Self Publishing - Factions of Sol

Three Reasons Why You Should Definitely Design a Board Game

Emma Sollenberger — Tue, 13 Apr 2021 15:26:00 +0000

If you’re an avid board game player, you’ve definitely thought to yourself, “I could do this. I could come up with a cool, fun game to play.” I’m here to tell you that you absolutely should.

You don’t need to start a company or go into publishing right away. You don’t need a business plan or a Kickstarter account or anything that independent board game designers have. You don’t even have to publish or sell your game at all. But if you have an idea– go for it!

Here are three reasons you should bring your board game into the world– even if you have no plans to profit from it.

1. Unleash your creative side!

Board games are, above all, a creative endeavor. You need to come up with cool mechanics, a fun art style, interesting pieces. If you’re crafty and enjoy creating things– a board game can be your new creative outlet.

There are so many different elements to board games– mechanics, pieces, rulebooks, lore, art… If you really enjoy one part, you can make a great game that revolves around that, while also branching out into other creative spheres. Stretch the limits of your mind! Make a board game.

2. Learn how to problem solve

One thing I’ve learned in over a year of playtesting is that players will figure out ways to completely wreck your game. Your new game won’t be perfect– and that’s great! One of the most important skills you learn is how to put it back together again.

Developing a board game means learning how to solve problems. Maybe the rules are too complicated, so you need to dumb them down. Or maybe there’s a way to exploit a mechanic, and you need a way to prevent it. Designing a board game is a great mental exercise for learning how to come up with unique solutions to unique problems.

3. It’s sooooo much fun

That’s it. It’s just fun. Getting to physically make, come up with, and playtest your very own game is an awesome amount of fun. Even if you don’t plan on ever making money on your game, it can be an enjoyable side-project that lets you think creatively and give you a break from everything else in this crazy world.

If you have an idea, go for it! Whether it’s a simple party game or a lore-heavy civilization builder, it’s worth exploring. You’ll learn valuable skills and make some amazing memories. Do it! Design your board game today!

Do you have a back-of-the-mind idea you’ve been meaning to test? Are you currently designing something on the side? Share your idea below! I’d love to see what you’re up to!

The post Three Reasons Why You Should Definitely Design a Board Game appeared first on Factions of Sol.

5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Playtesting

Emma Sollenberger — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 22:05:00 +0000

Playtesting Can Seem Terrifying at First

Playtesting your new board game can be terrifying. It’s a crucial step in the board game design process, but that doesn’t mean you won’t be riddled with anxiety the entire time. However, playtests don’t have to be daunting. If done right, they can actually be one of the most enjoyable times in the design process. Seeing other people enjoy your game is incredibly rewarding. I’ve been playtesting Factions of Sol with our team for about a year now, and I’ve put together some tips that helped me hone my method.

1. When playtesting, be open to feedback and criticism

This is the most important thing. While it may seem obvious, I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of showing a piece of art to the world and getting a lukewarm reception. Before heading into your playtest, take a moment to remind yourself that whatever people say is not a reflection of you. Breathe and remember that they’re only trying to make your game better. No board game is amazing right off the bat. There are always problems. When playtesters have something negative to say, they’re helping you identify them. Of course, that doesn’t mean everything they say is worth noting down…

2. Learn what criticism is helpful and what is not

Playtesters are people too, and often they won’t say exactly what you need to hear. They can have plenty of good insights, but sometimes they may say something that just isn’t worth worrying about. “I think the pieces should be like this” and “What if you had little aliens instead of robots” are examples of feedback that aren’t helpful when you’re testing out your new mechanic. Take their critiques seriously, but remember that they’re (usually) not board game experts and they don’t represent the majority opinion. If you think your trade mechanic is fine the way it is, don’t change it at the whims of one person.

3. Know what you want feedback on

…and tell your playtesters ahead of time! This is hugely helpful for playtesters. A new game is a lot of information for one person to process. If you tell them beforehand “I’m testing the power deck, let me know what you think” or ask them afterwards “Did the power deck help you finish the quests?” they’re much more likely to provide useful feedback. A general “What did you like?” is useful as it tells you what stands out about your game, but it’s not as helpful when you’re testing something new or looking for feedback on something specific.

4. Have an effective rulebook

You may not think the rulebook is as important when you’re first starting your game, but giving playtesters something to reference really lowers the barriers to entry. The rulebook doesn’t need to be perfect– if the game isn’t finished, your instructions aren’t either. But it’s important that players fully understand your game so they can give helpful feedback. More time spent figuring out rules is less time playing. Put your best foot forward and give them a manual to reference.

