out of this game. And I think part of the reason we do it is really just a selfish reason because we are the ones that when we're testing it, we're playing this game over and over and over again. So we're sort of designing it to be fun for that whole process and for there to be things for us to explore as well while we're doing that. So yeah, we design games that we that we like to play. Of course, I'm sure every designer does that, but we design them so that hopefully by the end of the process, after we've tested it 50, hundred times, we still want to play the game. Yeah, that's kind of like that's kind of where we're at. There've been one or two games that I've got sick of, but but that's actually not very many, you know, compared to all the games that we've worked on. So that's kind of our mentality, but yeah, as I said, the downside, some of our games really don't shine on their first play. And so that's something we're trying to be aware of in this really crowded market with lots of games coming out. But looking at your entire catalog, what would you have as the best example of this is going to come out of the box and you're going to get it. And then as you describe now, this is going to, the lamp is going to get left on the fifth playthrough. Yeah, so one game that is I have regrets about in a sense because it's so, so cumbersome on the first place as waferers of the South Tigress. It's a game where on set up, there are 20 cards face up around the board. So that's so much information and icons on all these cards to try and figure out. And then there's all these little tiles and other things. There's lots of icons everywhere. It's just icons sell it everywhere. And that is so that, you know, there are all these different strategies and ways you can collect cards and tuck cards and customize your engine. All that sort of thing that comes out the more you play it and there you'll find that there are more and more ways to play the game. There's lots of diverging strategies, but on your first play, when you're teaching the game, it's not that the rules of the game are actually that complicated, like the rules are kind of clean, but you have to explain all of these icons, what all of these things mean. And people won't understand the implications of what those things mean until later. So it's a game that I don't think shines on your first play. It's kind of overwhelming just because there's a lot of noise. There's lots of things to look at, but you play it over and over again. And you can, and you start doing some shorthand thinking, like, I don't need, I'm not worrying about that icon. I'm not targeting those things. I'm not going to get an inspiration card for a while. So I'm not looking over there. So you kind of know when you're an experienced player, where to look and where not to look. So you don't get anywhere near as overwhelmed. I mean, we had the same feeling when we played Esra and Nehemiah. At the first look at the end glance, it was this, this is clearly a 5.0 weight game just from everything happening at the table. But then as you say, it, I mean, that's also a part of many of your games. It has these different pipelines of tactics that once you've played them once or twice, you kind of get the sense of it. And then you have on the third, fourth and fifth play through it's going to get more advanced in the feeling of, "Oh, now I know how the tactics works." The overall whole of everything might be a bit overwhelming. I mean, you really have to go through with that. Okay, let's focus on this part right now. But that's also the good thing. I mean, going back to some that you explained before, like these different sort of not weird tactics that you can win. But one thing we quite recently experienced in, for example, architects of the West Kingdoms are these depth cards. I mean, that was something you truly avoided. But then you started to get these apprentices that gave material for the depth card. And you saw the opportunity of gaining a lot of vertitude when you're repaying the depth, etc. And suddenly that became a tactic of actually ending up in depth. So it really shines through that you have thought of these different ways of actually scoring. And even though during the gameplay it might seem like, oh, I will lose this. I have so many depth cards. And then suddenly you get this apprentice and whoops, you're back in top. Yeah, the depth, you've seen the light or you've seen the dark actually, I should say, you've been hanging out in the wrong parts of town, my friend. But yeah, that was just, that was a that's a great example, because that was something that we really wanted to put in the game. Yeah. And I would have done three or four play tests in a row trying to make this thing work. And I didn't really see playtesters trying this thing. So I'm going to try this thing. I'm going to try and just collect a lot of debts, collect a lot of money, and then flip all these debts for a lot of resources. And it was hard. It was hard to figure out how to do it because you, there's a lot of downside if you don't get the timing right. Yeah. You lose a lot of points from the debts, but you're also going to have a low low virtue. So you're going to lose a lot of points from the low virtue. And as we said with the game, timing and the timing that of the table is a real skill. So I was learning trying to figure out how to play this debt strategy and also play the game like figure out the timing of the game and how much how many turns I have to flip debts and how many turns I need to save for building buildings and things like that. When to stop building my engine and start spending my resources to build. So I was trying to figure out these things. So I ended up playing the game three or four times in a row with this debt, collect a strategy and not really making it work. But there was just a moment when it clicked. And on that next play, I absolutely dominated the table. And from then on, I'd figured it out. And so we needed to nerf them. We ended up nerfing them and changing them. They used to give three resources. And it's couldn't make it work like for a while. And then once I actually figured out the game. So I was still learning how to play the game. Then we nerfed them and they're and they're still really, really strong. But it's this kind of like chase strategy to go after which a lot of players, they'll just see those cards and be like, oh, I