I designed a board game... and it bombed.

armies collide might manipulation and just a little bit of luck will ultimately decide who takes the throne a trick-taking game with dice instead of cards that's the hook i'm adam porter i design games and i review them on this channel with a focus on product design and this review is going to be a little bit different because i'm going to be picking apart my least successful published design throne a game which never found an audience and received some pretty strong criticism online in this video i'm going to reflect on the mistakes i made in the production of the game the lessons i learnt and what it's like to design a game which one bgg user described as wow what crap throne was a 2019 release from wizkids designed by me and playable for three to five players in 30 minutes or so in throne each player draws a selection of dice from the box without looking each round of the game is made up of several tricks and to start a trick one player rolls between one and three dice of any single color from their pool of dice then each subsequent player must decide how many dice they want to roll in an attempt to beat the other player's scores if they're able to all players must roll dice matching the colour rolled by the first player if they're not able to roll a matching colour they can roll one to three dice of any colour in an attempt to roll a trump and in throne a trump is a roll of six on any individual die if any player rolled a trump they win the trick if no trumps were rolled the highest roll in the starting player's chosen colour wins and if there's a tie the later player to roll wins the trick the winner of the trick gains one gold for each dice rolled in the trick which wasn't their own then all dice are discarded and the trick winner is the first to roll into the next trick the twists in throne come from the four cards which are laid out at the start of each round and each of these cards relates to one of the dice colors and allocates a specific power to dice of that color for example if the knight is in play you can discard a white die on your turn to re-roll your dice if the wizard is in play you can discard a white die to turn one of your dice to its opposite side the red powers target your opponents dice if the archer is in play you can discard a red dye to return one of your opponents roll dice to their pool green powers activate when a certain dice result is rolled so if the thief is in play and you roll a one or a two on a green die you take one gold from the player with the most gold blue powers activate whenever you win a trick containing dice of that color if the noble is in play and you win a trick containing blue dice you gain an additional two gold finally purple powers are used in the advanced game and you assign a color to them at the start of the round they have a variety of effects for example if the imp is in effect and the trick contains dice of the imps color the player who would normally come second in the trick instead wins the trick a round ends when only one player has dice remaining and that player loses one gold for each die left in their pool for each new round a new selection of cards is chosen and after a number of rounds equal to the number of players the player with the most gold wins the game product onboarding is the process by which a user moves from being unaware of a product to a fully engaged user and in relation to board games the onboarding process starts with the user's first interactions with the game picking it up on a store shelf watching a video review opening the box for the first time sorting the components reading the rules teaching the game playing it for the first time packing it away and returning it to the shelf so as always i'll start with outward presentation every box cover makes a promise and the game inside needs to deliver on those promises the cover the throne is difficult to pin down what is it promising from the artwork alone i'd guess generic fantasy my name is up front and center but it has no real utility i'm not a strong enough brand to drive sales in the way that uber rosenberg or stefan feld or vital asurder might so we're reliant largely on the wizkid's branding to pull customers in throne followed hot on the heels of some other really good fantasy titles in similarly sized boxes with similar art styles from the same publisher fantasy realms and rock paper wizard were both exceptional games and commercially very successful i would guess that some of the early purchases of throne were made by fans of those products well that's a lot for my little game to live up to a great box cover should tell us what we're going to be doing in the game cover of throne doesn't give any indication of the nature of the gameplay several years on i still give myself a little pat on the back for the title thrown a nice little gag referencing the dice chucking nature of the game but in the absence of any supporting visual clues or even a subtitle the pun is lost the reverse of the box has a pretty clear description of the gameplay but that of course is only useful if a customer is motivated to flip the walks over and take a closer look it's really hard to be critical of your own product but i've been outspoken about plenty of games from other designers and publishers on this channel so as painful as it is i think it's a process worth going through and it's certainly an exercise which i would encourage any other inventor to do with your own designs reflection self-awareness and insight are valuable tools and they're going to help you to weather the highs and lows of the life of a game designer i've often stated that a great board game cover should tell us how we're gonna feel play in the game a throne is a mixed bag here the four characters portrayed on the cover clearly depict a battle between different factions and the game is indeed competitive and in your face i think the wizard image is the most evocative primarily because he's in a really dynamic stance where the others are all rather passive i'm not a huge fan of box covers which reuse card art i do prefer a unique cover image designed specifically for the job but i appreciate that this comes at an additional cost for a publisher my main observation about the art style for throne is that it's all very serious i envisaged the game to have some humor but somewhere along the line that was lost and we ended up with some really capably drawn but rather insipid characters and that's my biggest regret with the production i