John D. Clair is UNSTOPPABLE | BGSS ep_024

0:00 Today my guest is the incredible designer John Declair. You might know John Declar's designs, Space Base. Have you played Dead Reckoning? Maybe Ready, Set, Bet, maybe Mystic Veil, or maybe the new card crafting sensation in Unstoppable. In fact, that's where eventually our conversation goes. I actually review Unstoppable to the designer's face for the very first time. John Declair has made many really important contributions to board game design. this carding slashmomentum system that he's built with Unstoppable might be the greatest. So, if you're at all interested in getting inside the mind of John Declair, stick around because it is a great conversation and as long as it is, I think it might be worth it. And without further ado, please help me welcome John Declair to the Board Game Secret Show.

0:52 I I've done a little bit of research and it looks like to me that you designed your very first game at nine. Um, and that was because out of necessity. Is that is that true? What was the what was the household like that that made you uh design games at such an early age?

1:07 I want to know I want to know which source you dug this information up on.

1:11 Oh, that's some other interview I did.

1:14 Yeah. Think like a game designer number 40.

1:16 Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, my uh I was my mom had a very creative uh frugal approach um uh to parenting. So uh often when there was a toy or a game or something I wanted as a child, um her answer wasn't uh yeah, let's get it. It was maybe we can make it instead of um buy it. So um I was interested in game design from a very young age. Um, and when my friends started getting Pokemon cards, um, I assumed that, uh, I didn't even I didn't even think to ask my mom to be like, "Hey, can I get Pokemon cards, too?" Um, I just went straight and like, you know what? I'm going to make my own little game about fighting monsters. Um, and that turned into a game called Monster Cards, which, um, I mean, all my friends at the time didn't know how to play Pokemon. They just had cards, which I'm always like, why? What is what is that good for?

2:20 Um,

2:21 well, you can hold on to them when you're, you know, over 40 years old. And

2:25 there you go.

2:28 So, uh, one of my friends knew enough to be like, "Yeah, when they fight that this one does damage this on my turn, and then that one does damage on their turn." And as the nine-year-old game designer in me, I was like, "Well, that seems silly. Then, you know, the bigger number always wins." Um, so my game had like dice rolling and stuff. Um, I later actually learned how to play Pokemon and realized that there is some strategy. It's not just bigger number wins, but yeah,

2:55 that's funny.

2:56 Even as a nine-year-old, I was like, I don't like big number wins.

2:59 You wanted to introduce a little luck for excitement,

3:01 right? It feels like you should you should go into a battle not knowing who's going to win.

3:06 Did that design ever turn into anything? Uh, so I um I actually went back to the just the simple idea of two monsters fighting and you're rolling dice to see which one wins. Uh, recently my son and I worked on a little game um a bit. Uh, it's it's sort of a auto battlerish. You draft monsters and then you fight and you roll dice and hope your monster wins and then you draft another monster, etc. Um, it is currently unsigned. Yeah. [clears throat]

3:35 Very interesting. And did that did that uh that early design is that what brought it up or is your son into you know doing similar things is just following dad's footsteps and trying to make his own Pokemon cards.

3:46 My son is very intrigued by game design and playing games. He wants to play all the time. Um

3:50 how old is he?

3:51 He's seven.

3:52 Oh, very cool. What a good age. Yeah, I have uh I mine were very um very engaged early on and now that we're in high school, you know, girls and stuff just don't, you know, they're they're so much more interesting than uh playing space base, which was one of my kids favorite games, by the way.

4:13 I must I must say I don't have it in my in my notes to talk about space base, but we have played a ton of space base in this house, a ton of Kitos in this house. I've played a ton of Dead Reckoning. So you have been a fixture in my family for many many years but um they have they have lost interest not in your games but in all games.

4:34 I mean I've heard that from other parents right and I've heard it from the ones whose kids have grown all the way up into adults and then they come back to you know playing games more. You know the teenage years are they're a unique set of years.

4:47 Right. Right. Yeah. So, I'm what I'm trying to do now is invite the the the boyfriend and the girlfriend over on Sunday nights for Sunday night dinners and and try to like sneak in, you know, maybe a little social deduction. You know, I I think I introduced him uh oddly to Secret Hitler as our first kind of like full family game. It's like, oh, I can't I can't imagine what they went home and told their parents we did when they came over to my house.

5:09 Hitler game with them.

5:11 I had to role play as Adolf Hitler. I like

5:15 to be a Nazi. Yeah.

5:19 Um, so you also did a bunch of like maze books. Is that true?

5:26 Yeah. When I was uh my my first foray in what would I guess tangentially or similarly sim similar to game design was game uh maze design. So as like a 5-year-old, some of the first art that I like to draw was mazes. And I enjoyed doing mazes. Um, but because I was so intrigued with games, I wanted to sort of gify mazes a lot.

5:49 Yeah.

5:50 Um, one of the most inspirational books for me as a kid was this uh book by a g guy named Dave Phillips called Monster Mazes. Um, and it's a book where you sort of progressively go through diff more and more difficult mazes in this book. And each maze has like a monster and you have to try to get around the monster and stuff. Um, and it's very lightly gified. Like initially it's just don't walk into the monster. The monster is basically just a cooler version of a dead end. Um and then the next level is like if you go to one spot you can teleport to another spot. And the next level is like you have to pick a weapon and see which one helps you through. And then the final level is as you go around there's arrows and every time you go through an arrow you get it and you can use it use the arrows with your bow to like kill the next monster you get through. Um and the puzzle of the maze is to figure out like how to get all the right arrows to get through the monster.

6:40 So that was all very uh interesting and inspiring to me. Um but it wasn't gamified enough. Uh it was in a sense like it was very it was still just a puzzle and the rules were there to just make the puzzle more puzzly. Um as opposed to just you know figure out the path through the maze. It was like let's add a a layer of rules but it's still just figure out how to get through the maze. Um, so I came up with mazes that were like multi-page mazes. So it was all one maze. It's not like there was a start and a finish on the same page. The start was on one page and you'd get to a spot on that mage that portals you to a different page and you could collect weapons and items as you go. Um, I I experimented with things like health points. So like if you fight monster, if you run into a monster and you don't have the weapons to kill it, you take some health points, but you can get past it. Um, and there was it was like and then it all like teleporters in there and stuff. Yeah.

7:37 Were there were these just like handdrawn oneshot mazes you were creating?

7:42 Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I mean I was five, six, seven, eight, nine.

7:46 Um, so yeah, I just get these I get sheets of paper and just start drawing. Right. And it was um

7:51 Yeah.

7:52 So now I'm wondering and I know you weren't, but how are you not the designer on Layers? Have you played Layers?

7:58 Uh, I don't think so. So, this KTBG game where um it's basically you have a divider between two players and you're constructing a maze

8:07 or or a dungeon essentially and you're hiding treasure and hiding monsters and traps and all kinds of stuff. Uh and you have to then the and and actually that first phase for me I thought would kind of be a throwaway is so fun. It's so fun like you're actually like building your maze and and you know oh can I just put the exit right next to the door and just have them

8:27 building a maze for the other player? Yeah. Yes. And then you take turns. You have action points um that you're kind of like sliding over on a board and then they have to reset and sometimes you lose the action points. Um so it'll take two turns for them to reset. So that's kind of like one of the hooks, but you need to get and slay the monsters and you have you don't want to get stuck in the trap and you need to get a certain number of treasure before you actually get out. So you're not just trying to find the end. Once you find the end, if you don't actually have um the correct treasure or have slayed the right number of monsters, you can't get out of the maze. Uh so it seems like that's something right up your alley. You should probably play

9:04 this. I think I looked it up. Layers enter the dungeon.

9:08 Yeah, it's awesome.

9:09 Cool. Yeah, I got to try this one. Cool.

9:10 My one criticism on it is uh the the game is extremely like the base game is super cheap. I think it's I got it for 35 bucks or something like that. Uh, but it only comes with one type of monster and one type of trap.

9:22 And then they have these other two expansions that look incredible, but it's another 80 bucks to get the two expansions. And I feel like I need the two expansions cuz I kind of you you lose interest a little bit there. Well, I'll say there becomes a meta between yourself and your partner pretty quickly and you start to you start to know their their proclivities to to building uh mazes and such. But a great game for people,

9:44 right? It's not it's not you're not cooperating, right?

9:46 No. Yeah. That's your opponent. That's your opponent. I think there they in one of the expansions there's somehow a team version like a 2v2 or something, but don't quote me on that. I haven't I haven't looked too too far into that. But the expansions of all kinds of different monsters and traps and and treasure and you can get loot that that helps you out when you find the treasure box. And

10:06 there's a little set collection game in there to score points. Anyways, uh [clears throat] why have you ever designed a maze game at all? like got that got published?

10:16 Not yet.

10:17 Not. Is it on your is it on your list or it's just you you've you've uh uh you've you've it evolved fast.

10:26 Um I mean another So another creative avenue that I um enjoyed a lot and did a lot when I was younger, but um haven't got back to yet, but would like to is creative writing. Um I like to I when I was a kid, I used to write fantasy stories, right? um never never enough to actually finish like a novel, but I had I had I had like four different novels in progress, right, as a as a kid. Um uh and I I enjoyed creative writing. I still really do. Um I just it's not high enough on the priority list to for me to spend a lot much time on it. Um but um I think mazes, the way I like to do mazes, the sort of very gamified exploratory mazes um is a good place where the the two interests may intersect at some point. So I actually I started sort of a proof of concept of one um last year where basically it's a maze it's a multiplay page maze book um uh but where the encounters are all very narrative. So, uh, the the the mazes themselves look like a fantasy map, um, of a world. Uh, and it's almost like an open world maze game. So, like you're traveling through this fantasy map, uh, but the only way you the way you get from point A to point B is actually going through the maze and finding your way there, right? And some routes, if you find the the safe route, you can get there without having to encounter any bad guys. If you can't find the right route, you might get stuck on a path that has you have to fight through the

11:56 bandits or whatever to get to the village. Um, and then when you're in the village, you can have you have options for narrative encounters and you'd flip to the encounter and you'd read this little encounter section, right, which have some sort of gameplay application. And the idea this would be like a multi-page book. So, if you go off the edge of one page, it tells you go to page 14 and then you'd flip to page 14 and you'd enter the world on that page. So, it's this giant sort of openw world maze within these encounters. um that it may be the place where my creative writing and my game design intersect at some point. Yeah,

12:28 I would imagine that has to be so incredibly difficult creating uh you know not only kind of mechanics that work in the game but then the narrative the choose your own adventure or or finding these intersecting path or alternate ends to the story that has to be a totally different skill than actually designing mechanics on a board game. Yeah, it's a very different sort of medium to be working with creatively. Um, uh, and it's a bit of it's a that that concept, my my vision of that concept is a is a like is a, you know, a multi-page big world book with lots of encounters, which is a sort of daunting task in terms of the amount of time it would take to do. Um, it's a intriguing task to me because I think I would enjoy virtually every step of the process. Um, the main problem with my life right now is just finding time to do the things I want to do.

13:19 Um, so tasks that take a lot of time like that, um, are just not going to get on the list for a while. Yeah.

13:25 Is game design the thing that's, uh, sucking up the most time.

13:30 Um, yes. Uh, that and parenting. Um,

13:35 there's that. Well, so my, you know, my uh my game design career has had a really good path the last trajectory, I guess, the last few last six years or so. Um, I was able to quit my regular normal person job.

13:51 Congrats.

13:52 And do game design full-time starting in 2018. Um, uh, and I've had a sort of a residual 10-hour a week part-time job that I've been doing that was similar to my old job, which I'm quitting this year. Um, and the and the the goal for quitting that is not to replace that time with game design time. It's to replace it with more time with my kids.

14:16 Yeah.

14:17 That balance.

14:18 So, between between raising four kids and um, loving the work that I do and wanting to do a lot of it, right? Um there's uh [snorts] there's a lot of a lot of things that I also enjoy that I have to say no to at this point.

14:33 Right. What was the impetus to you qu uh quitting? Was there one big breakout or just a bunch of games that all of a sudden publishers signed?

14:42 Um I was a combination of factors. Um, I uh uh I've always I was I was a um I made good financial choices in my 20s, I would say. um so that I was in just a good healthy financial place to be able to take the risk of cutting out a salary um or most of a salary um and relying on royalty income which at that point if the royalty income at that point stayed where it was I felt like okay if if I keep making this amount of money on royalties I'll be good right but the risk of course with royalties unlike a salary is that what you make one year is not necessarily predictive of what you'll make the next year um so uh you know it was a matter of trusting myself to keep making good games. Um hoping that the games I have continue selling for a while and then also um you know getting some of the dividends of having made good financial choices in my 20s

15:41 and that was 2018.

15:43 Yeah.

15:44 So that's Space Base, right? That was right when

15:48 were both selling were both selling well at that. So Space Base came out then.

15:51 U was selling very well at the time. a couple years old at that point.

15:56 Um, and I had a number of other games signed in in the pipeline. Um, AEG was really helpful at that point. We had, um, so John Zenzer, the owner of AEG, um, I can credit him a lot with my ability to transition to full-time game designer earlier than maybe otherwise. Um uh around that I think it was around then we signed a deal like a development deal where they would get first right refusal on several on um pretty much everything I would do at that point. Uh but I would get a basically a a meaningful upfront on those to be designed games um and then a development contract bonus on top of it. So I had some sort of reliable income with them

16:38 um even if I was taking away my flexibility to sign with other publishers. So that deal lasted for um for a few years and made and was like a and turned some of what would have been unpredictable royalties into somewhat more predictable and made it a little easier to make the switch. Also,

16:52 did they pass on Unstoppable or they didn't get a chance at it?

16:57 The contract the the deal at that point was over.

17:00 Um so they were no longer um getting first right refusal. They were one of the companies I showed it to. Um but um there's a lot of good things to say about AEG. One of the good things is not that they are good at getting licenses though. Um they they've not proven to be great at tracking down um and getting cool IPs to put on products. And I saw Unstoppable as a game

17:26 that

17:28 um I had a really good feeling it was going to do really well as a base game. Uh, and it was uh I just had a lot of confidence in the game and because of the nature of the design, it felt like one of those games that could turn into a line of games with other products and stuff put on it. So, not only a game with expansions for the core game, but other popular properties could also uh get unstoppable versions made. Um, so it felt like signing with a company that isn't good at getting IPs was going to um limit the game's potential success. So,

18:00 well, and Renegade's always good at that. Um, and they've they've certainly demonstrated that

18:07 at this point I'm feeling good about that choice given the first IP they got for the game.