5. Be prepared for playtesting to go wrong

No matter how much effort you put into your rulebook or how much time you spend explaining rules, there will be problems. Players will find a scenario you didn’t think about or an exploit you didn’t find. That’s ok! Learn to roll with the punches. The point of playtesting is to find those things. If one playtest goes awry, it’s not a huge deal. Learn what you can, make adjustments, and try again.

Other Playtesting Resources

Tell Us About Your Experience!

Do you have any other playtesting tips? Have any of your playtests gone horribly wrong? Let us know in the comments or message us on our Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter! We can all learn from each other.

The post 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Playtesting appeared first on Factions of Sol.

The Story of the Evolution of Factions of Sol

Joe Blanchard — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 02:06:25 +0000

Factions of Sol was Raised by a Village

Factions of Sol, Mark IV Games’ first game, has been in development for just about a year, and from beginning to end, the game has changed countless times. We’ve created and redrafted dozens of card decks, trashed tons of ideas, and spent endless hours playtesting to get the game to where it is now. And much like raising an infant, creating Factions of Sol has been a labor of love filled with late nights, bulk orders of plastic pieces, and all the nurturing patience a bunch of college students can muster. More so than most games however, Factions of Sol was raised by a village—with a three-dad design team (Adam, Elam, and I) and orbiting team members who constantly improved our work, the game is very much so the product of a community, and we’re proud to show off our nerd-baby to the world soon.

Elam's Original Idea for Factions of Sol

The original game was designed by Elam and consisted solely of hundreds of small white squares of printer paper attached to playing cards—our low budget mockups of game cards. Players stole, “called the law” down on other players, and bid on cards every round. And while this first version shared core ideas like building machines, exploring planets, and earning victory points, its gameplay was drastically different—but it gave us a wonderful foundation.

After Consulting the Team, a New Game Board

Shortly after Elam presented this game to the company, we decided to form a design team to take the game farther—which we playfully named “Jupiter Rats” (referring to a running joke that space rats were infesting Jupiter). I vividly remember the first meeting that the JR team had. In a preceding meeting with the whole company, we really wanted to structure Factions of Sol in a way that made it more physically and visually interesting. To solve this, we came up with the exciting idea that the game board would be the planets rotating in orbit around the sun, and that each planet would correspond to an action players could take.

This new board presented an interesting problem—if the locations (and therefore, distances) of each action are constantly changing at different rates, how do we create a game that stays balanced? The answer, was math.

The Math Behind the Game Board

Each planet in Earth’s solar system (which we call Sol) orbits at a different rate. Using these rates, we devised a system where each planet’s orbit had a number of steps corresponding to the length of its journey around the sun. Mercury’s orbit, closest to the sun, only has 2 steps, whereas Neptune, the farthest, has 24. This allowed us to mathematically standardize and manipulate the different planet speeds while still keeping the dynamic gameplay we liked so much. But, with a new board came a need for new game mechanics.

The Fundamental Game Mechanics of Factions of Sol

But in order for those cool orbits to be useful, we needed a movement system that would make the changing locations of the planets relevant strategically—so in the same meeting, we created a system where players use limited batteries of energy to move between the orbits (in spaces called sectors), leaving energy pieces in their wake that make travel more difficult. This made longer distances harder to travel, and forced players to keep track of each other’s movements, which, when combined with our moving planets, created wonderfully dynamic gameplay.

Quarantine and Playtesting

With these more fundamental mechanics solidified, the next couple months took us into quarantine, and, while hunkered in our childhood homes, the Jupiter Rats team really got into the meat of the game. We had our dynamic base for gameplay, but in order to make Factions of Sol a game that had nuanced, fair strategy and high replayability, we had to examine and optimize every aspect of the game—which meant tireless rounds of play testing. We continually drafted and redrafted each planet’s mechanics, re-balanced orbits & energy costs, and got yelled at by our online professors for not paying attention.

We Eliminate Attack-Based Mechanics

Around this time we also took out any attack-based mechanics because of how they sucked the fun out of playing—which left us with no real sources of player interaction in the game, which led us to instituting my personal favorite mechanic, called “Stellar Events”. Stellar Events are game-changing events (planets switching places, wormholes opening, etc.) that players vote on each round. This system proved to be really effective and engaging in our playtests, as not only did Stellar Events incentivize interaction & in-game politics, but they also inherently competitive without being aggressive, and added a wonderful new dimension of replayability to the game.