really should have laid out a clearer vision for the look of the game the feel of playing throne is much closer to munchkin or bucket king 3d or epic spell wars of the battle wizards my main recollection of play testing throne was that we laughed a lot that was what made me fall in love with the design a game of throne was a chaotic affair not to be taken seriously i want to be clear here that this era is on me not the publisher i've only identified this issue on reflection and hindsight is a wonderful thing the journey to the final artwork was a bumpy road the initial set of samples sent by an early artist on the game were not suitable at all and i was relieved when the final images were sent through to me the artist had been replaced and the images were clearer crisper and brighter it was a little late at this point to change direction or make major alterations so i was happy to approve the art albeit i requested some changes to help a little bit with diversity among the characters in the game the next step in the onboarding process is learning the rules throne is a relatively simple system but for many play testers it seemed impenetrable i spent a couple of years testing the game with different groups and i repeatedly tweaked the graphic design and terminology on my prototype to make it easier to grasp i was never really honest enough with myself that it was the core engine of the game that players were struggling with i sent the game to blind playtesters and they fed back that they weren't sure they'd fully understood the rules i had similar feedback from the early publishers that i showed the game to they weren't sure that they'd played it correctly and each time i assumed that the errors were in my rules writing rather than recognizing that there was something more fundamental wrong here the central system just wasn't very intuitive as a side note i think the game makes a lot more sense if you're very experienced with trick taking card games and if you look at the game as an experiment in translating those traditional mechanisms into a dice game format as an experimental design i think it's really intriguing but that doesn't translate to a great commercial product upon release one online commenter would write a really cool and simple idea simple elegant and obvious but it doesn't work at all i'm pretty happy with the final rule book i was given total control over writing those rules which makes it hard for me to look at them objectively but i did put in a lot of time to ensure that they were thorough and clear and that they covered all the many situations which could potentially arise with the vast number of different card combinations in the game incidentally i didn't play fantasy realms or rock paper wizard until shortly after the release of throne and i had a moment of realization upon playing these two brilliant games they are so simple so streamlined they make thrones rule set look incomprehensible so i've come to the conclusion that onboarding is a problem in throne and perhaps an insurmountable one but let's take a look at the gameplay as with all my reviews i'll analyze the game using my ladder engagement system i score the game between zero and three in five different categories and each point scored climbs the game one rung up the ladder a score of 10 or above sits atop the ladder and indicates a real favourite with me for thematic immersion throne scores zero the theme is meaningless and only really chosen to give some opportunities for artwork and names for the cards to help you remember their abilities the powers do tend to have some relation to the characters so the thief steals stuff the shapeshifter alters the powers of other cards and many of the heroic powers have an evil counterpart the knight manipulates your own dice the dark knight manipulates your opponents likewise for the heroic wizard and the evil sorcerer for interaction it's a three the game is extremely interactive with lots of opportunities to compete with your opponents and a hefty dose of take that the ability to swap out powers from the deck means that you can customize the experience to include the level of interaction that you're comfortable with but the game is at its most enjoyable when played with a bunch of light-hearted players who are willing to get screwed over repeatedly with a smile on their face for stress and challenge it's a two throne is a pretty tense game there are lots of push your luck moments opportunities to throw another dice into the mix then another one in the hope of winning the pot but dwindling your own supply of dice in the process for feedback it's a three the game offers up rewards constantly at the end of each trick players gain points in the form of coins if they've achieved the highest total but even in the midst of a trick the game offers rewards for taking certain actions a dice result will allow you to manipulate the game state in some way or to gain or lose dice from your pool or to attack your opponents for meaningful decisions it's a one throne does feature decisions largely about when to use the powers on display and when to push your luck and spend your resources to further your position and when to hold them back but inevitably as a dice rolling game the results are heavily influenced by chance i will say that among my group of regular playtesters there are players who win repeatedly and others who never score a victory in this game there's certainly a knack to play in the game well the overall score of nine is very good while falling slightly short of classic status as i've frequently done with other games i have to make deductions for the onboarding process the unintuitive rules and the uninspiring presentation i'll deduct two points which leaves the game with a respectable seven i have to say as the designer of the game i find it really engaging and i'm always happy to play it gets a mixed response among other players though it's very polarizing i've certainly seen some players love the game while others have taken an immediate dislike to it a common criticism is that the final player in the trick has too much control they can manipulate the other player's results to ensure that they win in my head i never saw this as an issue it's the case in all trick-taking games and it's heavily mitigated by the fact that the winner of a trick plays first in the next trick but it does seem to leave a sour taste in the mouth of some players so i can't ignore that feedback for whatever reason players seem to expect a level playing field in each