18:11 100%. It's like where do you go from there? I mean, we'll get into Unstoppable later, but that's that's huge. And like perfect timing, too. It's like fever pitch of dungeon crawling Carl. Um, so

18:22 yeah, and the mar I mean the that game fits fits that world so well. It it almost like if if I if I had designed a deck building two-player or solo co-op game for Dungeon Crawler Carl, I'm not sure I would have designed a game better than Unstoppable, right?

18:39 Yeah.

18:39 Um I think every board gamer that's reading that book was like, I have to play this as a game or a video game, you know, uh player as well. I'm surprised that I'm sure that project has to be uh in flight somewhere. Um, okay. So, before we jump ahead there, you're you started making your own games, but did you ever become a true hobbyist or what was that like that game that did that to you? Or have you just only designed and played your own games your whole life?

19:09 Yeah. I don't like playing any other people's game.

19:13 It's amazing. You make such great games with the so little so little influence.

19:19 No, I I'm always inspired by other people's stuff. Um I and I think that shows in my games. I um uh I've always been a gamer. I love playing games. I love a variety of games. I think there's like there's two categories of games that I don't like. Um and everything else I like and those are basically word and if it's if it's reminds you of Scrabble, [snorts] um I probably won't like it. Uh and the closer it gets to feeling like you're playing Sudoku, um the less

19:50 Okay. So, uh, core of discovery. Uh, oh, no, that's more of like mind sweeper. That Well, I guess it has some sodoku, uh, tingents there. And then, um, there was that deck builder, uh, word game. What was that? I actually enjoyed that for a short time.

20:06 Not for me.

20:07 Not for you because it did feel very much like Scrabble. And I suck at Scrabble and kept spelling the same words over and over.

20:13 I'm genuinely terrible at word games. So, um, but I but I I don't think

20:19 I I don't think I'm one of those people who who just likes games that I'm good at.

20:23 Um, because I actually am quite good at the puzzle games, like games that are similar to to feel to like a Sudoku type experience. I'm actually pretty good at them. I just that headsp space just isn't that interesting to me. Um, but pretty much everything else I like. I like party games. I like big complicated games. I like tight engine builders. um spatial spatial games, area control, the whole the works except for except for word games and

20:49 things that remind me to do.

20:50 Has that arc kind of like evolved over time or did you just always like everything but word and puzzly games?

20:57 I I mean it depends on how far you want to go back, right? I my uh uh my family had the traditional games. We had Monopoly and Risk and stuff, right? It wasn't until um I think I was like maybe a little I don't remember I don't remember what age I was when I got introduced to Magic. Um but magic really sort of broadened my like oh what this is what games can be right. Um because again I was introduced to Pokemon before Magic. Um but none of my friends knew how to play and I didn't have any Pokemon cards. Um, so I started making what you could consider a TCG uh as like my monster cards game uh based on just seeing other people's Pokemon cards but not actually playing it. Um, and then later I was introduced to Magic and I was like, "Oh, this is really cool." Um, uh, sometime in my teen years I played Katan for the first time. Um, in college I played Diplomacy for the first time.

21:52 Um, and uh, a bunch of other games, Citadels and stuff. And then when I graduated college, I found out that there's a local board game convention in LA um and I went there and all and was like, "Oh my gosh, there's so many more board games than I had known about." Um and then from then on I was in board game meetups, you know, once or twice a week playing tons of different games uh all through my 20s. It wasn't until I started having more casting kids uh that I slowed down the amount of games I was playing. um of other you know other people's designs and now I still play games a lot but a lot of and actually interest interestingly I've I've made the switch now as my oldest two kids are getting older that there was like a period there where the I really only had time um outside of work trips to conventions I really only had time to like play test my own stuff or at play test meetups play test other people's stuff and I was missing out on a lot of just regular game playing just for fun but now that my oldest couple kids are into playing games. I'm starting to play more games again because I now I play with them. Um, which is nice.

23:00 Do you feel like playing more games helps you design or vice versa? Meaning like are do you want to try to keep some of those influences out so you're not like, you know, over influenced by somebody else's design or is it helpful?

23:14 No, I it's strictly helpful, I think. Yeah, I um uh there's something I uh I mean a lot of a lot of my designs are inspired by other people's games. Um uh and I'm not I'm not like shy about saying that. Um I've learned that I think one thing now that sort of gone through the cycle, right? Like I was inspired by other people's games and I made games that were inspired from them. Uh and now I've I'm seeing other people making games that are inspired by my games, right? Um, and in that process, I learned that like it's I I have no creative problem with other people playing my games, being inspired, and making a new cool game that is similar but different, right?

23:56 Uh, the only thing that like my ego would appreciate is like if they just gave me a little credit for inspiring them,

24:04 right? That's it. Just just to be like that, I was inspired by Space Base. I was inspired by Mystic Veil, right? There's just like I just want a little like, you know, especially if it was like an original idea like card crafting. Um, so that's what I've started doing in all my games. I've tried to do whenever I can put a designer's note, and it's something I wish I'd done before. Um, like now, so now whenever I can put a designer note or I write a designer diary about one of my games, I make sure to be like, these are the games that informed or inspired or I can give some sort of creative credit to for for create for for my creating of this game, right? So like some are obvious, right? Space base was obviously inspired by Machioro. Um uh but some are not as obvious, right? Like Mystic Veil was the card crafting for Mystic Veil I was unique to me. There was no game that I saw do card crafting and then I thought I thought of card crafting independently. Since since then people have been like, well that game kind of did it and that game kind of did it. Um which I think is only only kind of true. I do think I do think Mystic Veil was the original card crafting game. Um but uh but the core loop of Mystic Veil is actually like a blackjack mechanic that was somewhat inspired by a game called Flip City, right? Um uh so giving credit to that in the rule book is something that had a given a second chance, I would go back and for sure be like, yeah, the the core sort of blackjack system of that game was inspired and informed by playing Flip City, right?

25:30 Yeah, I think that's so important. I think so many I don't I don't know that you could really point to one game that comes out now that's not inspired by something else. Um

25:40 it's almost impossible not to be, right?

25:42 Um yeah, on some level, right? Like you used to you want some part of your game to be like different even if it's not that like there's no one thing that's different, but it's the way it's put together that's different.

25:52 Um but in there's almost it's almost impossible to find some creative thing that is there's like wow nothing about this I've ever seen before. Right. Yeah. Right. And even even then, I mean, like uh card crafting, well, we we'll get into card crafting, but I would imagine most people that play board games have something in there like, "Oh, I wish it did this." And they they have that spark. The difference is a designer then just goes and tries to fix that problem with another design, right? Like you're always trying or or enhance it or make it more fun. Um, I I

26:25 often for me I find I it's because I I play a game and I really I maybe I really like the whole game, but there's a particular element of the game that I think is really different and either underutilized in that game or has the capacity to be utilized in in a very different way uh that hasn't been done before. So playing Rise of Augustus, for example, um inspired me to create EOS. Um and even if you play those two games, they're not that similar other than that core system of pulling things out of the bag, which clearly one reminds you of the other, even if strategically the way you win and how you're thinking about your way you're making choices is different.

27:12 Yeah.

27:12 Well, that that's a nice segue. uh going into deck building. I assume you're a fan of deck building in general, especially early on. And yeah, was your first deck builder Dominion?

27:24 Uh-huh.

27:24 Okay. Take me back like what when you played Dominion, did it spark something in you or were you saying were you saying to yourself or a combination of both that oh, there's something missing here or there's something that should be fixed and were you designing games at that point? So that was 2009 I think was the first time I played Dominion right around when it came out. Um maybe 2010. Uh I played it with my friends uh uh at the time and we we opened the box and the first thing we did was like, "Oh, there's a ton of cards in here." And we took them and we started shuffling them all together. Well, one like you guys shuffle the cards while we read the rules, which if you know Dominion, you're not supposed to shuffle all the cards.

28:07 Nope. Well, that's how Ascension was was uh first play test play tested shuff shuffling the the cards for Dominion together and see if that works. Yeah.

28:16 Yeah.

28:17 No, I think I think Dominion's brilliant. Um uh and I try to credit um Dominion uh and Donaldino whenever I make a deck building game. Um uh I and I in some sense I credit Dominion as uh sort of the gold standard of new ideas for inspiring games. Um I remember I appi I applied to a game design job early in my 20s at Fantasy Flight. Um, and they uh one of their questions in their job application was like um what would like what something like what is what would be a real achievement for you as a game designer? Um and I think my response was something like I want to do with a game what Dominion did with a game like with a game idea. Create a game that like is so different and original it inspires a genre of games.

29:14 Um, and I I I think Dominion I I don't I I've not I don't think Dominion has any problems. I don't think it needs to be fixed by other games. I think um uh uh it does exactly what it's trying to do really well. Um uh it is not the beall and endall of deck building though, of course. Um and I know other people credit like Starcraft as the original deck building game because Starcraft had um I don't know if you've heard this, but Star Star Star Starcraft the fantasy flight board game. It's this area control dudes on a map board game. Um, but players have a battle deck and over the course of the game when you battle you like I think it's I may be getting this wrong, but you reveal cards and they you fight with them, right? But as the game goes along, you can remove cards from that deck and get better cards in that deck. So your little battle deck changes as the game goes on, right? Um, but it was a sideeshow to the overall game and no one played Starcraft being like uh that the game mech mechanism is going to inspire me to make a ton of other games, right? Um, so I I I don't think even if it kind of you could look back and be like, "Oh, that is kind of deck building, right?" So it it did it first, but not in a way that people recognized or found inspiring, right?

30:26 The big question is, did that game influence Donald to create Dominion?

30:31 I don't think so. I I don't think he's ever he's ever um maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think he's ever said so.

30:38 I hope to get him on the show so I can obviously if I'm if I'm doing a a documentary on deck building, he's certainly one that I absolutely need to talk to for sure.

30:45 Mhm.

30:46 Um in the Unstoppable Diary, you wrote The Dominion created a brand new design template. It's like starting starting with a half design guaranteed not to suck. What is it about deck building for people that is so addicting? like when you if you were to distill it down to like the core componentry.

31:04 Yeah. Yeah. So, slight tangent. I think just because you mentioned if you're doing your documentary, you probably want to get um uh Paul Denon on.

31:12 He's on the list, too. I I've already interviewed, but I haven't put out Justin Gary. Uh Paul Denon is definitely somebody that I want to Yep. Um because Paul wants to I was on a panel with Paul um and he described deck building as like the most perfect game mechanic. Uh which I don't know if I agree with. I have to think about that a little more. But it is um it is in a sense it's for us gamers it's doing so many things in such a simple way that we like. Um it's this this idea of progression um uh while with still a a degree of randomness but a but a predictable and controllable to a certain degree randomness in how you draw draw your cards, right? Um uh the constant feeling of progression, the design space that it allows for in uh C in its use of cards. It allows for so much design space to to have the cards work in different ways for thematic reasons because it's using cards um when you're making a game, for example, based on an IP, right? If you want to make a Marvel Champion, a Marvel, you know, Legends uh game that's a deck building game, um it's cards are such a good way to introduce lots of

32:43 characters and things from a from a world that you want to, right?

32:46 If uh if it's a if it's a game with a board and there aren't cards, how are you going to fit all the characters into it? Right? It's a little harder to find ways to do it. Whereas, if you introduce a deck of cards, well, now one card is one character, one card is u an item from that world, right? It's very easy to uh do that. So, deck building because it's so card- based um makes it really easy to introduce a ton of different thematic

33:12 touch points into the game and it has that beautiful little progression, right?

33:18 That's it. Cardinal, it cycles. It's such a natural progression. and you feel ownership of what you've built.

33:27 Yeah. It's Yeah.

33:28 Yeah. It's like the the only other kind of like consistent progression mechanism is through tracks really that I've played. And that's just so much less fun because there is not that that feeling of of randomness as you put in the hand, but you're also rewarded for smartly playing those cards in a good deck builder. Some some you know, one of the issues is some people just drop them and do what they say. There's no real decision. Uh, go ahead.

33:54 I think you get a lot of progression from tableau building games. Um, uh, it's just less clean. Uh, so for example, space base, right? There's a lot of progress feelings of progression in a game. Space based or Machoro, right? Those kind of tableau builders.

34:10 A lot of feeling of progression.

34:12 Uh,

34:13 those but they do they do they are related to deck building as well. you know, market card market.

34:18 I saw so

34:20 uh card market grabbing grabbing cards out of the market. It very it's one of the things that addicted me to space base and I had loved deck builders before that. It felt very familiar in that in that regard which is also the market.

34:33 They're all shopping games. Yeah.

34:34 Yeah. Yeah.

34:35 Have money you can buy things. Yeah.

34:38 Right.

34:39 They're shopping games.

34:41 What other deck builders influenced you in Dead Reckoning's rule book? You credited Ascension. Did it teach you something about your design in the future?

34:49 Ascens Ascension specifically

34:52 or anything else that But yeah, I mean you credited Ascension in in Dead Reckoning's rule book. Um, was Ascension a big influence on you?

35:01 So, um, Ascension was one of the earlier ones I played. I mean, it was one of the earlier ones in general, right? Uh, [snorts] Ascension did I mean the the the what Ascension introduced to the deck building space was the idea of a non-static market. I think

35:18 uh a um uh the kind of the card the card row that we're often very familiar with now in these kind of games. Um which was a in a sense a limitation, right? It wasn't

35:34 I I don't I don't mean to say that in the way that like that's a problem with Dominion, right? Dominion had a limitation to the experience of any given game because the market the market is static and limited, right? But I don't mean to say that that's a problem with Dominion. Uh that's just the way Dominion works.

35:53 Mhm.

35:53 Uh and there there are good things about that that uh Ascension and similar games of the market have. there's or there's problems that Ascension runs into that need to be designed around that Dominion doesn't have a problem with because of the way it's done.

36:06 But Dominion is more limited in that in any given game these are the this this is this is what you have to work with

36:14 and there's not you're not going to see that really cool combo because it literally can't happen in this particular setup,

36:19 right?