After the first couple hundred hours on Tabletop Simulator (the gaming software we used to test the game), we started to build the world around our game so we could welcome new players into our stellar madness. We developed the unique 1950’s retro-dystopian style of our game, wrote original lore about the people who inhabited it, and created rulebooks specifically tailored to first-time players to make learning the game easier.

The Introduction of Factions (How Factions of Sol Got its Name)

The next big step in our process was the introduction of player factions, which we did for three reasons. First, by adding faction abilities and machines players got a unique and customizable playing experience different from anyone else at the table, which helped to make the game more personal to each player. Second, as we added lore for each faction players also got an in-world lens through which to play the game—someone playing the Zealots of Sol can now use the Zealots’ unique history, hopes, and grudges to justify screwing over other players. Third, adding new faction abilities threw off our delicately-built game balance, and the next couple weeks led us into another round of deck revisions and experimentation.

Next, We Made Factions of Sol Intuitive and Understandable

Once we rebalanced the game with factions and revamped our planet mechanics, we found ourselves with a fun, dynamic, and very complicated game—which made it inaccessible to new players. After some great research on the difference between game depth and complexity, we refocused our efforts around building a game that was intuitive and understandable. We added a first-player mode of the game, revisited our rulebook (again), simplified our mechanics, and worked with our wonderful graphic designer to create a system of symbol-based instructions, all of which really helped to make our game more accessible without losing its nuance.

The Next Step for Factions of Sol? Manufacturing.

Now finally, at this later stage of the process, the Jupiter Rats team is working on fitting manufacturing concerns into our game design (what pieces are easy or hard to get? Is there anything we don’t need? Why can’t we make pieces out of lead?) so we can make a game that’s as efficient and smart as it is fun. We hope you’ll enjoy the end result of this journey! Follow us at Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, or contact us if you would like to hear more about our work!

The post The Story of the Evolution of Factions of Sol appeared first on Factions of Sol.

How to Approach Manufacturing for Self-Publishers

Joe Blanchard — Sun, 20 Dec 2020 02:57:26 +0000

Manufacturing, in my opinion, is objectively scary. It’s complicated, pedantic, and especially for crowdfunders, only seems to exist in the somewhat dream-like future of when your project actually has funding. However, as I dive more and more into the world of manufacturing, I’ve found it’s also fun and pretty darn rewarding. So in an effort to make this kind of work more accessible, I wanted to share a bit about my experience riding this learning curve, and plug a couple of my favorite resources.

For my skimmers here’s a TLDR:

Manufacturing is complicated but it’s not as scary as it seems
Trust yourself, you got this. And when you don’t, google it.
Research is hard but incredibly helpful, and it’s easier with the links below

The first real surprise I had is that manufacturing is that it’s a regular industry just like any other—designed for people with varying levels of expertise to make cool stuff. As soon as I broke past the all-intimidating wall of manufacturer contact forms, perfect portfolios and hyper-detailed blog posts (hehe), everything was much less scary.

All I really had to do was explain what pieces I wanted in my game, and someone else told me how much it would cost (this is called an RFQ, or “request for quote”). From there it’s basically just professional, very-detailed texting. At its heart, your project manager wants your business and wants to make your game happen. So trust yourself! You know your game, you know your vision. And if you don’t know an acronym, material, or other industry secret? Google is your very best friend 😉

Regarding other types of manufacturing research—while you do know your vision, research helps you make that vision so specific that your manufacturer can see it clearly too. You’ll also save a LOT of money if you do your research well. And the wonderful thing about making board games is that there’s an enormous community with tons of experience just waiting to make your day. Engage them and learn from their experience so that you can make your game the best it can be. Below are a couple of my favorite resources.

Stonemaier Games Kickstarter Lessons:

Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier games is a godsend and has done tons of work putting his expertise back into the community through these blog posts. Especially in the “Shipping and Worldwide Accessibility” section, I learned a TON about the details and finesses that can make shipping and manufacturing much easier.

James Mathe – Game Publishing

James Mathe of Kickin’ It Games has also done awesome work that’s been incredibly helpful for me when communicating with manufacturers. James goes into fantastic detail and makes lots of info on manufacturers, materials, etc. very readable. I highly recommend his “Art of the RFQ” and “Hitchhiker’s Guide to Game Manufacturers” posts.

Comment if you’ve had similar experiences, or if you want to see more resources!

The post How to Approach Manufacturing for Self-Publishers appeared first on Factions of Sol.