don't have many debts. So I'm not going to buy this thing. Not realizing that it's not just about the debts you've got, but it's sort of encouraging you to go out and get it. Yeah, exactly. So it's like leverage them. Yeah, exactly. So leaving your your pawns in the prison or actually go to the black market and stuff like that. It's only become exactly it becomes like this extra strategy that you go towards which many people tend to avoid. So it's really flips how you play the game. And that's really nice. And I mean, an interesting way with that as well is that because of this pivot that happens when once you recruit these cards, I mean, because in certain games where there is worker placement, it can feel like, oh, you place to a worker on that spot. That's going to be the winning strategy. Looking at architects, you can always place your workers, but you kind of get away from that when you have the symmetry of of having different pivots to different strategies. It's never going to feel like you're just following someone else completely because they're going to have some differences when it comes to end game scoring and how they play the game. So that's a really interesting aspect. But looking at you mentioned cursed problems when it comes to to board games and the kind of both sides of the coin, looking at balancing and when you have different strategies, how is it as a game designer and when you play test and create your different games, looking at things like runaway leaders or king making, I mean, keeping the score tight because as we mentioned, that's also part of your games that it always, I mean, sometimes someone can just run away, but usually it feels tight when the end game scoring comes. How difficult is that? That's really difficult actually. There's a lot going into this, but there are little tricks that we can pull. So I'm kind of of of the opinion that if someone has clearly won the game, the game should be over. But because players don't like playing when they don't think they can win, they get this realization that I've got no chance. And the reality is that probably occurs a lot of the time. Like how many times does your last turn actually matter in a game? Maybe like maybe like 40%, I don't know, like you might have had so many turns in a game that like, can you actually change your position on your last turn? Yes, some of the time, but not every time it's your last turn, right? But the thing is what we do to slightly avoid the problem is we obfuscate who's in the lead. So we're not scoring all of our points on a score track every time we do the thing that's going to score us points. Yeah. Instead, we get out, I calculate it at the end, we add up our points from these different areas. And so you can only tell if you're behind, if you're actually really far behind, if you've got an intuition for where you are, because not many players that I play with actually start to count up what everyone's going to get at the end of the game. Now, you can also hide this more by having like in-game objectives and things like that and hidden objectives and things, but I as a designer hate those things. I really don't like those things, there are reasons for it. The first reason is that I hate telling the player what they should do. Like, I'm giving them a card and I'm telling you to do this thing. And like, how dare I tell you what to do in my game? You're going to decide what you're going to do in my game. Exactly. Like, I want you to experiment. I want you to decide what's good for you. That's a downside of asymmetry is in a way the designer is playing a little bit, is telling you, hey, you're good at this thing, right? But I just think the benefit of asymmetry of like that feeling of being different is worthwhile having even if the designer is a little bit pushing players in a direction. Now, I'm weird in this way because a lot of players actually like to have direction. So I need to figure out like what is the right amount of direction that I'm comfortable giving the player and I don't like giving them direction. I like it when, as I said earlier, like emergent asymmetry. The player gets this card and now this thing is scoring for them. And so now they have decided their direction. You know, I like that sort of thing. Or you play a card down and he's running him. I that's red, right? Because you have to play a card down. And now, oh, red is more powerful for me. So the player is deciding their direction based on other factors. Yeah. I feel like there's two or three. And that's a question here. So now, I mean, it's it's perfect because this is really an insight in in in how you design games and what we really want is this because usually you have this product in front of on the table that you play and I mean, you have the sensation. But a lot of time, there is this thought process of how did they design this? How did they bring all these elements together? So I mean, it's really insight into the the mind of Sam when it comes to the complexity of games. But because I mean, looking at a lot of your games, there is, I mean, you're more towards the complex games usually with a lot of mechanisms. And I mean, for first time players, it can also feel a bit chaotic. But I mean, speaking to Shem, he he talked a lot about this that he liked, liked games being brain burners that there is like a puzzle trying to be solved. Are you of the same ideology when it comes to games and when you design or how do you think about the cognitive load and the analysis paralysis in games? Yeah, I love I love brain Bernie games too. I love when I get to solve problems, not not not now as a game designer, but now as a player, right? Yeah, like little, not problems, kind of all that puzzles, I guess is exactly with the mini games and get that feeling of progression. Now there's progression in the game when you gain engine building, when you boost tracks or you gain more income, things like that, that feels amazing, right? That engine building, that progression in that way. But the other thing that happens with these brain Bernie games in the puzzle games is this progression outside of the game because there's progression of you as a person because you've gained understanding and insight and knowledge over this system, which you didn't have at the start of the game. Yeah. As you play it out, you're actually starting to understand the puzzle a little bit more and if you were