36:19 Um whereas Ascension you start the game and it's much it feels much more like we don't know where we're going with this game, right? as opposed to a game of Dominion where you can look at it and be like and very much so the experience of Dominion is look at the card market decide how you think you can win with that market and then try to execute it faster than anybody else whereas ascension is much more tactical every given turn what do you got what's your best option there's some knowledge of like I know what's likely to come out from the deck potentially so I'm trying to plan for what cards I think I'll see but I'm not guaranteed to see it's very and in that sense it's it's quite different uh So I I mean I think I think Ascension just introduced first of all it did theme in a really nice way.

37:02 Mhm.

37:02 It's it said it it gave you two currencies uh so that you can you fight monsters and do something else and fight monsters and build your deck. Um and it had the variable market. So with so with dead reckoning um one of the big things I wanted to do with that design other I mean the card we can leave card crafting aside cuz um that's a whole topic in itself but Dead Reckoning is fundamental fundamentally a deck building game.

37:29 Yeah.

37:29 Um if you want to quibble with definitions maybe it's not because you don't actually add or remove cards from your deck but it's essentially a deck building game.

37:37 I mean let's the proxy for that is changing your card and it's essentially a new card.

37:42 Yeah. Right.

37:43 Um, but the real thing that I'm doing different in Domin in in um in Dead Reckoning is that getting cards is a much more tactical uh and strategic experience, right? Um it's it's not just on your turn you figure out how much money you have and buy the cards, the best card you can afford that you want to buy. Um your ability to buy cards has to do with your ability to move around the board. Um uh and then there's all different implications about where you end up moving and stuff. Um so that's that's where sort of the variable card market I turned it into a two-dimensional market,

38:22 right?

38:23 Um instead of a one-dimensional market.

38:25 Um and then you could argue it's a threedimensional market because there's actually other implications of like how you can get into certain zones. Um yeah. Were there any other kind of formative deck builders you played prior to creating the card crafting system or were those kind of core limitations that were set up with Dominion and Ascension um some of the things that you used to produce more fun, you know, I will say in the card crafting system.

38:53 I would never argue my games are more fun than other really fun games.

38:57 I um

38:59 this is an evolution. I think I just to be clear like Dominion's great, Ascension's great. I there's so many great deck builders, but like in viewed within the time frame in which they were created, they're incredible. Like everything, there's evolutions. People play those and then they stand on the shoulders of giants to create better things in some cases, not always. So that's kind of my perspective in this questioning. Not that anything is better, but you know, things evolve get better. Card crafting is definitely an evolution. Um uh uh but it's it's a it's a lateral evolution. It's not like strictly better, right? You know that even in my design now, it's not like I've come up with something that's better so that I shall always use the better thing,

39:45 right? Um

39:46 there's plenty of games where card crafting would make the game worse, right? You know, you know, and you should just use normal cards,

39:54 right?

39:54 Um because it's not it's not it's a lateral evolution, right? It opens up design space that didn't exist before to create potentially awesome and different games, but it doesn't it doesn't level up game design. Like I think in many ways, so my yeah, my design diary of of um Unstoppable, I I kind of delved into a little bit why uh why card crafting has not been as like picked up by other designers a ton. Um whereas as deck deck building has been right deck Dominion came out and all of a sudden there's tons of deck building games um and card crafting came out with mystic veil and other things and there have been a number of them um there's been a number more by me and there's been a handful by other people um uh and uh so why why was that why what was the difference in those two innovations right um uh so I think Dominion innovated in the creation of deck building like you said like you were alluding to before, Dominion is like a cheat code for game Dominion. Deck building is like a cheat code for game design. Um, if you're if you're building a deck building game on the framework of Dominion or Ascension, you're basically already starting with a good game, uh, and now it's just up to you to make it different than existing games.

41:15 Mhm.

41:16 Uh, in a way that that people actually care about and and it doesn't feel, um, totally derivative. Um, it's a game system that works, right? Card crafting is not a game system at all. You can't say, "I'm gonna make a card crafting game." All right. Well, you're starting with a good game then, right? You don't have you have zero. You have nothing. If you say you're making a card crafting game, you don't start with anything. Um, you have no rules. You have no system, right? Card crafting doesn't mean anything other than you have cards that that aren't static, right? Um, yeah. So, in that sense, um, they're very different innovations. um they're not actually they're not actually that comparable. Um so I actually don't think card crafting is necessarily an evolution specifically of deck building even though it's where I first used it was in deck building.

42:07 There's nothing about card crafting that says it's a deck building innovation. It's merely a usage of cards innovation. Right. the

42:16 does it solve in for any issues that you saw in deck building?

42:22 So there's the common um the common issue in deck building of uh the game gets to a point where you can afford cards even though you on your turn you can you can you could buy new cards but you actually don't want to buy new cards because

42:38 unless you can get rid of

42:40 those cards will actually make your deck worse, right? you know, in Ascension, if I have um $3 uh and everything costs $4 or more, I don't necessarily want to buy one of those cheap basic cards.

42:55 No.

42:55 Um because they just might make my deck worse. Uh whereas uh with card crafting, provided the your deck has enough real estate on it to keep adding upgrades, um there isn't a point at which buying even the cheap upgrade to make a card better uh is bad for you. So like Mystic Veil had the um the fertile ground cards uh fertile soil cards and uh they're the cheapest cards in the game. They're not very good. They cost two bucks to buy. Um, but there's not a point in the game where like you have a lousy turn and you don't have very much money. Um, you should just the right choice is to do the boring thing and buy nothing. Um, in Mystic Veil, the right choice was always to get at least something. Um, because it makes your deck better and it doesn't make it worse.

43:44 Uh, so you can call that a problem with deck building. Um, but it's only a problem in so much that it isn't the design doesn't doesn't solve for it. Um, and there's been some really nice innovations in uh deck building games that do resolve it. I think a a really good one a game that particularly did it really well and opened up a lot of answers to that was Shards of Infinity. At least for me, that was the first time I saw some really nice um innovations. So, Shards of Infinity did um this thing they called them mercenaries, I think. Uh so, some portion of the cards in the common deck are uh have this red border around them.

44:30 And when you buy the card, you could either treat it like a normal card and add it to your discard pile, or you can immediately use it for its mercenary power, uh you get to do what it says now immediately, and then trash it, and you don't get to keep it. So, if we're late in the game and you don't actually want to add that not very good card to your deck, but you can still buy it, it does two damage to your opponent and then you trash it and it's better than having wasted that $2. And then it also cycles out the market of these cheap not very good cards. Um, so it's a it was a great way to like solve for that problem where early in the game actually that that cheap card is nice to have to your deck because it's better than all your terrible starter cards and later in the game now it's worse than all of your upgraded your good cards but you can there's still a reason to buy it and get it out of the market. So that was a really nice innovation. It inspired a different solution that I used in my misborn deck builder. Um where basically in my misborn deck builder some point about uh uh about Midgame uh players gain a new hero power that basically says once per turn you can do that. So once per turn you can buy any card you buy in the market you can immediately eliminate and do its power. So rather than having some cards be that type and some not, just everyone can do it once per turn. Um, which which again solves for the problem in Midame, every player, even if you can't afford the card you want and you don't really want to keep any of the cheap lousy cards, you still should be buying something, using its useful effect, and then not adding it to

46:02 your deck and making it worse, instead chucking it. Um, so that was a really nice innovation. Are there any other uh really important innovation innovations that have happened from those early deck building games that you played that you think uh have really brought forward deck building uh as a mechanic? Um so people keep doing it differently, right? So like um I think the introduction of the the broadening of the design space with games like Dune Imperium and Arc um what is it called? Uh uh Raider something whatever the the

46:46 Lost Ruins of Ark.

46:48 Yeah, that one. Um that where deck building is driving a a different game, right? It's not the goal of the game isn't to just build a great deck that wins the game. The goal of the game is to win a area control game or a worker placement game. Um uh and it's driven by deck by your deck. And there's a number of games that have done it. I think those two maybe are the most wellknown that do a board a board game driven by a deck builder. Um there's a whole mess of games that do it,

47:19 right?

47:19 Um uh you know I mean arguably you could say Dead Reckoning is one of them, right? Um

47:26 yeah.

47:28 Uh so, uh yeah, I mean that that that was a really nice move forward in it. Um yeah,

47:38 let's go to Unstoppable. um, Unstoppable. I you keep kind of like just diving a little bit deeper and I I have to kind of jump ahead and start to talk a little bit about it because it's the elephant in the room and we're talking about deck building evolution and I think it's you're hesitant to call things problems, but I think it solved a couple of problems that I typically have with deck builders. First and foremost, um, is card draw. The idea of eliminating a threat to get cards into your hand, I think, is the single most important deck building evolution that I've ever seen. And in fact, if you look at Unstoppable, you might think that this is a card crafting game. I don't think so. I think that's just kind of like a a subtitle to what has really stuck out to me, which is this card draw element that I think you pro probably u describe what is momentum deck building.

48:31 Is that your term that you've um that you've coined? And it very much feels like that. And that's what that's what caught me off guard out of the gates. As soon as I said that there I saw that there was no card draw, I kind of like rolled my eyes a little bit because that's the that's the thing you're always striving for. Also eliminating cards from your deck, which you have a mechanism to do that. But this one in particular feels so natural and ingrained. It's not something I'm striving for. I'm not trying to upgrade for for card draw. I'm not trying to find those cards to clog my deck to be able to uh to draw cards, which is always weird because you're playing a card to draw more cards. Um I mean, it's a solution, but it's it's not as elegant as saying my deck also has threats or enemies on the other side, and I'm always going to have to fight them. Of course, the the um the upgrades, which we'll talk about in a second, are a key part of that, but to me, that is such a huge deal. What what influenced you to do this? And is this the is this the first time you saw this as a mechanism?

49:39 Uh yeah, I do think I do think the way I do it in Unstoppable is unique. I someone would have to tell me if there was something that did it similar before.

49:48 I don't know. I couldn't find it. I looked everywhere.

49:50 I haven't Yeah, I haven't played one that that does um deck building the way Unstoppable does. And I do think you're right. Um, some people um, some people I think get it backwards. They call the innovation in Unstoppable the card crafting. Um, and honestly I do card crafting again differently.

50:10 I do I do it differently again in Unstoppable than I did in other games. Um,

50:15 uh, but uh, and then it is for many people it will be their first introduction to card crafting. So it does feel like for them the big innovation. Um, but I do think the thing that um is a actually the the the big feature of that game that really makes it work is um the momentum nature of the game. So,

50:38 and the right the cards go right into your hand. That's the other thing I forgot to say in my initial diet drive. Keep going. Sorry.

50:45 So, the the original idea for it came way back. So just like yeah just like every designer ever when they played Dominion for the first time um they had some idea to make a deck building game right they played Dominion and it inspired like oh I could do deck building in this way or that way right

51:04 so for me the inspiration for playing Dominion way back in 2009 when I played it for the first time I didn't like that when you buy the victory point cards it makes your deck worse so I didn't like that doing the right thing to win felt like doing the unfun thing for your engine, right? Uh I I played Dominion that was based on like my first two plays of Dominion. I got that feeling. I learned with more plays of Dominion to appreciate that um that is a sort of a catch-up mechanism in the game that it's a really nice actually balancing system in Dominion. Uh but it still is true that the thing that makes your deck better is not always the thing that wins you the game. instead makes it less fun.

51:52 The thing the thing that often makes your deck that makes you more likely to win is the thing that makes your deck less good,

51:57 right?

51:57 Uh and causes your future turns to be less fun.

52:01 Um so at the time I thought maybe we can just invert that and say that the way you win is like what if the way you win is just doing the fun thing. And the fun thing in Dominion often is making card combos that let you just keep drawing your deck and keep going, right? And churning an engine. Um, so it occurred to me, I was like, well, what if what if the way you win is essentially just building a deck that can just super combo and keep drawing. So like card draw is actually the way you win. Um, and you need to draw a lot of cards to win. And you maybe you just need to cycle your first first player to cycle their deck six times wins the game. Maybe that's just the game. M

52:44 um so uh uh the fir I came up with a prototype that had double-sided cards and this is before I I had invented card crafting. Um so I came up with a game that had

52:57 this predates any sort of

53:00 carding mechanism. Interesting. Okay.

53:03 So I came up with a deck bu a deck building game where uh there was monsters on the back side of your cards and your effects on the front side. Um, and uh, you weren't, so it does predate card crafting, but you you can you'll you'll be able to see where the beginnings of card crafting were coming from. So, you had a a static deck. You weren't adding cards to your deck or removing cards from your deck. You had like a 20 card deck. Uh, on the back sides of the cards were the monsters and the front sides were your cards, but they had icons on them. It was like a red triangle, a green square, a blue circle, right? And not all of them. Some of them would have just a red triangle and some of them would have a red triangle and a blue square. Some would have a damage number like seven damage. Um, and you would you would use these cards to try to kill the monsters. And the the the the red squares, blue triangles, whatever. Um, those didn't do anything unless you purchased one of these ability cards, which would just build a tableau of ability cards. And when I played the blue circle, if I had a card in play that said, "Blue circles do this," it would do the effect. So, in a sense, by buying that, I've carded that card in in a sense, like I crafted all the cards in my deck with blue circles to now have that ability,

54:14 right?

54:15 Um, even if I'm not actually carding it, right?

54:18 Um, so, uh, I built this game. So, you would you would play cards and you would kill the top card of your deck. You'd have this the monster would sit on top of your deck and you would kill it. And then when you kill it, you draw it into your hand and it would hopefully give you some new ability and at some point you'd run out of steam. And whenever you'd run out of the ability to keep you run out of momentum, the top monsters on your deck would damage your life, but then you'd draw them all into your hand. So there was auto there was card draw in that version. Uh but whenever you ran out of energy, the cards you drew would first do damage to you and then you'd draw them. Um so that game was really cool actually. it like as a as an early game designer, this is before I'd signed any games. Um, I made this game, so I I'd not signed anything and it and it was actually it was pretty fun, but it was only really fun for the player who was taking their turn. Um, and the the problem was very self-evident after just a few play tests that um uh doing really well meant no one else had fun because I would I would get an engine going right and I would have an 8 minute turn and then someone else wouldn't get it going and they'd have a 40 second turn and then I'd really get my engine going and I'd have a 12m minute turn. I was like this can't this isn't going to work. Right.

55:37 Right. Were solo games big back then?

55:40 No. So, I didn't know what to do. So, I was like, man, I'll come back to this maybe later. But, I need to fight I need to figure out a way to like I take an action that you take an action and maybe there's some action efficiency so that if I get momentum going, I get a little bit more than you. But I need to like I need to solve this problem of like one player having a massive turn and the other and and and making it boring for everyone else. Um, and that's where I got to and I was like, I need to solve that, but I don't know how to solve that without breaking the the core thing that I was trying to do, which is build an epic combo, right? And have fun building a powerful combo. So, um, a decade passes of me working on other games and that game just being forgotten about. Um, but I was always like, but that is fun. Um, uh, and then in 2020, and of course it was 2020, right? because we're all stuck at home by ourselves.

56:32 Um,

56:32 a little extra time.

56:34 Yeah. Uh, it occurred to me maybe that game should that game idea I had way back when that was that caused people to have really fun time on their own turn. Uh, but everyone else's turn was boring. Um, maybe that should just be a solo game.

56:50 Let's get rid of everyone else.

56:52 At that point, solo games had proved themselves in the market. They demonstrated that like there is a market for solo games. Um, so it occurred to me maybe that game should just be a solo game. Um, and then also like co-op games had clearly pro proved themselves at that point as well. Co-op was really popular. Again, 2009 co-op games weren't a big thing, right? That was only a handful of them.

57:13 Um, but in 2020, obviously people love co-op co-op games. So, you know, if if it's either solo, so I'm the only person taking a turn, so no one else is bored while I have a really fun turn, or it's co-op, where we essentially take a turn together, um, so we're both taking the fun turn, hopefully the fun turn together. Uh, that essentially solves the problem that I was running into on that game design, and I should go back to it. So, I went back to that design with a much more experienced as a much more experienced game designer. Um, and also with card crafting as one of my tools in my tool chest at the time. Um, uh, and I approached it from that point. Um, and made a game called Epic, I called it. Um, it was fantasy themed and but you would, you would see a lot of Unstoppable in that design and then it evolved into what became Unstoppable.

58:06 There's a lot of kind of interconnecting parts that make this system really sing. But do you think that this is the core kind of like arbiter of excitement as somebody is playing is eliminating draw cards and and and doing this?

58:21 Oh, 100%. The magic of that game, the magic of Unstoppable is that moment where you look at your hand and you've got like two cards, right? And you're like, there's no way I can kill all these threats with these two cards.

58:33 Mhm.

58:34 I'm screwed. How do I kill these four threats that just came out with these two lousy cards that I have? And then it occurs to you, well, well, this card can kill that guy, right? So, it can't kill all of them, but it could kill that guy. But by killing that guy, I draw that. Now I have that card. And then that that card is going to give me the credits when I play it to buy this upgrade, which I can put on this other card I this the second card I had, which then lets me actually kill two of these guys. And when I kill those two, I get those into my hand. And now all of a sudden, this turn where you're like, I'm so screwed. How do I survive? turns into a turn where you can actually like kill everything and even make more progress, right? So that that feeling that feedback instant feedback of I kill this which gives me this which lets me do something which lets me kill that. Right? That feeling of momentum that you can get when it starts singing. That is the magic of the game. Yeah.

59:22 In a lot of solo games there's always this uh or typically this moment at the end of a game where you just do a pretty simple math problem and you're like, "Oh, I lost." And it's just so

59:32 not dramatic whatsoever. And especially it's already tough. You're playing inside your own head. Nobody else is watching you. And it occurred to me yesterday. I had that exact same moment you did where I was. I hit that math problem. I was like, "Oh, five. I'm dead. I have four left." And then I look at the card that I played and then I look at the market. I go, "Oh my gosh, if I would have bought that, I was like, you know what? Let's just do that. No one's watching." So I take out Yeah. Yeah. I take I take my play back. I buy the upgrade. And you know, I still lost in Duomo's menace, but I got probably two rounds further because there was this insane combo that happened just because I was able to clear the one threat because I bought the upgrade. It was exactly what you described as the magic in this game. But there's also those good times where you're just flowing along. You're like, "Oh, okay.

1:00:18 Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom." And that is kind of the momentum feeling as well. But there's also those moments where you hit a wall and there's nothing you can do. How fragile did you want the momentum to be? Cuz sometimes I just feel like I just I can't do anything. But I wonder did I play too many cards the the time before? Did I go too deep in all of those good feelings and I should have not played so much out of my hand? Uh was this all intentional or do I suck? So, um it's a the game does not uh the game does not handhold players. Um right, it like uh and you don't have a lot of life in the game and when the monsters get big enough, they can just you could be at full life and die the next turn. Um and the game does not handhold you and tell you, "Wait, you probably shouldn't play that card and save it. You should probably save it for next turn." Um, and that is all um part of the the sort of the player journey, right? You know, I think a lot of people play Unstoppable and the first time they play um they get a few turns in and they just get clobbered and they're like, "What what did I do wrong?

1:01:31 I that was this game's really hard and they try again and they get clobbered again, right?"

1:01:35 Um and at some point it clicks a little bit that um this is not like other deck builders. Um, you you should not be playing as many cards as you can each turn.

1:01:45 Yeah.

1:01:45 Um, you should not be spending all your resources to buy upgrades because they look good, right? Um, you need to be doing exactly what you need to be doing on each turn and nothing more. Uh, [snorts] because you need to save up. You essentially need to say like if if it's a momentum game, the analogy is right like you're at the top of a hill, right? And you can use your momentum to go down the hill, right? But if you get to the bottom of the hill, you have no momentum left.

1:02:10 Mhm.

1:02:10 Right. So like you need to figure out at what point to push the brakes so that you still have all that gravity next turn, right? To deal with the problem, right? Um uh

1:02:20 and that's what I did not do early. I was just like, let's how see how far that combo can go. Then no card.

1:02:26 Fun. You're like, yeah. And then you get to your end of your turn and you've played all your cards.

1:02:29 Then I have three threats to deal with. That was a big turn. And then three more monsters come out and you're like, uh uhoh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. So, was the idea to always bring those threats directly into hand instead of your discard pile?

1:02:43 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That that was I mean that was the core of the momentum is the idea when you kill something, you get it into your hand.

1:02:49 Um

1:02:50 and was it always the case you could upgrade the cards in your hand and play them?

1:02:56 Uh right from when upgrades became a thing in the game. Yes. Which, you know, if we rewind to 2009, they weren't. But when I came when I started the design in 2020,

1:03:08 um I had card crafting as a tool in my tool chest and I was like this I think this will fit in this game

1:03:13 um really well. So yeah, it was it was in there from the beginning and and buying them and having them available to use right away was was immediately a thing.

1:03:20 Yeah, those two things right there are just are so important. You know, not discarding and being not, you know, I mean, you could have been mean and said I could only upgrade cards that I've already played, so I can only get that upgrade next time. But that that puzzle is so much more dynamic and interesting when I'm when I'm looking at that card market and saying, "Oh, what can I upgrade? How can I how can I combine that?"

1:03:42 Yeah. And there's there's real subtle stuff of like if you see something out on the market, you know, um if it looks good, maybe don't buy it now, right? Leave it in the market until all of a sudden it's really good, right?

1:03:55 You know, if there's a card that says,

1:03:57 you know, this card costs three action points less to play. Like when I see those and I'm playing, I'm like, I need to leave that card there because even if I have a twocard action, a thing that costs two actions in my hand now that I could now make free. If I can kill all the monsters in front of me without having to do that this turn, I should leave that option there so that on a future turn when I draw that three-cost action card on a turn that I'm going to die and if I can't afford it, I'm going to die. Well, now I can I can draw that really powerful three action cost card, I can immediately make it free. And now my turn that I was going to die on is solved because I left that option available. And I think uh a lot of people come to uh unstoppable uh and what makes them it feels so difficult initially is they come to it with all these huristics from other deck builders they've played where the flow is play all your cards.

1:04:49 Mhm.

1:04:50 Buy the best thing you can discard. Next turn play all your cards. Buy the best thing you can discard.

1:04:56 [snorts]

1:04:56 whereas this is not true of that, right? It is play only the cards you need to to kill the monsters you need to um and prepare yourself to so that you still have momentum next turn. Uh

1:05:07 as I prepared for this, I didn't necessarily make that connection, but yeah, that is another core issue with deck builders and I I'll say it. It's a problem and and one of I'll say it's a common criticism where I get a hand of cards and I just have to play them. In fact, in in the Ascension app, there's an autoplay button. You just autoplay all your cards and it just and it just does it for you. Ascension is super fun and and all of the different kind of mechanisms that he's that Justin's put out over time is is uh made it more and more fun and more and more complex than something like Dominion, but that's still an issue here. Absolutely not. There is huge strategic value in looking at your cards, looking at that market, looking at the upgrade cards that you're going to might be able to get next um next round. like there's so much to actually think about uh or not too. I mean you could also flow through the game uh you know until you can't relatively easily without you know having to face a bunch of rule over rules overhead and complexity in those regards. So

1:06:05 oh yeah the game the game gives the player the game gives the player a lot of agency

1:06:10 which um uh which also which often means it's your own fault if you like if you if you you burn through all your options. um uh you know, you had the agency to do it and you had the agency to stop. Now, there are, of course, there's plenty of randomness to the game. Um there's certainly those turns where uh you're looking at a bad set of monsters. You don't have good cards in your hand to deal with it, but you do get that first turn, the start of turn draft, right? And all you really need is something that does a little bit of damage to get you going, and you just happen to draw three cards, and none of them are what you need. Um there's scenarios where you know there's one taunt guy in your deck um and he just happens to be the one that ends up on top of your deck, right?

1:06:56 So you can't kill the three in front of you. You have to kill the taunt guy first and he doesn't get right. So there's pos that's possible um uh but I find um like I can you know there's I I wanted to add a lot of difficulty layers to unstoppable because so like the difficulty ramp right there's there's um there's normal, hard, and then expert, right? Um uh because I do think a lot of people play normal and um the first time they play they get they get they get pounded. It takes them six games before they can beat normal difficulty. But once you figure it out

1:07:29 I'm kind of there right now.

1:07:30 Yeah. Yeah. Once you figure it out normal becomes easy, right? Um like I will I will never lose on normal

1:07:36 because there is a new set of heruristics to deal with, right? Once you understand those there's ju there are some really best good best practices to follow. There's basically there's basically no amount of bad luck I can have in a game of unstoppable that would cause me to lose on normal. Right. Interesting. It is possible but unlikely that I

1:07:53 any scenario we're talking baseball box

1:07:56 if I'm trying to win if I'm making if I'm not just making if I'm not paying attention making bad choices I could lose. Right. But if I'm focusing and trying to win I will there's no amount of bad luck that will cause me to lose. Um

1:08:09 do you hear a luck criticism on this game? Yes. Yeah, I do.

1:08:14 Really? So it

1:08:19 so the luck so you hear that honestly I hear that on all my games

1:08:24 uh because I do I do introduce a lot of luck and I give players a lot of agency. Um uh so uh a lot of times uh and I don't mean to criticize my own players, but um uh I do think until you understand a game, you don't know. It's hard to recognize that a choice you've made was a bad choice because you don't actually if you don't if you haven't played it, you've played it once, you played it twice, you haven't played it enough to know to be able to distinguish yet the difference between good choices and bad choices. Some of that is you're just not super familiar with the um the game system. Some of that is you're not super familiar. You don't have the the card knowledge. You don't know that like those cards existed that that you should have been looking out for. Um but uh often people often people attribute uh something that is bad luck to uh the game strictly. They did genuinely get bad luck, but they could have completely avoided the scenario where it was possible to even have gotten that bad luck by making better choices before, but they don't they don't have enough experience with the game to to have recognized that those choices had an impact on later where they had the bad luck. So, it just felt it just ends up feeling like the bad luck is what um hurt them. So, from a game designer perspective, um I just I need to it's a it's a balancing of like is if my game is causing people to feel like they're getting really bad luck um and that it's uh

1:09:58 uh and more than I'm comfortable with them, then I need to adjust something. But to a certain extent, like I don't want to take away the agency that out of the game, right? So, so luck is um I think sometimes people sometimes gamers um uh think that something like you know there's no luck in the game is a good thing, right? Uh which is which is not true almost all the time. Um uh I do think we want some amount of luck in a game. It creates uh exciting moments. It creates um uh variety from game to game. [snorts] Um, but if people are consistently feeling like the reason they lost is because of bad luck, uh, ideally the game either needs to, uh, be fun enough that they want to come back and try again so they end up getting to the point where they where they realize how to avoid those bad luck scenarios um, more often. uh they can recognize where the agency was that they had um uh or I need to fix the game because it's too opaque. It's just too opaque and um and it's it's it is actually the game's fault that players are having unfun even if if they were experts at the game that could have avoided the unlock scenario, right?

1:11:17 There's only so much I can expect a player who's never played a game before to figure out a complex system, right? Um, so I think actually Unstoppable toes the balance in a way that I'm perfectly comfortable with. Um, there are a lot of people who say it's really hard. I do hear uh people say there's a lot of luck. Um, in the same sentence, I hear people say there's a lot of luck, but it's really fun. So, for me, that usually translates into people who um uh haven't reached the expert at the game yet level, but are still having fun. uh even if even if they're losing to bad luck scenarios that maybe they could have avoided it with better play they if they like the game enough they may figure out that eventually right so you know at the expert the people who are the best at the game who are really good at the game like I said they'll basically never lose on normal only only actual really bad luck will cause them occasionally to lose on hard and then at expert mode the luck becomes an actual factor because it is like you made all the right choices to get to this scenario um and the the one in 20 the you know the the the one in five chance that just the right set of threats came out to kill you happens, right? So like you've reached that level of like you know difficulty where you're you can make all the right choices and occasionally something the you know you just get screwed, right? Um and I wouldn't even want to design that out of the game, right? I would I like I don't want that to be out of the game. I want there to

1:12:47 be enough. There needs to be enough luck in the game that that it remains exciting and and challenging and yeah.

1:12:54 Has anyone ever complained to you that there's too much good luck?

1:13:01 I don't think so.

1:13:02 Cuz if there's bad luck, there's got to be good luck. I don't ever hear anyone say, "Damn, this game just has too much good luck."

1:13:09 Uh I mean, so I I think people I think people wouldn't phrase it that way. people would phrase it as um the game's too easy.