to play the game again, you're a better player because you've seen something, you've understood something and so you're actually not only progressing in the game with engine building and you know, I feel more powerful, but you're something about you, this sounds like really philosophical, just for a little game example, but something about you has changed. Like you've learned how to interact with this puzzle in a way that is more efficient than than what you would have. instinctively done. That's a good puzzle for me. Where you don't get it immediately. You understand how it works. You understand the rules. So you're not like confused. It's not like too complicated, but it's complex. It's like there is something. There are implications of your actions that you didn't foresee and that after having experienced it and trialed it, you can start to foresee, start to predict, and start to feel like you've gained a little bit of mastery over this system. That's why I like puzzles. And some of them, a problem with that is that sometimes once you've figured it out the first time how to interact with a puzzle, it might become really obvious that there's always like a put this thing here and put this thing here and do it this way. So that's a problem because you don't want players to always do things the same way. - Yeah, you don't want to have a met or a mechanic that always wins. - So there still needs to be other ways to look at it. I think for the puzzle to be really satisfying. But yeah, that's why I like BrainBurney Games is feeling better as a person like growing and achieving mastery and things like that. - Yeah. And another thing that when we talked to Sham, that perhaps there's a difference between the two of you. He spoke about you loving the interaction between players, maybe more than he did. He saw one of the reasons that almost all of your games have a solitary version, but how would you describe your sensation of interaction between players and the importance of having that in games? - Yeah, totally. I think I love interaction. I think it creates the most memorable moments at the table. I think solving like this feeling of solving the puzzle is a great feeling and it might make you come back for more in your experience than mastery. But you might not remember that a year later, that the greatest puzzle game, I don't know if you would remember that a year later, but you definitely remember that moment your friend back stabbed you and you know, or lied about being the werewolf or you remember those moments. So they are a high emotion, they're a high emotion moments for good or for bad that really that stick with you. Like even the massive frustration that I was betrayed, that it's a game making someone feel something. And it's a lasting impression. So these moments of interactions can be amazing, but they can also be bad. But there are other feelings of interaction, they think are fun too. In the game time model, the thing we're talking about with architects, it's like figuring out the meta game at the table and learning not just what's the best thing to do in a vacuum, but the best thing to do at this table, the way that it is currently playing, and that adds a layer of skill, skill expression that isn't normally found in a lot of these Euro games where you can just full action efficiency plan everything. So that's, it adds a level of skill, although it's a different kind of skill, a kind of skill that not every mega smart player will figure out in a way. It's just a different, it's about reading the table and things like that. There are other layers of interaction, which are sensational too. And these are often in cooperative games or team games where we get that feeling of you and I being on the same wavelength. And those are those high five moments when you guess my clue in code names and it's really obscure or like when we're doing a team trick taking game and you know that I'm, and I play this low card and I know you're off-suited so that you can trump it, you know, and you're stoked that I figured out that you'd off-suited and we did this little, like this little pass to you and you did the slam dunk and it's really cool. So when you suddenly tap into the telepathic communication skills, that's a solution. Yeah, we're on the same wavelength that feels amazing. So there's lots of like really incredible feelings that can come from interaction that you can't get with these puzzly games. And I don't think every game should be going for these interactive moments, not at all. But I just think it's another avenue for enjoyment of games and if you can get that in there, it might improve your game. Now there are some games like Hadrian's War or Scarab Ray or whatever. We're adding interaction. One of the things that happens with interaction, one of the downsides of interaction is that normally, if you add interaction, then you need to have turns in the game. So we can't all be playing at the same time. You need to have a way for each player to be able to react or to do the thing and then something else happens. So if you had a lot of interaction in Hadrian's War or Scarab Ray, then the game time would just go longer and longer and longer and longer. And so there is actually a cost to interact. Like you get a lot of game in Hadrian's War in one hour. Like it's like you've played about, it's like you've done the same number of actions as you would do in three games of Paladins of the West Kingdom and half the time of one game of Paladins of the West Kingdom. So there's an upside to having no interaction too. It's just about knowing kind of what you are going for in the game. And I might just keep talking about interaction because I'm going to actually be able to answer one of your questions that I didn't properly answer with using interaction as an example. - Find an answer. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, finally. Let's go. - When talking about balancing a game and how to determine the winner and stuff like that, there's really these three factors that make up who wins the game. And one of the factors is luck. So if you're playing a game like Snakes and Letters, that's purely decided on luck. That's all it is for winning that game. So it's not really a good game. We like to have decisions and so-- - I play it a lot with my son. It's one of his favorite games and I hate luck based. But yeah. - Yeah, yeah. But then you've got games like, okay, so we've got luck. But the other end of that spectrum is pure skill. So a game like Go or Chess, there's zero luck in those games. Perhaps the only luck is if you're going to be black or white player. First or second, you know? - Yeah. - That's it. And so with those games, the downside is that if you're not playing with someone at your skill level, they are just going to win every single time. And so now when I play a game like Chess against Magnus Carlson, I'm starting to think a little bit of luck might be a good thing. You know, roll the die and if it's less than a three, then the pawn doesn't get to take the piece. You know? Maybe I'm going to roll high and he's going to roll low. - It's only going to be applied to him. - Yeah. Because with these modern board games, they are designed for lots of different types of people to come and play. We don't want them to be one by the same player every single time. - Yeah. - We don't want players to feel like they've got no chance. I'm not saying that's a bad game if a player has no chance, but it's not very accessible. - Yeah. It's going to be a big step to start, because as you mentioned, there is, you want this excitement to come back and play the game to get better at it. But it's not going to be that because you're better, you're going to win every time. - It's harder to introduce new players as well. I mean, if you play the game for several times and then you introduce a new one, they might not feel that it's as fun because they are so far behind at the start. - Yeah, and to be fair, I've got games like that where I'm not an insanely strong gamer. I'm okay, but if I were to introduce to my friends or just play with my friends, I've played these games so many times and I have grown like that mastery thing we're talking about, interacting with the puzzle, knowing what's good and stuff like that, that they wouldn't have a chance. So that's not necessarily a good thing, but it's the curse problem. It's the other side of the coin of having a game where you're not going to master it on first play, is that if you're playing with someone who has played it lots of times and they're on their first play, yeah, you don't really have a good chance of winning. But we accept that because we love that feeling of progression, we love that feeling of the game having depth to discover. So these are two of the factors for what determines the winner of the game. And we can agree that for most games, we don't want to have it purely luck and we can agree that we don't want to have it purely skill. So we want it, we mix in a little bit of luck there into our games so that it's not pure skill. But there is the third factor and the third factor is interaction. And this is where we would say, "Kingmaking would kick in." Yeah. Where if a game is full, if a game is full interaction for deciding the win, it's kind of like a voting game, like what's a good example. Cards against humanity is full, it's not skill, it's not luck. Well, there is luck in what cards you get, I guess, but mostly it's the cabal, the group, the gang of people, they decide who wins the game. And a lot of people don't like this and they use the word "Kingmaker" like it's a bad thing. And I understand why it can lead to some really sour or bitter moments. But I think a little bit of that is actually interesting. Because then it's not just luck. If we put a bit of interaction in there, it's not just luck and it's not just skill, but actually like, "This player blocked me, they took the thing that I wanted." "Ah, now I have to adapt." "You know, I've got a bad break because I was sitting next to this player, But what am I going to do? And so. But when designing games, you've got to be aware of these three things and you're sort of ending up with some balance of the three based on what you're going for for the style of game for what's going to be determining the winner. So some games might be high luck and high skill. What's a good example of that? There are some games that are actually both like some trick taking games, a high luck and high skill. You know, there's randomness of the cards, but there's also a lot of skill expression. Some games might be high skill and high interaction. So then maybe it's like about knowing how to work the room and knowing what everyone's going to do and reading minds and stuff. And then some games might be quite random, like high interaction, high luck. You can just sort of see how there's this like Venn diagram of these three factors. And we sort of use a little bit of all of these because we know that each one of these is kind of flawed for determining the winner. So we can't just have one of them. We've got to use some mix of the three. Yeah. There's a very interesting diagram to how. I mean, a lot of the games that I think of now, as you say, have some aspect of it where you either detract from some part of the triangle and try to end up with, and games that feel unbalanced, usually have a bad balance of this trio. So that it becomes unfair or similar. But because you are right now in front of us time wise, 12 hours from Sweden. So talking about the future, because you can describe the future now for us, looking towards the future for Gorfill games. I mean, you've done almost all the sides of the world now with both North and South and the West. Looking at the future here in the trilogy of the East upcoming, and I saw an interview that you had on your site mentioning that if the South trilogy gets well received and accepted, it's going to become more pressure now on the last trilogy here. So how does it feel now coming forward? And once now we've talked about mechanism, is there something that you can reveal to us that's going to come into future here mechanically? Yeah, so we have started working on the East trilogy. And yeah, there is a little bit of pressure. I think I felt it more going from the West to the South where Shem designed the North on his own, and then I came in for the West games and I was kind of surprised at what we were able to achieve. I felt really blessed to work with Shem on the West. And if I can say, I was really almost what's the right word, like proud of what we had managed to achieve. I guess. I thought the games are cool, they're interesting, they're different enough from each other, there's this through line of this debt and corruption system, which was really interesting. Like it was