1:13:16 So, I've spoken with Ship Theory Games, um most recently the the the duo that that created Endeavor Deep Sea, uh who else? Um oh, Cole Worly as well, all have a really similar perspective on luck where it's it's almost like it's a you need to understand more about the design and also there's a misunderstanding that luck is a luck is a factor only in the turn that you're in. and and players don't typically understand that there was 30 other decisions that happened before that that led you to having that bad luck. You know, Cole Worley would say getting the wrong cards in arcs um is not a luck issue. It's that you made the wrong decisions before to need that card so bad to declare the ambition that you actually need. Um, is that who's right here? Or is it a um like a rules or strategy problem in in or communication problem um that the the publisher and designer are aren't communicating how to play the game?

1:14:23 I mean, some games just have enough complexity that uh they will feel the outcomes of your decisions will feel somewhat opaque to you. Um and therefore the degree to which there is randomness affecting those outcomes feels like the outcome was determined by the randomness and not by the choice. So, if I don't really understand a game yet, like arcs, right, and I um uh and I move my ships in one place and I build a thing over there and I do something else um and someone else is able to counter my move. If I didn't know that card existed that let them counter move, right? Um it feels like really lucky that they got that card, right? uh and really bad luck for me.

1:15:17 Whereas if I knew that card existed um and I was factoring into my decisions, I may have made different moves from the very beginning. Uh so it's a it's a game knowledge. Often it's a game knowledge thing. Um uh that just the first few times you play game is opaque to you. Um sometimes it's an understanding of a game system. Um uh you know in Dominion if you've never played a deck builder before uh and you um you buy some victory point cards early in the game

1:15:54 and later you draw your hand you know you buy you buy the duchies too early in the game

1:16:00 um and it hasn't become clear to you that that's going to make your deck worse right because you've never played a deck builder before. This is all a game not this is just a game experience thing. Later you may draw a hand and it feels like bad luck that you drew a hand with two duchies in it and three money you can't buy anything whereas your opponent got a gold and a silver and a other thing and they bought and they get to get a province. Um if you don't understand the game system to recognize why the choices you made earlier are causing you to draw bad hands and them to draw good hands. You could interpret that as they're getting lucky and getting all these good draws and I'm getting unlucky and getting all these bad draws. Um, and that, you know, that translates into most games that have a reasonable amount of luck if you don't understand the game system. It's possible you can just interpret outcomes as bad luck or good luck. Uh, whereas you actually did have agency to to avoid the bad luck scenarios or make them less likely or improve your good luck scenarios. Um, and yeah, as designers, we just need to we need to be careful about how opaque we make our the we make it our games.

1:17:05 Um, you know, if your goal is to make a complex deep strategy game, it's only so there there's there's just naturally going to be a certain amount of opacity to like what you should do. [clears throat] And for many players, they want that, right? They don't want it to be obvious what the good move is. U, they actually want it to be hard to figure out what the right move is. Um, and they want it to be hard to figure out what the right move is the the 50th time they play the game. Um uh but at least you want them to be able to figure out after they've played a few times what the possible consequences of their choices are as opposed to sort of flailing in the dark, right?

1:17:48 How many times we'll talk unstoppable. How many times do you think a player needs to play it before they kind of see the forest through the trees?

1:17:59 For some players it's once. For most players, it's some number more than once,

1:18:06 right?

1:18:07 Uh, you know, I I've definitely seen comments on Board Game Geek from people who are like, "Oh, yeah, I beat it on easy mode the first time. I beat it on hard mode the second time." That like immediately I was like, "Well, you you got it then." So, you know, uh, for whatever reason, that player like what they needed to do to win the game clicked. Um, but for most people, um, you know, sometimes five or more games until, um, they feel like they they, uh, have a chance to beat it on normal mode. Um, and then at some point it clicks and they can beat it on normal mode almost every time. Um, you know, I don't know what the number is. Yeah, I I it's it's a subject I think about a lot because, you know, I review board games or at least used to a lot more and now I do a lot of these conversations and I always felt um there's there's this weird I like you're being pulled in YouTube to make as many videos as possible, which means play as many games as possible, which means play less of a particular game. And this is painting with a broad brush. Of course, some people go super deep and and have really deep um perspectives on games, but I often see criticism on games that I've played a lot. And I'm sure people have seen the same when they watch my stuff on a game that I hadn't played a lot. And I go, "What are you talking about?" Like, how could you be criticizing this person's thing, this art, and you clearly did not play it, or you played it completely wrong, or you played it a couple times?

1:19:35 like what um a what responsibility does somebody have in in like the number of players are actually groing and understanding the game before they go out and talk about your art? I don't know. It just frustrates me a little bit and I've been thinking a lot about that lately.

1:19:52 I don't think I don't think people have any responsibility. Um I think there's

1:19:57 even like YouTube good etiquette and bad etiquette.

1:20:01 Yeah. Um right I it's like life in general right? Um don't express a strong opinion about something that you don't understand. Um

1:20:11 uh so so the step one there is having a good understanding of what you don't understand. Right? If you if you um if you're not cleareyed about your own understanding, your own depth of understanding of something, then you um it becomes very easy to think you understand something better than you do and then express some sort of strong opinion on a subject that you are not particularly knowledgeable about. [snorts] Um and board games is one of those spaces where it's very easy to end up on uh the wrong side of that, I think. Um because there's a lot of there's a lot of emotion tied in with playing games for some people. Um some people are very emotional about playing games and some people are

1:20:50 some people are just there for the fun and they're fine. But some people get passionate about their games, right? Um some people are more competitive.

1:20:57 Um sometimes you're more competitive about the certain people you play with, right? Maybe there's somebody at your game night that like

1:21:04 you not annoys me. I didn't hear that part. No, we're just really competitive. I love her. But, you know, so sometimes there's that one person at the game night who kind of gets under your skin and you happen to play this one game with them and they did really well and you did really badly and like you know, you really really want to attribute it to bad luck, right? You know, you know, you really want to say it's because they got lucky and you got unlucky and not because they were just good at the game and you weren't, you know. Well, and also in in the internet age where it's so easy just to throw a comment up there, a faceless avatar, and there's no consequences whatsoever.

1:21:40 At the same time, you're talking about something that you've put as a designer in, you know, I don't know, I don't know how many hours, countless hours to create. It has to be frustrating to read something where it's like, oh, that was just a clear misunderstanding. Like, they clearly didn't,

1:21:57 you know, get it or play it enough. Or do you take that as I as a designer communicated something incorrectly or or there was there was a way that we could have spelled that out in the rule book a little bit better? Like is has there ever been any of those in instances?

1:22:12 So I mean there's only so much um people's comments on board gamegeeek are going to uh frustrate me.

1:22:23 Okay. But do they bother you at all?

1:22:28 Not anymore. Okay.

1:22:30 Yeah. Um, so if I have a game that is not terribly successful,

1:22:37 um, you know, if people make what I think are unfair comments about it, it's not a successful game anyway, right? Uh, and if it is a successful game, the good comments outwash the bad ones and they don't really matter.

1:22:51 Um, I I mean, so I should say the unfair bad ones, right? Like even even my successful games, people can have fair criticism, right, of it, whether it's just a they didn't like it for this reasons or they thought something in the game could have been better. Sometimes I'll read a comment that's like, you know, they should have done this or that with the game. Why didn't they do this, I didn't like that part? And sometimes I read those comments, I'm like, you know, that is a kind of good point.

1:23:16 Maybe I should we should have spent a little more time balancing that or they Yeah, you know, like I do think like Space Base is the easiest example, right? Um uh there are two cards that in Space Base that I don't play with anymore that I've taken out that I've taken out of the decks.

1:23:33 Uh uh so like when people say that I don't like these cards, I wish they hadn't made them. I'd be like I agree. You're right. I wish I hadn't made them either.

1:23:40 Pull them out. That's easy.

1:23:42 Right. So yeah, take them out. Right. But like, you know, it's not it's not the responsibility of players to take out cards, right? It's the responsibility of the game designers to not make the cards that people don't want to play with. Um, so, so if you want to know what the two are, it's the it's the one that makes people lose um lose points. There's one card in base game space that causes everyone else to lose points. Um, and the reason for that one, so a lot of people think that card

1:24:08 What number does it activate on?

1:24:10 Seven.

1:24:11 Oh,

1:24:12 so some people think that card is overpowered, and it isn't. It's actually balanced with all the other cards. Uh, but it's unfun. M

1:24:19 it and it makes the game take longer. Uh and that's why it's a problem. So some people are like, "Oh, so powerful like, you know, it made me not score points and stuff." And I don't think that is fair criticism of the card. I think what they're expressing is a different opinion that that card made them have less fun and it made the game take longer. Um and that's

1:24:38 I wonder if it were a six or an eight if that would be different just because the perception of seven is the you know that's

1:24:44 Well, remember six is actually in space base six is the most likely thing to be rolled.

1:24:47 Oh, is six the most likely? I thought it was seven. Okay.

1:24:49 Well, seven seven with two dice is the most likely sum, but space base space you can take the individuals.

1:24:55 Oh, right, right, right. Okay.

1:24:57 So, I guess further down.

1:25:00 Yeah. The other card I take out is the one that lets you reroll dice. Um because it's the only one that breaks the flow. So,

1:25:08 yeah,

1:25:08 the flow of the game is very consistent.

1:25:10 Yeah,

1:25:12 the the flow is very consistent. Roll dice, everyone gets stuff. And it's that the whole way until one game, this one person gets this card where the dice are rolled and they're like, "Wait a second, wait a second. I might want to roll it." And then they look around the table and they're like, "You're gonna get that. You're going to get that. I'm going to get this. H I think I'll reroll it." Right? It's just like, "Ah, [clears throat] this is not fun. Make it go away." Um, but so I think generally, no, the board game comments just I I think the really negative ones I actually save. I have a because I think they're funny. Um, and it makes good conversation, especially with other designers where I'm like, "You want to see some of the funny comments my games have got?" So, like, there's some just overthe-top hateful comments about my games that

1:25:54 um just crack me up.

1:25:55 What's the most hated game you have? I'm I'm curious.

1:25:59 Uh, probably the most viscerally hateful comment I got was on Ready, Set, Bet.

1:26:08 What?

1:26:09 Yeah. Yeah,

1:26:12 they don't like luck.

1:26:15 I think the person probably I don't want to get into a psychoanalysis, but I suspect and from their and from their comments, it indicated that they have a problem with horse racing and betting.

1:26:27 Um, so they were

1:26:29 they were very pre-incclined to hate the game

1:26:32 um already. Uh, so they played a game that they already didn't want to like and then we're looking for all the possible reasons that that game sucks and they don't like it.

1:26:41 Um, so I mean that can, you know, people have people have their inclinations. I think when when it does bother me is more when a reviewer gives a game a review that I think is unfair. Um, so, um, I have, you know, Tom Bassel, for example, is a big fan of a lot of my stuff, but I have I have some complaints with a few of his reviews of mine. Um, even games that he liked, right? I think he reviewed Cubitos and Dead Reckoning. Um, both of them he said he really liked them. Uh, and then, you know, he spent a lot of his review complaining about the things he didn't like. Um, so that the net result of the review was people coming away hearing, you know, complaining about the game and three minutes of saying it's nice, so they don't like it. Even though if his even though his net result was he did really quite like the game. Um, so there's that. I um, you know, I think the the review that bothered me the most was a um a shut up and sit down podcast review of

1:27:46 their podcast.

1:27:47 It was on their podcast. Yeah, it wasn't on their show. They played Dead Reckoning. Um, they played it two-player. Um, which is the worst worst version of Dead Reckoning.

1:27:59 I had fun with it.

1:28:00 They gave it a bunch of They gave it a bunch of critiques that I just f thought weren't fair. Um, in ways that I found really annoying. Uh, when I do think a lot what honestly I don't listen to their podcast a lot, so I don't know if I would agree. I usually agree in meaningful degree with their video reviews. Not I'm not 100% with them, but I don't listen to their podcast. I'd listen to that one because it was about my game. Um, so I don't know if they go as they they clearly don't go as in deep on those reviews and they probably play it more for their video reviews, but um that was probably the only review that really stuck with me in a way that I was really annoyed with. Um because I do think they gave it

1:28:37 they gave it a really unfair critique

1:28:39 uh and didn't give it credit where where they didn't credit the innovations of the game in ways that I think it deserved. and they and they spent time highlighting things that I don't think were then from my perspective weren't fair critiques.

1:28:52 The more I kind of like think about this whole YouTube thing, it just feels first of all, I don't think Shut Up and Sit Down's perspective, my perspective, Tom Bassel's perspective is relevant to 99% of the people that watch it. I really don't. I think

1:29:09 I mean though, right, like like all these reviewers like the stuff, you know, I I think it's funny. So, I actually think it'd be really funny just as a joke, just as like a a sideeshow once to have a bunch of board game designers review content creators.

1:29:25 Yeah, that would be great.

1:29:27 I know. I mean, in good all in good all in good taste, right? Like, you know, I just spent a little bit of time critiquing the Shut Up and Sit Down guys. Yeah.

1:29:35 For their review of my game, right?

1:29:37 Um they spent a lot of time creative critiquing my creative, you know, output. Um, and uh, you know, so I I I feel like maybe we should get to critique their creative output a little bit. Um, all in good faith. I mean, I love those guys. Those guys are all really nice guys. I've met them all. I've hung out with them, you know. Uh, same with Tom. I like Tom a lot. I don't think his reviews are always perfect. Right.

1:29:58 Right.

1:30:00 I think it'd be really funny to get some like get some get some designers together, right? And have us do a a review of the reviewers.

1:30:08 That would actually all good. All in good chest. Yeah,

1:30:12 I uh I just did um uh Endeavor Deep Sea uh the duo that that uh that did that and I had just watched a no pun intended uh review and he did the exact same thing. I really like it. I really like it but went into this long diet tribe on how there's a turn one trap and it turned out they actually sort of agreed with it up to an extent but it was funny getting their perspective as I went through each bullet point that he said u and and getting responses to that. And the other thing that I I have in an idea of and I want to do it with designers, I'm sort of doing it here as I give you give you uh we go down these different elements even though we've got through one is I want to review in front of the designer.

1:30:53 I want to and I want the designer to give feedback on what I review because I found that sometimes I just have a misunderstanding. I may have a rule mishap or whatever that's super embarrassing later on. But um but the designer could also give their perspective on why it is like that or you know why it was balanced in that particular way because I do think you know we don't play games enough before we open our mouth and and review them and affect the sales of these games in general. Um but I the majority of the audience doesn't necessarily feel like that when I've expressed that in the past. So, um, anyways, let's move back to the actual Unstoppable. We got on quite a tangent there, but I like it. I like those little those little side side quests.

1:31:41 So, the other thing that I think Unstoppable did um, and I don't know if this is new, but this is this felt really new and it fixed card markets for me.

1:31:50 Card markets, Ascension added, we already talked about it, the dynamic market. um you either have to dilute cards so they're all usable in every deck or you risk kind of clogging your market with highle cards that somebody can't play or even afford. Um it's constantly an issue. You're not finding cards that you that will synergize with what you're trying to do. Um it it can it can create an uneven experience over time. What you've done is you have six levels of cards. You start everyone at level one. The ingenious thing is you can actually play cards to increase your level temporarily to get those better cards. Then you let players look at three cards and then on top of all of that you put them directly into your hand. Another incredible design decision I think that goes with this momentum idea that we've already looked at. But it it it gives this really um interesting decision as you're looking through these cards. And I believe I'm playing it right. They're face up, right?

1:32:53 So you can see you can see the top card. But you know, and especially if you have that disc that's ahead of where your current level is, you can pick on any level that you have. So there's a nice little decision there that happens.

1:33:06 You have one of the options.

1:33:06 You get one of the options. You can't pick up the three cards. and you re I really want an orange card to synergize for the bargain uh I have which makes the card cheaper to play or or activate or whatever it might be. Um it it to me it just creates such a great play space where card markets are often feel like bad luck. they often don't feel as powerful because they go right into your discard as you grab those cards and you're hoping they fit within your strategy. What you've done here is it makes it feel like I am contributing to my game immediately. And I think sometimes in designs that's looked upon as a negative like oh they have to pay the price to get that card. They've got to they've got to shuffle it back in.

1:33:54 talk to me a little bit about this card market because it is not as impactful I think as um the first you know momentum issue we've had even though it kind of plugs in but it is a huge arbiter of fun for me

1:34:09 and it is this new

1:34:12 or was this uh

1:34:14 well so so drawing cards in straight into your hand is not new. Other deck builders have definitely done that before. Yeah.

1:34:19 Cards you buy go straight to your hand. The I think one of the reasons a lot of designers and including myself have avoided that in some of our deck building games like maybe most of them um is uh it has a snowball effect to it, right? The player who is able to buy a really good card gets a really good card straight into their hand and turns their really good turn into an even better turn. Um, and in a game like say, so imagine a game like Ascension where uh instead of when you bought a card, it go to it goes to your discard pile, it goes to your hand. So I spend $3 to buy a card that gives me a dollar and draws me a card that goes to my hand. And now I play it and I draw a card and get a dollar. And now that dollar helps me buy another card that gets me something, right? And you can uh it creates a snowball um where uh by cards going to straight in your hand gives you essentially momentum to keep going which in a game that isn't supposed to have that kind of momentum. Um uh you then need to you would you need to avoid it.

1:35:22 And the easy way to avoid it is say well you don't get the cards you buy now you don't get right away. Um you need to progress you need to buy them now and progress into drawing them later. So I think there's good reason to do it that way in a lot of games. Um uh so Unstoppable avoids the snowballing in that you only get one card. It's not like you can use that card to then buy another better card, right? Um you just draft one card at the start of your turn. Um and then on top of it, the fact that it goes to your hand because it's a momentum game anyway, right? Giving you the good thing now is is fine as opposed to later, right? I actually want you to get that little moment in many in many ways is essential because that card,

1:36:04 you know, if you've if you've burned through all of your cards, that one card you get to draft at the start of the turn can be the the jump start. You get your engine cooking.

1:36:14 If I get the wrong one, it's too lucky. And I I can't I lose again.

1:36:19 Yeah. Um the I'm really happy and I've and I've used it in some other games lately. Um some other prototypes that I've got cooking. um that uh turning the card get rid getting rid of the card market, this public card market, and instead making it a a deck that you draw options from and choose out of the options and then discard. Um there's a few advantages with that. Um uh one of them is there isn't a distracting card market. Uh, another is is if it's a multiplayer game, um, we can actually all do the card buy phase at the same time. Um, as opposed to progressively wait for each person to pick something out of the market and see what changes. Um, in Unstoppable, it was really nice to just have those six decks cuz it's really nice progression. But what Unstoppable does that's very different than most deck builders in in yet another way um, is it costs nothing to acquire a card. you just get a free one every turn. Um, but the better cards cost more to play. Um, uh, or you have to have done something to get to the better cards.

1:37:33 So, right in a in a in a classic game like Dominion or Ascension, um, uh, once you've gotten the good card, it's not free to play forever, uh, but you had to have built up to have enough money to pay and buy the the good card. Um, so that system works great. Um, what inspired the unstoppable system was uh the way Slay the Spire works where in between each battle you fight, you essentially just get a new card, you get to draft a new card. Um, and it's free. Um, but some cards have an action cost. So, I really like that the way that worked and that's essentially how I implemented it in Unstoppable. uh but with the progressive level deck system so that like the better cards are deeper into these levels and you need to in you can it's it's it's almost two dimensional, right? You can invest in training to get better cards earlier than you would typically be able to, but you're doing that instead of getting other things that would be useful. And then when you draft a card, the second dimension is when it whatever deck you draft it from, you know, if you're drafting level four cards, theoretically they're all balanced. They're all balanced in in power to each other.

1:38:40 Uh but you on the dimension of action points, right? So this card may be more powerful than the other two, but it costs more action points to play every single time you want to play it for the rest of the game.

1:38:50 Uh

1:38:51 unless you upgrade it the right way.

1:38:53 Sure. Yeah.

1:38:54 Yeah.

1:38:55 And then the the the next innovation is the card crafting. So um um yeah, so I I really like the way that marker works. I've done it recently in another game I made that isn't a deck builder. It's a tableau builder, a dice rolling tableau builder. the cards you get are in a in five different levels and um you can progressively give yourself the ability to draw from better level decks and then the cards from those decks are free to are free to get but they have variable dice requirements to trigger their powers. So it's sort of it's again that two-dimensional balancing.

1:39:26 Yeah, I to me I would never want to play with the another market. I, you know, I respect you having the, you know, this idea around the deck and drawing a bunch of cards and picking the right one. It just won't feel as good as this six level. And I think the cherry on top is the variable level that you can cheat the system and get that better card if you invest in it as you play it.

1:39:50 Uh, and it's giving you extra choices because

1:39:54 and as a designer like there's so much design space there because I can make the level six cards really powerful. Right. right?

1:40:02 And really fun uh in in ways that like if it was a single deck, right, that you're drawing from and picking from um they just the nar the range of power you can put in that deck is much narrower because you can't put busted powerful cards in that deck that someone could pull early whereas doing it the way it's done there. Yeah. like as it opens up all this design space to make cards that are wildly disperate in powers uh but still fit in the game space

1:40:29 and you know you have I don't there suits or factions or whatever it might be. So you want to have different synergies. You want to have synergies with like factions or what are they called? Just I'm not saying the right the right thing.

1:40:41 Factions.

1:40:42 Factions. Uh I sometimes I I pull three cards and I don't get what I want or I don't get something that's going to synergize with me and that that sucks. But and that's always the the big kind of problem with card markets. Um or even the draw card and choose choose a card. But I seldom feel that way which is kind of reinforces

1:41:01 what is this momentum idea where it's this constant positive feedback loop until it's not as we discussed earlier where you can Yeah. Yeah. All the you're feeling great, you're feeling great. SP Slay Spire does the same exact thing too like you're just feeling like you're rolling along and then

1:41:17 boom you're you're dead. run to that one monster who's got that attack that you like don't have a counter for. Yeah.

1:41:24 Yeah. I think this this I can't say enough about and I haven't like fully wrapped my head around the full design yet, but it just feels everything feels so good. It feels like it just works synergistically. That momentum system isn't a a BS tagline at all. It is a true system that I think for me has transcended deck builders. It's going to make and you've been very humble here in and in and saying you like there's no you no real problems in some of these other other deck building games. To me, the worst part about this game is it's going to make all of those feel inefficient and not as fun because of the way this thing flows. Uh

1:42:06 I'm I'm not I'm not sure I agree. It's

1:42:09 you don't have to. That's my opinion.

1:42:13 Well, the I mean, I've been thinking about it, right? Because I do I I agree with you that Unstoppable just feels good playing, right? That the the way the momentum works. I love playing this. I don't um uh maybe I'm not supposed to say this, but like I I don't really like playing board games solo. I don't really do I

1:42:30 if I'm going to play if I'm going to play a game by myself, I'm generally going to play a video game.

1:42:35 And by generally, I mean always. Um, yeah, the only the only times I've ever played board games solo is because it was a game I wanted to learn or research for something I was working on and I didn't have somebody to play with and I just wanted to do it.

1:42:47 Um, uh, I will play video games solo. I like in video games, but board games not so much. Um, uh, Unstoppable I actually really like playing solo, right? It's actually really fun. Um uh and maybe maybe if I explored more tabletop solo games, I would discover that there's other ones that I also feel similarly about, but I just haven't done much of that, honestly. Uh but it feels really good and I I have been thinking about um how to make use of that of that of some of the innovations and the new and the stuff and unstoppable and other designs that would be meaningfully different. And I included in that thought process is how to make a good multiplayer game that has a similar feeling. And this takes us way back to 2009. The original problem.

1:43:35 Yes, that's what exactly going to say. Yeah.

1:43:37 Yeah. Uh the original problem of the the momentum was that it's really fun to play by yourself,

1:43:45 right?

1:43:45 And it's not that fun to watch someone else do it. Yes, that that is a tough one because momentum is like if you were going to distill this down to one word like you've done, momentum is the key that you would want to try to push forward, but that doesn't work very well when two people have to wait for someone else's momentum to be done.

1:44:05 Right. So, I've been thinking about maybe there's a good four-player version co-op. Four player co-op. So, we're basically all taking the same turn and we're communally trying to keep the momentum going. Um, uh, I tend to be less inspired to make co-op games than competitive games. It's just a preference of mine. Um, it's not a hard preference, though. So, maybe that's the way to go. Um, I would really love to solve the um the way to give people the feeling of momentum they get from Unstoppable um, in a competitive uh, space. Um, I do not have the solution for it yet. And I think that's why when you say it has, you know, it has evolved and and iterated above and beyond other deck builders, I I think it's doing something those deck builders do cuz they're doing something it can't do.

1:44:58 I think that is super fair. Like if I think about Clank, would that work with Clank? No, not necessarily.

1:45:06 Someone gets momentum going in Clank at some point. You take the turn, I take the turn, then they get and then I get my momentum. You just watch me run through the whole dungeon.

1:45:14 You just go through the whole dungeon and back

1:45:16 over a 20 minute turn. Like like no one's going to want to play that game.

1:45:19 I think that that is a I will take that back. That is a that is a but it will still have me thinking like this is not having momentum is less fun and it it it just it just brings up all of the the the friction that other deck builders have when you have played Unstoppable. I think

1:45:37 I've got I've got a child entering my room.

1:45:39 No worries. Yeah.

1:45:41 Hi, Summer. Bye. Bye, Summer.

1:45:44 Bye.

1:45:46 I I uh I have not successfully drawn a hard line uh at entering my office, so they they come up and bother me frequently. My wife does know my wife does know we're recording right now, so she's trying to keep them away.

1:45:58 Yeah.

1:45:58 Well, we we'll we'll try to uh get through this here. We're ending our time. So, the ele the last element that I have really enjoyed are the bosses. I've played Harbinger and Triumphirate the most. I've only played Duomos Menace and I lost awful last night.

1:46:14 A lot of people say that's the easiest one.

1:46:16 They say that's the easiest one. I wonder it. I mean, it wasn't particularly crazy, I guess. um trying to trying to stop yourself and shave off some of your your either credits or damage to go do the thing on the side is

1:46:32 yeah you need to spend side resources whereas like Harbinger

1:46:36 you don't need to spend side resources on other stuff until those Harbinger guys get powerful enough that it's kind of inefficient to kill them because they don't then subsequently kill something else

1:46:46 right

1:46:46 but uh

1:46:47 I think the big thing

1:46:49 go ahead go ahead

1:46:49 for menace is you don't start with extra cards in your deck. So, you can level up a lot faster.

1:46:56 A lot faster. You can level up somewhat faster. Um, so you get to the better.

1:47:00 What do you mean you don't start? Oh, you don't start with the uh the boss cards or whatever from the other two.

1:47:06 Well, it's funny. The first time I played it, I thought those boss cards were doing damage to me. I was like, "This sucks. I don't like this at all."

1:47:11 No, a few people got that wrong. And yes, that would the game would be literally impossible.

1:47:15 That that literally was my first play. I was like, "Oh my gosh, what am I going to tell them? I hate

1:47:19 anyone win.

1:47:20 I hate this game.

1:47:24 But no, but no, but then I then I would get them. I was like, "Okay, yes, that that it's still another feel-good thing. It's clogging your deck." Yes. But it's back to that positive reinforcement loop that this entire game has is it was still doing damage to the boss. It early take is do most menace was my least favorite because I got killed, but also that it I didn't have that same like I guess on the other side you are saying there are less cards and it's easier to it's easier to uh level up. I don't know. I still I still need more play more plays like I said, but I what I do like about the interactions here um are there's a wide variety of bosses here. When I played the first one, I thought and I Harbinger was the first one I played. Um I thought all of them would be like that and they all have a really specific different feel. Is that is that a benefit of the system being able to make this um pretty flexible?

1:48:20 Uh that's the goal of the design of the bosses is to give um you know the the big variation from game to game is often the cards you draft

1:48:29 um almost more so than the boss you fight. Um but we wanted to add we wanted to make sure those the bosses are adding a meaningful variation also. Um to a certain extent uh the more different we want them to feel the more complex they have to be. Um,

1:48:49 so there's a trade-off there.

1:48:51 The nice thing is they aren't complex to run. They're super easy.

1:48:54 None of these three are with the expansion that we've got in the works. Um, uh, we've introduced a bit more complexity with some of them, but I think an expansion is the right place for that because an expansion assumes the people playing it have already played the base. They already know it, right?