quite a cool whole line of games, these three games. I was like, are we going to be able to, like it's the next trilogy, the South trilogy? Is that going to be able to hold up to this? Are we going to pull it off? That's a tough ask. So I felt like a little bit of, I felt that pressure, I guess going into the South. And yeah, I think we managed to do a good job. We decided that in advance that the trilogy was going to feature dice, which is quite a heavy restriction. And I think it meant that all of the games in the South tended to be a little bit heavier, because what we wanted to do with dice was not just have a dice mechanic for all three games, but innovate a new way to use dice in each of the three games. So when you innovate, the downside of innovation, well, the upside of innovation is things afresh and you and stuff like that. The downside of innovation is that people haven't seen this before. Yeah. So it takes a little bit more. You have to introduce it. I mean, yeah, we discussed that in a previous episode. If you were to describe to someone who's never played monopoly, it's a fairly complex game with all the mechanics, but because we got taught it as youngsters, we know the rules. And then it's easy. And I can imagine the same here. You're describing mechanics that are difficult because it's the first time you see them. That's right. So as designers, we love to come up with new things. We love to bring something to the conversation, the design conversation, but realizing now, like I didn't really fully understand this at that point that there's cost to that. Like I think there's cost everything that's kind of why I've matured in this interview. So those games were a bit heavier. Now I'm really pleased with what we came up with for them as well. And that kind of gave me confidence that Shem and I, and also working on ESR and Nehemiya in other games, that we can do it together. We can come up with games that are cool. And so it sort of ended up easing the pressure a little bit for this upcoming trilogy. I know that we've kind of got our process. We know how to work together. We know the kinds of things we want from these games. And so there's so many things that just go on unsaid because we're on the same page. And so we can shorthand a lot of communication. And yeah, we both know we want the same thing for these games. We have the same goal. So it's really easy to work with them because you're in this same wavelength. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Even though our tastes are exactly the same, like there are things that I like in games and things that he likes in games and they don't always overlap. And I think we've kind of found this common ground of like he'll allow some, he likes interaction. He doesn't dislike it, but he'll allow some interesting interaction in these games. But like, you know, we're not going full bluffing and bidding and all of that sort of stuff. So we sort of understand the scope of these games I will say. And following up from the south, what we're wanting to do with the East is not be so heavy. Not be quite as heavy as the south. So these East games are going to be a little bit lighter, but I would still say if you enjoy our heavy games, you're going to like these like there in that mid-weight kind of category. Where would you say is it for the players that have played both or have followed you in the northwestern and south, where would you describe it coming weight wise? Yeah, I would say that they have a lot of depth in terms of things you could do. And different paths to explore and skill. But I would say that weight might be around the Vikings level, perhaps. But I think the teaching those the East games so far, the two games we've designed is easier than teaching the other games. I think so. Not quite as many icons and things to explain, but maybe I'm wrong. It's hard to know. I might not have heard of it. Maybe it's a nice idea. You're right. I'm not sure how much that you have forgotten maybe. Putting out these decoys. Well, it's going to be complex, but it might not. I'd want to tell you the hesitation, the pressure that I feel now is for this last game. Okay. I feel it because it's something different about being the last game. The 12 game in the series. Yeah. I've got some ideas. Shema's got some ideas. We haven't, we've tried different things. We're not under an immense amount of time pressure. It's still a hit of schedule, but how do you finish off the book? Do you know what I mean? How do you have that right ending? And I mean, looking at the intro that we did with Shema and speaking about your games, comparing it to the Lord of the Rings, where every part of the trilogy got more and more Oscars. I mean, you have, you have to finish strong. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. But one thing that you mentioned in the interview on your site as well was that one of the things that you looked towards the East games, maybe more than the others, were that you wanted players to look more at the combined space rather than just their own board and what they were creating. Is this going more towards that interaction being more in the shared space? Is there still a part of the upcoming games? I would say that was one of the early goals of this trilogy or a potential direction that we could head, right? I would say that yes and no, we maybe haven't completely nailed that feeling. We've sort of gone with this other direction. Games kind of have a personality of their own. Like once you get certain distance, you kind of start to understand what the game wants to be. It's sort of a poetic way of talking about it, but it really kind of feels right. And so like there is, there is definitely interaction and there is this shared space, but it's not in the same way that we might have been talking about in that interview, like trying to design a brass style game with root building or like a Tehran Mystica style game. These games at this point are not so much like that. The second game is more so than the first in the East trilogy, but not so much like that. We do have a little bit of an idea for what the through line is. Both thematically, there's sort of like a thematic thread tying the game together, but there's also a subtle mechanical thread in the action taking. Again, we like to just put a little twist and spin on the action taking. Yeah. It's funny because I was thinking about games that I really love and I was thinking about when we were talking about designing this trilogy and like Gaia Project and Tehran Mystica two games that I love. And then there's like terraforming Mars and brass even like and all of those games, the action took place. taking system is very much out of the way. It's not in your face. It's like in Los Rones of Arneck is another example. It's kind of like here's this list of things you can do. Yeah. And so the action system itself doesn't shine, but it doesn't need to because the game is so solid. The game is so robust that the action taking system is just getting out of the way and you just get to play the game. Right. And so this idea kind of I was enamored with like can you build this really cool game that doesn't need an action taking system. But that's just not really us. Like yeah. When when when thinking about this, actually no, this is kind of our thing. Shema and I for these trilogy games, like they all have a different action taking system that's weird and a little bit unique, you know, kind of started the obvious one it started with was Raiders, even though that's not the first game in the trilogy, but that that take a worker and place a worker, take a worker thing. Yeah. That just kind of set the tone for the whole quadrilogy of trilogies. And so even though I kind of set out to design a really cool game that doesn't need this crutch of a really interesting action taking system to make it more interesting. That's just not us. Like it would have been there. It wouldn't have been the gore feel DNA. Yeah. Yeah. So it feels like a bit of a concession to not do that. But we've come up with some co-etching taking systems that you guys can enjoy and like gains in mastery over. So yeah. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about so much, but it's just tapping the well because I mean, there's so much more to talk about. And as you said, there is this trilogy coming up that we I mean, it kind of feels like we have to invite both of you at the same time next time to talk about this and and and all aspects of when you design games because we love playing them and the insights of of coming close to how you think when you design them is really amazing as a as a spice to when you play at them. But just to round off here, we have some quick fire questions here. Just as an ending kind of looking at what you feel as a designer. So shorter questions. What would you say is the most underrated mechanism? Most overrated mechanism, obvious to me is I cut you choose. It's a cool idea, but it just relies too much on the players understanding the balance of the game. And I think it only actually works at two player where it's zero. So yeah, looking at like agent Avenue where it's I cut you shoes, but it is just to player didn't works, but I can I have the same feeling when there's a higher player count. Yeah, it just requires too much of the player to understand the balance. So I love Hanami Koji and again, two player I cut you choose, but it sounds like a really cool and fair system, but I just I just don't think it works out. So but underrated mechanism, I'm going to say underrated is auctions. I think there's a lot of people that say they don't like auction games, but I think that they are brilliant for one, creating interaction between the players. Two, creating like tension, there's a lot of tension in the auction when you think just let me win this bad. Or thinking, should I go, shouldn't I go? That sort of thing. And also auctions are great for the players getting to balance the game of them. Yeah. Like you can put really OP cards in a game that's an auction game. And the players are going to determine that actually you can't just get away with that OP card cheaply. Exactly. So I think auctions are underrated. A mechanic that you're tired of seeing. Mechanic, I'm tired of seeing, I am tired of exploration in 4x games. So I know by definition I'm just saying do 3x games. Yeah. But I think that the exploration just ends up being too much of a factor for who wins the game. Someone might get a really good map setup or stumble upon really cool loot and things like that. That just kind of throws the battle and the interactive elements out the window. Yeah. I want to see exploration and co-op games. I want to see exploration and exploration games. Yeah. We get to discover things. But in a 4x game, I think that the exploration part is actually makes the game worse by and large. Yeah. Luck becomes a two bigger factor in a game where it's not supposed to be about luck. Yeah. Great. And what would you say is a game design hill that you're willing to die on? What is something that I mean it's a it's one of your doorlings that will never be killed. If the game is over 30 minutes long, give me some engine building. Let me progress. Let me be more powerful. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Perfect. And last one of the quick fire questions. Mechanics that you love as a player, but you hate as a designer. Yeah. It's got to be something around the cooperative space. A cooperative is not a mechanic, but that sort of team play element. Yeah. I love team team play games as a player. You know, it's okay to four player game. A two V2 game. I love these are my favorite games. Like I think I did a top 10 and three or four of my games in my top 10 were two V2 games, which is ridiculous. Like I didn't think about it until I actually looked at the list. It was like, whoa, but I hate it as a designer because I'm saying only four people can play this game. In that such a narrow scope. Yeah. You know, oh yeah, that's good. Perfect. So one thing we keep coming back to in the conversation like this is just how many invisible decisions exist inside more a modern board game designs and the process of making them. And as a player, as players, it's easy to sit down, play a game and simply feel that something works. That tension that just feels right or the decision that feels satisfying. But hearing about all the balancing underneath player interaction, a symmetry, pacing, engine building, solid design, it really gives you a new perspective for how difficult it is to make complex games feel elegant. And honestly, it's been refreshing, getting to focus almost entirely on the craft itself today. Not just on the finished product, but the thinking behind them. So, Sam, thank you so much for joining us here at Brad Spills