1:49:11 So, they're already they're not learning the base game and all of your complex boss rules. They're just they're just learning the slightly more complex boss rules. Um uh and the same is the same for dungeon crawler Carl. Our first three bosses are not terribly complex. Uh the fourth one that we did that that we did we call them we call them floors in that. Um

1:49:33 uh the fourth floor is meaningfully more complex. And I'm currently working on floors five and six. Um uh but yeah, we want we want them to introduce there's a reason why like you know uh you want to play all the different bosses, beat them on different levels, play them with different heroes. You want that variety that people can keep coming back to.

1:49:56 The one thing that stood out to me last night playing DOS Menace was the possibilities that the narrative choose your own adventure type um system with that boss has for future games, future applications. I'm assuming there's some of that in dungeon crawling Carl.

1:50:14 Uh we haven't made a a dual almost menace specifically type one with the choose your own adventure actually.

1:50:20 Um what they're the first boss the first floor in dungeon and crawler Carl is similar to the harbinger

1:50:28 because that's just the most straightforward. Again

1:50:31 most people's first touch point at this because of that IP is so popular and did so well on crowdfunding. Most people their first touch point with Unstoppable will be floor one of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Um so we wanted that to be um similar to the Harbinger. We knew it's straightforward and it isn't complicated. Um all the other ones are different than any of the um the core unstoppable ones though. Um they're all still very different. So we haven't other than the first other than Harbinger and floor one, nothing really. There's no repeats.

1:51:01 Interesting. So, so the job the idea is to continue to make these bosses feel very different and not necessarily kind of repeat a lot of

1:51:10 men system. Um, we we will quite possibly return to that even in even in um

1:51:17 I think that has a huge possibility

1:51:20 because every card because you can you can just do it differently, right? Like in itself has a lot of

1:51:25 that is a system in and of itself that could just be a game, right? That's the thing I was thinking about last night as I was going through that is you could tell a pretty awesome story around choose your own adventure just doing bosses like this or levels or or whatever it might be. So that has to be uh as much as I said it was my my least favorite, it's I I saw that there was some uh huge possibility there to make an interesting because because it does connect with that with the momentum system because you are using you know credits or or um damage to to be able to clear those things. So,

1:52:01 it'd be interesting to see what you do with that in the future.

1:52:04 Yeah. No, it's definitely it's definitely one of the bosses that repeating it won't feel like repeating it. Um, if we do it because we can do it like it can it can have the almost the same exact rules, but as long as the card the cards that you go through to do it, the sort of the card pyramid of possibilities

1:52:21 has different challenges, different results and stuff, it'll feel meaningfully different. Yeah. My only real gripes uh so far have been and of course you know being the YouTuber I gota got to give them but we're going to say them to your face sleeving and unsleaving not fun but it's you got to do it you

1:52:39 yeah I mean every card crafting game for all time will have that and uh if you want to play the physical version of a card crafting game there is no current solution other than

1:52:50 no there's not it the it's such a snappy game and just so easy to get into and get going and and get into flow. That's the one thing at the end like oh I got to unsleeve all this. Um or not all

1:53:02 if I can if I can if I can run on a brief tangent on that.

1:53:06 Yeah, do it.

1:53:06 Um I like I said it's a very it's every card crafting game gets that critique.

1:53:10 Yeah.

1:53:11 Um I do find a a a nugget of frustration with the critique that I hear often. So, I think Dead Reckoning is maybe the single most um frustrating one to hear it from where people say

1:53:24 five cards or or how or however many cards it is. It's not many cards at all.

1:53:28 I I've heard comments that like clean up for this game is really long that right um because of the card crafting that like you know um you have to break down your deck and it adds an extra like 10 minutes to clean up.

1:53:40 Um and it's like it's like 12 cards.

1:53:43 Yeah.

1:53:44 That you need to unsleeve. It takes about 40 seconds, you know, right?

1:53:48 Like I agree. It's an annoying 40 seconds that it would be nice if you didn't have to do. Right.

1:53:52 Yeah. And it might be the first time where they're like, "Oh, where does this go?" Like, you know, get in your bearings on it.

1:53:58 Unsorting the sorting them back into the level decks. Yeah.

1:54:01 But like that's like a normal cleanup thing in any deck builder, right? Most like

1:54:07 Yeah.

1:54:08 The only other thing is No, no, that's fine. The only other thing is the theme didn't jive with me and it's why I didn't buy it in the first place. And when I saw Dungeon Crawling Carl was coming out, I was like, "Oh gosh, that seems awesome." So then let's go see if this system is for me. Um, and I'm But the the the system transcends the theme for me. And um, I'm happy to own it and won't get rid of it. I love it.

1:54:33 Yeah, I think the the theme I mean, it's a fair critique. Um, uh, the game is the game is not necessarily super it's a it's very much a mechanics first design. Um, as are most of my games um, up till now at least. Um, uh, and that theme just didn't speak to everybody.

1:54:59 Yeah.

1:55:00 Right. Yeah.

1:55:00 And I think that's that's the case with all themes, but Yeah. But your your vision was IPs from the beginning, right? That's why you went into Renegade and and hope hopefully were going to acquire or or get taken up on IP offer.

1:55:15 Yeah, I I was pretty aggressive with this game. I really thought um I really thought it would do well. Its success has not surprised me. Um uh so uh when I was pitching it, I felt I felt that way about it then. Um, and yeah, I wanted to find a publisher who would be aggressive about making it into a game, a line of games and not just a one-off a one-off game.

1:55:38 Are there any plans past Dungeon Crawling Carl right now? I know you can't talk about anything, but like, you know, how how many games are in the works with this system?

1:55:49 Uh, there's one other currently.

1:55:51 How many are on your mind to do? Are you asking me what my ideal IPs were and stuff?

1:55:59 Yeah. Oh, yeah. That Yeah, throw that out there. That'd be awesome.

1:56:03 Uh, well, then I would give away what we on we already have. I mean,

1:56:06 don't do that. Let's assume like

1:56:07 would it be awesome to make like a Batman one where you're Batman?

1:56:11 That would be pretty cool.

1:56:13 Uh, you know that there's a whole bunch that would be cool. Yeah.

1:56:18 Um, oh gosh, I just lost my train of thought. I I had a really good one. I know. It's it's mostly up to Renegade to track down these IPs. This is what they're good at. Um and the game as long as the game continues to prove itself. Uh they'll continue investing in it. So I I hope they will.

1:56:35 What pro This was it. What problems in the in the in the first Unstoppable are you trying to solve in the uh dungeon crawling Carl or any future versions?

1:56:45 Mhm.

1:56:46 If you were to critique yourself. Well, so um I I believe that um I believe we should approach games in a similar as similar as we reasonably can to the way digital games develop. You know, one of the big advantages a digital game has is if in the initial release you messed something up about the game design that is changeable, like

1:57:10 this card,

1:57:10 you hear about it, but there's a patch.

1:57:12 Sure. But like let's like this card really cost more than it should. It really is too expensive. or this is really is a game-breaking ability when comboed with that, right? Well, in a digital game, you can just sort of fix it, right? You just patch it, right? If you're tutorial for your digital game, people are getting confused about a certain thing, you just, you know, modify your tutorial a little bit,

1:57:32 um, and physical games, the great disadvantage, and it is it is unfortunate, but is unsolvable, right? um is that the f your your your most excited people who are the people back it on crowdfunding and stuff are also the ones who get the the the first version of the game where um uh we haven't gotten the thousands of people giving us feedback and finding all the little things we may have missed.

1:58:01 Yeah. um or recognize or you know getting all the data that like sure 65% of people read the rules and don't have confusion but 20% of the people get confused about this thing and 15 get% confused about this thing right and like if we just did a little differently we could fix those things for those 20 and 15% people um so unfortunately the first backers just by the nature it is they are in a sense are the you know the the final play testers um in a say like the you know we've we've done our best to make it final but um it isn't so I think publishers should

1:58:40 um uh make revisions for future prints based on stuff and generally publishers do um and to whatever extent costs possible you know help your backers if you can but a lot of times it's just not really cost doable.

1:58:59 Yeah. Um uh so of course with Unstoppable we've had we we kept a we kept a list of like okay this card is confusing people. Let's reward it. Um uh this um this thing in the rule book is confusing. So we've we've we made a list of those and we've been make we've made changes um uh to certain things to fix it. Um, if you weren't looking for those changes and if you have Unstoppable and you didn't get confused by the rule book and you figured out how to play and you you you got a new version of the same copy of the same game, but now with all the revisions we've made, you would have a hard time figuring out what is different. Um, it's it's not it's not like anything big. the the big change we are big the quoteunquote big change we are doing in the next print run for base unstoppable is we actually really like the new rule that we did in dungeon crawler Carl for how co-op works so um in dungeon in the original unstoppable if you're playing co-op you each draft in in the draft phase you each draw three cards and pick independently uh and we changed how that works in dungeon crawler Carl so that um you actually it's actually more of a co-op draft uh when you're drafting cards between turning before each turn. We really like that. So, we're we're going to make that the official rule in base unstoppable for future copies. It'll be in the rule book.

2:00:24 Um uh there's no component change though, right? So, anybody who currently has Unstoppable can just play with the new rules if they want to. It's just their rule book will teach the old rules, right?

2:00:35 Are there any evolutions in dungeon crawling, Carl, that you're excited about

2:00:40 other than that one? Um, uh, there's a lot of stuff that's really cool about that one that is very dungeon crawler Carl specific. Um, so one of the big, uh, macro differences is there's a campaign mode in that one where you play uh, you can choose to play any one floor you want, just as like arcade mode, just see if you win the floor, just like normal unstoppable. But you can play campaign mode where you play progressively through floor one, floor two, floor three, and then if you have the expansion, floor four, and then if you have if you get the expansion on that that I'm working on now, floor five and floor six. Um, so you can play progressively through it. You can play like death march mode where if you lose at any point, you're done. Or you can play um uh you know where if you lose, you get to try again. And you know, there's certain things that carry over.

2:01:32 So depending on the outcome of floor one, you can get some amount of experience points and uh or you're able to carry over some small thing into the next floor.

2:01:42 Um so that's

2:01:43 otherwise are you resetting your cards?

2:01:46 You're mostly resetting.

2:01:47 Okay.

2:01:48 Um but for example, like with enough XP points, you can uh you can you gain XP points depending on how well you did. Um, and you can spend those points to make a upgrade that's on one of your strike cards stay on the card at the beginning of the for the beginning of the next game, right? Um, so that you like write down what the card what the name of that upgrade is and that is now in your deck on that strike card for the rest of the campaign. Um, so you're and and like each floor if you get a little bit of that, your deck is now growing. So, um, what what that means, of course, is what we've done is that like campaign mode floors have to get a little bit harder each time, right? Whereas the arcade floors are have to be the same across everything. So, the game now comes with floor one arcade mode and floor one campaign mode and then same for all of them. Um, so that's different. Uh, and I I'm actually I guess we'll find out whether people have a preference which way they play. I I suspect a lot of people will want to play campaign the campaign through it.

2:02:48 Yeah, the campaign is what what really stands out to me. I would love if you instead of killing my cards, just added new levels of card. So like the next level you have a level seven card and ones drop off. And it's up to you to be able to to kind of mill your deck out and or change out your upgrades or whatever and just have this constant progression and really build who your character is rather than the the small ones. But I know if you're balancing against arcade mode, that would be really tough. I um it's man it goes back to like what you can do digitally that you can't do physically.

2:03:25 Yeah. Um the challenge with that so if you scale everything too much like if it actually is progressive similar if it's as progressive as dungeon crawler Carl is

2:03:35 um we need to be swapping out like all of the threats every round so they're all more powerful right we need to be like there's like because if you make if the player can scale up in power

2:03:46 but those threats are also getting more powerful as well

2:03:51 uh they have the threat icon so those can get more powerful. What we've done is each floor those threat icon numbers tweak up a little bit. Yeah.

2:03:58 Okay.

2:03:59 So, like we've been able to do that to tweak it up. Um and we have talked about whether we want to at some point do exactly what you said. So, like maybe starting on floor five, six, seven or something. Um the deck the level one deck drops off and a level seven deck shows up. Right. So, we've we've discussed doing that or not. Um we actually talked about whether there shouldn't even be a deck six in the base box and then deck six shows up in an expansion. Yeah, I mean it's a matter of scaling, but that would be that would be

2:04:27 exciting to get to another floor and like, "Oh, this is a whole new deck. Can I get it up up to that?" Um, I guess you're level You wouldn't want them to be able to get into that if they already made it to level six or five. You wouldn't want them to get into it uh quickly.

2:04:41 Uh but yeah, I don't know. Uh I'm excited though either way of having any sort of kind of progression that holds with you. I think there's a lot of um opportunity there. Do you see lots of expansions for this? I mean, the there's tons of source material.

2:04:57 Um, it you know, expansions are always dictated by the success of the game. Um,

2:05:02 the crowdfunding look pretty successful.

2:05:04 Certainly, the crowdfunding has renegadeed telling me that I need to make the next expansion right away.

2:05:09 I was going to say they're going to be the ones.

2:05:11 That's why I'm actively this this week I'm working on floor six. Um, so uh

2:05:19 was that in the campaign? Floor 6 was named as as an expansion. Oh, so this is new. So, what's in the campaign now?

2:05:25 Hey, we're breaking news. I mean, it's not shocking news, right?

2:05:28 Yeah. Right. How many floors are shipping in the uh the first?

2:05:33 Four. Three in the base game with one expansion.

2:05:36 Okay. Oh, so you you're working on five and six. And the next expansion would be a five and six presumably with a reprint as soon as this delivers.

2:05:44 Yes.

2:05:45 Beautiful. When's it supposed to deliver?

2:05:48 Fall. Paul, very exciting. What else does somebody need to know about that loves Unstoppable about Dungeon Craw and Carl and why they want to pick it up?

2:06:00 Um, I mean, if you haven't read the books, the books are fun. If you like um if you like wild stories and you don't mind gory violence,

2:06:12 but you don't need to read the books, right?

2:06:14 You do not need to read the books. Yes. Um, if you really like Unstoppable and you have no interest in the books, I mean, every single like all the cards are different, right? Like it's not like we copy and pasted the cards from decks one through like levels one through six and just made Dungeon Crawl Carl versions of them, right? They're all they're all new. So like the combos you'll see are not the same as your combos you'll see in regular Unstoppable. Um,

2:06:39 so new keywords, not just by name, but actually there are some new keywords. um uh you know, new floors. Again, the first floor is going to be similar to the harbinger boss, but floor 2, three, and four are all totally different. Um uh there's a new type of bad guy you can fight called a boss. So, in Unstoppable, there's bosses, right? That's like how you win is beat the boss. Um in in Dungeon Caller Carl, for theme reasons, um we're you're you're trying to defeat a floor,

2:07:12 right? There's like neighborhoods on the floor. There are boss,

2:07:15 you're right. There's like different levels into bosses that you'll fight and they're basically like

2:07:20 they're basically like threats but like much more powerful.

2:07:24 Um so it's like a new type of threat you'll face a boss that when it comes out um you actually set it aside in a in a in a looming boss zone and it has [clears throat] some sort of looming effect that is active while it's over there. But whenever you want to you can choose to put it into your threat zone. Um and now you can attack it and fight it. but now it's there. So, as long as it's in the looming zone, it's not fighting you, but it's doing some sort of looming effect, which is usually bad. Um, and then when you activate it, now you could fight it, but now it's a giant boss you have to fight. So, like you can sort of prep yourself to fight that boss so that when you bring it in, you're ready to deal with it.

2:07:57 Um, some bosses, their looming effect will cause them to become active at some point. So, even if you're not ready, they might just

2:08:03 It's not a timer or is it random?

2:08:05 They're all different. Yeah. Um, so that's a new type of card. So, I mean, if you like Unstoppable, Dungeon Carler Carl is it's kind of like a a whole new base set. Um, not kind of, it literally is a whole new base set. Um, where we tried not to repeat ourselves.

2:08:21 Are these cross-co compatible in any way?

2:08:26 Is uh

2:08:28 I would imagine that would be tough. Yeah, you can use the I think you can use the threats and the uh from either set against the heroes and core cards of the other set. So, for example, you could take Kai Silver and send him through the world dungeon of Dungeon Crawler Carl. Uh but um but only kind of because you would still have to use all the core cards from Unstoppable

2:08:54 um with Kai Silver, but you could fight the floors and threats of dungeon crawler Carl.

2:09:01 And are core cards the same essentially between the two or

2:09:05 are the the base the non hero specific cards the starter cards are they essentially the same between the two sets?

2:09:14 No.

2:09:14 No, they're they do. Okay. So they do there it's not like basic one damage or get credits.

2:09:21 Oh, you're starting like your starting six cards. They're slight they actually are slightly different.

2:09:25 Um you do have six normal strike cards that do one damage. Um but then you have two other cards that are different and then you'll still have your three hero cards and every hero is all the heroes are different. Um there's I mean there's other stuff like uh in Dungeon Color Carl you can pick a race and a class so you start with a

2:09:45 your race has you start with a unique starting amounts of life and credits and maybe a special power.

2:09:50 Um usually not a special power maybe a special like a unique card that you like search the level one deck and add to your deck at the end of the game.

2:09:57 Um and then your class gives you like a a power that you have that's unique to you for the game. So you pick you pick those at the start of the game. That's different. There's mana. So, armor is no longer a thing in the game.

2:10:09 Okay.

2:10:09 Um, we've removed armor as a resource and instead there's something called mana.

2:10:14 Um, and it is a resource you can use to do spells. So, those are certain cards that have the keyword spell like spell for. Uh, and when you play that card, if you can pay for mana, you get to do what it says. And if you can't, you don't get to do what it says. Um, so you have to manage your spell your mana resource. Um,

2:10:31 yeah.

2:10:32 So, the idea of defense isn't there. No, we replaced defense with just more abilities to gain life.

2:10:40 Was that um was that did that come from feedback and unstoppable? Was there was there any criticism around the defense that led you there?

2:10:51 It was a combination of factors. We um we felt like we Mana should be a resource in the game based on the theme, right? Dungeon crawler Carl. It felt like something they're managing. Yeah.

2:11:04 Um and like a lot of things like um credits in in Unstoppable, we translate those into achievement points uh in in Dungeon Carl. Um uh you know, obviously damage translates really easily, right? Same thing. Um but armor didn't really translate into anything obvious in Dungeon Crawler Carl. Um but but we wanted to add mana. Um so we could have just strictly added mana and kept um armor. Um it add but we didn't want to add first of all you don't want too many variables right each different variable increases the complexity and the card

2:11:44 problems.

2:11:46 Um so my original thought was actually that we would keep armor but armor in in dungeon crawler Carl would double as mana. So, whenever you gain armor, you can either use it to block damage like normal or you can spend it for mana. Um, but it was we felt we felt it was too important that mana is something you can accumulate um and save from turn to turn.

2:12:07 Oh, it doesn't reset. Interesting.

2:12:09 It doesn't have to reset. Um uh and so the choice was made to just do away with armor. It's one of the it's one of the least crucial resources in Unstoppable.

2:12:19 Yeah. Um, like armor can save you on a bad turn, which is really big often, but um, uh, usually if you're doing if you're doing quite well, if you're doing well enough in unstoppable, armor isn't very useful.

2:12:31 I don't see it come up as often. Is it not a heavy occurrence on cards or am I just not choosing to get the right cards or upgrades?

2:12:41 It's not It's not terribly common. There's some cards that have it. There's some cards that that can use armor to like multi to do effects. So like it is a resource that like you can use to block. It's actually honestly I think armor should be used by the good armor by the good players is used very tactically to leave weak monsters in the market without taking damage from them um and kill cards on the top of your deck instead for better effects. Right? Right. So, like like a lot of new players think armor is there to just keep you alive, but actually armor is there to tactically not have to fight the monsters that you don't want to, but still don't take damage from them so that you can attack cards on the top of your deck to get to the card you need faster. Um, uh, so that's kind of gone a bit in this, but instead we've replaced it with the ability to potentially gain life.

2:13:29 So, that guy that was going to do you two damage that with armor you could block, now you have the ability to just gain the life back after you lose it. Um, yeah.

2:13:38 And is the unbeatable difficulty actually unbeatable?

2:13:42 No.

2:13:43 No. Okay. If that's what you call it, right?

2:13:46 No one's beat it yet, but

2:13:47 Oh, no one's beat it. You haven't beat it?

2:13:49 I actually haven't actually haven't tried on I haven't tried on that level yet.

2:13:54 Okay, great.

2:13:54 That was one of the developers one of the developers wanted to add that level in and I was like, go for it. There's no there's no downside with adding even more difficult levels,

2:14:03 right? Yeah. They're going to be some psycho out there that wants it.

2:14:07 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, uh, I'll probably try it at some point. Um, right now my ta my tests have been with play testing, um, mainly. So, um, I'm actually I'm actually playing it on I'm not I'm basically I'm I'm playing it so that I can like see the see all the cards.

2:14:25 Do you test on TTS or how do you how do you test this?

2:14:28 It's solo. I do it by myself. But are you so are you just constantly just making new inserts or cards or whatever? What's the process around those cards?

2:14:37 I I do I do basically all my play testing in person. So that's that's un that's general. So I have a lot of people I invite over to for play testing on a a regular basis to my house and we play test games. Unstoppable is a weird different one. I I don't really need to have other people to play test it.

2:14:53 Yeah. Yeah. It's probably one of the easier develops for you, right? You don't have to worry about anyone else coming over. I mean, obviously, we want other people's feedback. We want we want

2:15:01 we want to observe people who aren't literally the designers of the game, designers and developers of the game playing it. Um uh but in terms of like does the cards I've made work? Is the boss that I've invented interesting to chip fight against? I can get all the way there just by play testing it myself. Yeah.

2:15:22 All right, John, let's wrap up. What uh what else is is coming down the pike for John Declair that's not in the unstoppable world that we can be excited about?

2:15:32 Um I think the next big announcement will be a um a crowdfunding campaign for the Stormlight Archive War of Roshar board game. Um, so this is a Brandon Sanders, another Brandon Sanderson, very popular book series, uh, called The Stormlight Archive, set on a different planet than Misttor, but, um, still in the same cosmir universe. And I've designed a a war a card- driven war game. I call it a herodriven uh, war game. It is um, your heroes are the the feature of of the game, but it is a dudes on a map game. Um, and it's card driven. Um, uh, 1 v one or 2v2. So, it's sort of like a War of the Ring or a Star Wars Rebellion type game. Um, but, uh, [snorts] it was really important to me that the 2v2 is like a real 2v2. Um, I do feel in both in both of those other games that I mentioned, um, those are they're really 1v one games with a with a suboptimal 2v2 variant, whereas I really wanted the War of the Roshar game, War of Roshar game to uh, the 2v2 is a genuine 2v2. Like both both players on the team are fully playing the game um, and not playing half of the game.

2:17:00 How far along are you on that one?

2:17:02 How long

2:17:03 How far along are you? The game is essentially done. Um, they're they're getting a there's a lot of artwork they're still getting done.

2:17:11 That should be on crowdfunding in September is the current schedule.

2:17:14 And we should have what? Mystic Lands delivering soon or has it delivered?

2:17:19 Um, Mystic Lands will deliver this fall.

2:17:23 Very cool.

2:17:24 Theoretically,

2:17:26 in theory. Awesome.

2:17:27 Yeah. So, Mystic Lands I'm pretty excited about. That is the evolution of Mystic Veil. Um, I wanted to I wanted a second stab at the Mystic Veil design. Um, you know, years later, there's a um there's a lot of things about that design that I liked, but a lot of things that I think could have been done better. Um, and uh uh AEG was on board with doing it. So, uh, Mystic Lands is not the same as Mystic Veil. We chose not to call it a second edition of Mystic Veil because, um, there's enough that's different. Uh but if you've played Mystic Veil, you will see a lot of DNA in um Mystic Lands. So we we we gave them a similar naming scheme um to clearly draw the line from one to the other, but we didn't just call it a second edition. Um yeah, and we spent a lot of time figuring out how to do the art. Uh so that like, you know, looking back at

2:18:24 Amazing.

2:18:25 Yeah. Looking back at Mystic Veil, the way we did the art and that is kind of lame. Um, uh, it's art is always a challenge with card crafting.

2:18:34 Yeah.

2:18:35 Um, and, uh, you know, a lot. It's funny. I talked to I've talked to a lot of people and done a lot of thinking about it. Um, a lot of people their first idea is why don't you just do sort of like um, almost like paper dolls, right? Like each piece of art layers on top and it creates a a picture. And that's how Canvas did it, right? So canvas canvas did it that way. And canvases canvas's cards are cool, right?

2:19:00 Um there's problems with that if you want to have art that isn't like Canvas's art, though. So canvas um canvas how they did it is basically there's like a background that's always that's just a card stock art the back, right? And then the plastic card you layer at the front like they go in different zones like one is like an overlay, one is right. So

2:19:23 and the order you put them in, they don't cover each other. It's just it it's it looks fine.

2:19:27 That's always a problem.

2:19:29 End of the game is literally about abstract weirdo art that doesn't make sense. Right.

2:19:33 Right. That's literally the theme of the game.

2:19:35 Yeah.

2:19:36 Right. They they they very wisely chose a theme that makes sense with art that doesn't make any sense. Right. Um, so if you want a game where your art actually makes sense and looks cool and like depth is appropriate, you don't have like you don't have a background tree sleeved in front of a foreground character, right? Um uh you need to like it's not just as simple as like yeah so some cards are foregrounds and some cards are backgrounds and you just layer them like well if you don't sleeve the foreground at the front if you accidentally sleeve it at the back now your like person that's standing supposedly at the front of the image is in front of this background tree that's like this big and right

2:20:16 and it looks looks terrible.

2:20:18 Yeah,

2:20:19 there's all kinds of complications. So so we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make it work. Um, and in the end, actually, the current layout was my idea, uh, inspired by some other people's thoughts, but ultimately my idea, my my original layout I did to try to make, uh, the cards, um, not be just abstract weirdo art, uh, but still be card crafting a beautiful piece of art on a card that is sort of cohesive. a single card is cohesive and doesn't look like some weirdo piece of art that is just like random things put on top of each other.

2:20:54 Cool. Well, I'm excited to see what comes out of that. Uh, anything else we miss?

2:20:59 There's a Misborn expansion coming this fall. Um, uh, there is uh a camp AEG game, a new AEG game I've got coming out this fall on crowdfunding. So, that'll probably be next year when it releases. um called Electrify. Uh [clears throat] it is it is engine building taken to the max sort of. Um

2:21:23 is that the official new term engine building taken to the Mac? Like momentum deck building.

2:21:29 Uh uh I don't think it's official, but uh yeah. And like it's um yeah. Yeah. You can you can you can combo things into quite powerful setups in that game. It's it's a it was inspired actually by um Civ New Dawn. I don't know if you've you're familiar with that one.

2:21:53 Civilization New Dawn

2:21:55 before Arnova ever more successfully popularized the line of action cards you choose when it goes to the back. Other games have done it before, right?

2:22:03 Um it's not like Arch Nova didn't innovate didn't create that idea. It just it just did it in the in a in a game system that really was fun, right?

2:22:11 People liked.

2:22:12 Um I really loved Civ New Dawn, which did that which also did that and I really liked it. Um and it engine it let you engine build it just a little like you could replace the card that was there with a better card. But I wanted to make that sort of like that system into the game. I was like, what if instead of that is driving some other game, what if that is the game and you're engine building that thing to be like more and more powerful?

2:22:37 Are you card crafting?

2:22:39 You're not card crafting. No card crafting.

2:22:42 You could you could in a system like that.

2:22:44 You're tile crafting.

2:22:46 Okay.

2:22:47 Um yeah. And then I think anything else I've got is going to be next year. I've got a a really cool auto battler. In my opinion, it's really cool. um coming out next next Gen Con in 2027, but that's always a ways off.

2:23:03 Beautiful.

2:23:04 John, it's been a pleasure. I've taken up way too much of your time. Two hours and 30 minutes. Um I appreciate it.

2:23:11 Thank you. Yeah, it was fun.

2:23:12 Yeah. No, it was great. Thanks for being here. And I Are you going to be at Origins this week?

2:23:16 No Origins for me. I will be at Gen Con.

2:23:19 All right. I I'll come say hi or find you.

2:23:22 Yeah. Yeah, we should we should connect.

2:23:23 Cool. Thanks, man.

2:23:25 All right. Bye, man. Bye.