Broad, and I'm for willing stepping into our little rabbit hole of game design philosophy here. Hey, thank you so much. The pleasure is mine. Thanks for putting up with all my ramblings. I really appreciate it. Love talking with you guys. But this is how it should be. We, I mean, born games is something that you can talk for on and on and on. I mean, it's just sad that we have to stop. And one could say that it's our fault because we ask you the question. So it's really. I don't even answer, you know, I just springboard from that to something else and then I forget. I think I answered some of them. It's perfect that you don't answer them because it's going to be a good cliffhanger for when we get to talk to you and Sam next. Thank you so much for being here, Sam. Thank you. Thank you. And then we're back just you and me after an interview with Sam from Garfield Games. Exactly. So nice to have Sam McDonald from Garfield Games. And I mean, one thing that I come to think of because right now we're going to do a review of Syracadins first-lite. So that's why he's not with us right now. And it's so this is really the thing that this podcast is about hearing the thoughts of the designer and then coming into the game and seeing these thoughts materialize when you play it. Yeah, truly. I mean, it's really nice to get sort of behind the curtains of how the designers are thinking and actually see the way you can see these thoughts get materialized into the game. Exactly. But so you're going to explain just a bit how you play the game to get a feel of it and then we're going to do our thoughts about it. Exactly. So Syracadins first-lite, it's the second edition that we got. It's sort of dice placement resource management game, you can say. It's each player have their own player board which they will populate with the dice that they roll. You have two actions which is either place it on a ship that will be sent out or in the farms in your own onboard. Then you have a bunch of different actions outside of a common board where you can get the different resources or negotiate with the different aliens that's our on this planet, et cetera. And one key moment that is that you can move this harvester, I think it's called, which is actually mining the planet sort of. What's really neat about this is that you have sort of a hidden dice placement first so you don't let the others know if you will place the dice on your farm or if you will send your dice out to to the planet in the different areas to collect different resources. Then it's sort of the value on the dice decides what type of action you will take. For example, if you want to move the harvester you have a certain value of the dice that takes it to a different direction, et cetera. But all in all you place these different dice and you can have sort of contracts that you can also fulfill, for example, spending different resources and this will also boost your own board, et cetera. Yeah, and so looking at the theme of this. So basically this is an avatar in another type of space form because really the theme is that in the galaxy far away we discovered this planet filled with intriguing life forms and we're there to it and also to interact with these life forms. And really it's I mean it's Sam Phillips, Shem's brother who's the artist who's done it so if you're familiar with the art form you're really gonna be familiar with this one. Looking at the gameplay I mean it is a work placement with these dies where you have some manipulation and then just a broad variety of ways to score different points and coming back to the things that Sam talked about in in our interview and the interesting thing of seeing the aspects that he thinks that is important and brings to this game. You are different factions or you have different leaders that drives your game and these it's starting a symmetry. As Sam mentioned one of the things you can do is giving a power to kind of manipulates in which direction you are going and a really nice aspect of this is that it's not just a kind of a weak starting a symmetry because sometimes it can be okay you start with just a small amount of resource that maybe pushes you towards a different path but here it is strong powers that maybe makes you go towards okay I want to go more towards negotiation because as it is if you negotiate with the with the life forms too much it can have negative effects and then some of these leaders they negate it. Yeah so what for example one of the most recently their side played with was that each time I bought a I think it was the order that each time when I bought a form I got a free ship so I mean that kind of boosts that you really want to go in this direction where you want to boost your form as much as possible because you get extra ships. I mean for someone that hasn't played it I mean the more ships you have basically the more for example it can be that you're when you place your dice out in the field they will get either cheaper when you do a certain type of action or you will gain something when you use that kind of ship etc so I mean it's it's you can really tell that there are multiple different ways of scoring and these leaders add this extra layer that sort of each game will be different depending on the leader you have because it will pivot what sort of winning point you will go towards. Exactly and so basically you have the leaders as the starting a symmetry and the thing is you talked about the the playboards everyone has a playboard in front of them that manipulates some of the aspects of how they mitigate the dice how they push towards certain goals but you also have these common playing boards one of them was the planet where you mind that going around with the with the harvesters but then you also have these interactive playboards with the life forms and etc so there is this interaction of you are able to block certain actions that someone else want to take so that's the interesting part of okay what am I pushing and that is where a symmetry is really nice so that is one aspect of the starting a symmetry then you also mentioned like the ships that or other items that you develop and they also change aspects of okay how much do you have to pay of a certain resource to be able to do a certain action such and that also brings into this the a symmetry that Sam talked about during the game which make you pivot as you said and that is a really interesting part the only thing that I can see in this game that is kind of the opposite of what Sam talked about and what he loves in games is the ending. Yeah exactly and because in this game you have these sort of event cards that you go through so it's a certain amount of events that will either make this round being boosted in some way or it might even be detrimental that it's a negative effect but it's a certain amount of these until the game actually just stops in a way so this is sort of I mean this is one of the things that that Sam mentioned that he doesn't really like to have these exactly definite end but I mean in this one it works so it's not like it's a negative point but but that's one thing you can see in this game. As you mentioned I mean these are the hard parts how do you find a ending that player raises towards but have the tension of oh I want to go another round I mean here is really interesting you have these event cards that feel you feel the progression but then again it is like wingspan one of the games that we talked about that you know okay I have to maximize this round because this is last one and I can really I mean that's the thumbboard I mean I didn't think that much about it when when playing before the interview but once he had mentioned it there is a certain aspect comparing to architects of the West Kingdom that was received from from Garfield games where you have this tension of okay so I'm gonna go for that and goal and can I maximize or do I have one more round and that is a really nice aspect but I can I can really see as he mentioned as well the difficulty of having that end trigger yeah exactly so playing wise we've talked about for a bit now what do you think about the components and an artwork of the game I like it I mean I have a weak spot for this kind of artwork and the art for artwork from Sam Phillips I've enjoyed it in in previous games as well like this of you and such and component wise I think it is a really nice components it looks good on the on the board and from what I've heard or look that compared to the first version they've done some changes to the artwork that that's been praised yeah exactly I mean the upgrade from the first edition it's really good so if you like the artwork you should really go for the second version I mean it's more because in the second version you have this more I mean almost full art in many aspects I mean you can really see that they have that that Sam has taken it a step further when he did the second edition I mean so the play boards they are more this yeah full art concept other than just having boxes that you can see that he did in the the first game but then yeah as you said like the artwork is really nice and I think that this sci-fi works with their type of I don't know if you can say Coutonish style but you know what I mean it's yeah so really beautiful game when you when you when you have it on the board I mean it can look scary for first time players because you have these you have your own player boards then you have multiple options in this common board you have this harvester space etc you have this many different places in the negotiation etc but once you start to play it and get to know these sort of basic action it's it's fairly simple I would say yeah I mean you you have a plethora of things to do but at the same time it doesn't feel overwhelming once you know the rules but as we talked about with Esther and Nehemiah and the same thing here and also because these different boards not attached to each other when you bring it out to the table to a first first time player that can be overwhelming overwhelming yeah exactly but so we've talked about the gameplay we talked about the components how many Brad spills brother to mar does it get for rating I mean it has dies so no exactly no but I really I really like this I also I've played it solo as well it worked really well with the AI or what you should say it's it's you can really see how they have sort of tried to minimize the amount of work that you have to do for the AI I mean you don't have to handle bunch of the resources they only collect these jam resources and that is also what they use to I mean negotiate with different aliens etc so the solo version also works really great which is good because nowadays we we play a lot of solo as well so for me I would say it's 8.5 Brad spills brother at home because of I mean it's really it's it's scary when you explain it to someone but it's really easy to get into but also that it works solo which I think it's really great nice I think this is the first time that we have the exact grade I have a 8.5 as well I mean I really I mean I have a weak spot as well we are very similar there for dice and dice manipulation or or dice mitigation but then also that it has this work placement aspect which I really enjoy as well so the combination of that is just amazing and then the the gameplay in itself is really good so and it has this complexity without being once you get over threshold the complexity is really nice so I really enjoyed this one so 8.5 for me as well so a great recommendation here from Brad spills brother now one thing I want to add since we are saying that it's a dice game and I mean some folks don't really like the randomness of dice the dice pips don't really they are not as like okay I didn't roll in a 6s damn it's a bad round because here the I mean it can be just as good as rolling a 1 as a 6 or whatever because in these different places they have different powers it's kind of like if you play the riots of the gangas where I mean the number doesn't really indicate power as you're used to more about placement and then at different aspects of you can only have a one at this point to get this power and then you can block someone else's having their one and then you can manipulate the the pips to getting to that number so yeah that's a really nice aspect as well that you don't have the hierarchy. Exactly. Exactly. Huge thank you to Sam McDonald from Garfield Games, also a shout out to Shem Phillips and Sam Phillips from there as well. Thank you so much for providing the review copy and for being a part of this interview at Brad Spiel's Brutana podcast. And thank you to the listeners that has been with us for this extra long episode, but we had a great time interviewing him and we hope that you enjoyed this as well listening. Thank you very much. Bye.