and every round and that's just not how throne plays out so onto my product design checklist is the game innovative yeah i think it is i designed the game straight off the back of design in picoco a trick taking game where you can't see your own cards i love dice games and trick taking games and i wanted to combine the two shortly after throne was signed but before it was released skull king the dice game was published by schmitzspieler this game is another trick-taking game using dice instead of cards and it's fun if very random but frankly i think the concepts and solutions that i developed in throne are more interesting does the game answer a need well if you'd asked me while i was developing the game i'd have said yes absolutely people love trick taking games and they love dice games there is no game which combines the two players are going to love it but if you ask me now i'll give you a different answer with throne i identified a gap in the market and i filled it but the truth is that people love trick taking games and they love dice games but they don't love trick taking dice games trick taking fans are very particular about what a trick taking game should and should not be the chaos of rolling dice was not welcomed by trick-taking aficionados and the complexities of the trick-taking tradition were not welcomed by dice chucking fans throne falls between two stools is the game able to grow with its user yes absolutely it's a real strength of the product there are 22 different cards provided in the game you use four in each round that means there are tons of different versions of the game to explore it's gonna feel different every time you play and i created at least 20 more cards which were discarded to hone the deck to the simpler more intuitive options during development so there was always scope for expansion if the game had done well so let's place throne onto my idea execution matrix a successful commercial product has an outstanding central concept at its core married with brilliant execution by designer and publisher alike the best sellers sit in the orange red section of the grid and the commercial failures languish in the blue section throne is a mediocre commercial idea i think it's a fascinating game design challenge rework a popular card game mechanism using dice but i suspect that there just isn't much of an audience for dye space trick takers that said sushi roll successfully re-implemented sushi go with dice and quarriers had a stab at re-implementing dominion though comparatively its success was short-lived so perhaps the problems with throne were more in its execution both in terms of my unintuitive and take that heavy central engine and in terms of the outward presentation of the game in his dice tower review tom vassell lambasted the weight of the dice and the size of the coin tokens perhaps a little overstated in his review but he has a point this wasn't a lavish production the result is that throne sits in the bottom left corner of the grid a commercial flop it sold a few hundred copies and then disappeared i normally round off a review at this point but i wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about how it feels to create a product which fails my first inkling that things weren't going well with throne should have been in the play tests where i was already getting polarized feedback i was all too ready to listen to the players who enjoyed the game and i dismissed the players who didn't like it i trusted my instincts because i had a whale of a time play in the game to me it was a total joy the game got a lot of interest when i demoed it to publishers many of them took it for further testing and then later rejected it things weren't looking good but then zev slashinger from wizkids threw me a lifeline i guess that slew of early rejections prepared me a little bit for the negative response upon release but i still had high hopes the production process was a little awkward the earliest artwork samples which weren't created by the final artist were really poor and i was gutted to think that the game was going to end up looking subpar thankfully wizkids recognized the problems with the art and they bought a new artist on board likewise i was disappointed with the lack of diversity in the artwork but wizkids were very willing to make the changes that i suggested but as a new designer i didn't want to make waves and i didn't push back as hard as i should have the most crushing moment was the early dice tower review a few weeks before the game hit retail tom vassell shot the game down hard for being too random and for the cheap looking production it feels bad when you watch a review like that there's no pre-warning just an initial frisson of excitement at the prospect of an endorsement from the biggest name in board game media and then a massive heart sync when you see where this is going it's hard not to be defensive about bad reviews it's natural to conclude that they got it wrong they just didn't play it enough or they just didn't understand i didn't watch the dice tower for a while after that before i got over myself and returned to old viewing habits if the game was good enough it would have overcome a bad review from tom vassell the dice tower has been such a valuable source of information over the years and i'm grateful for the work that they do the hurt was compounded when a board game geek user posted a thread on the throne page with the title killed outright by the dice tower for a while this was the only thing you could read online about throne that was tough i really really wanted to see some written reviews and video reviews to offer a counter point but that never really happened again as a designer it's tempting to place the blame at the feet of the publisher they could have supported your game more pushed it more made people aware but the truth is even more than reviews publishers listen to distributors and international partners if they're showing your game to retailers and no one wants to stock it if they're demoing your game to convention goers and no one wants to buy it they'll rapidly cut their losses and move on to the next product better luck next time and that's only right they have a business to run there have been lighter moments since throne was released some written reviews that were positive the occasional nice comment on bgg from a player who's discovered and enjoyed the game and considers it a bit of a hidden gem i'm so grateful for these little moments of positivity because generally the published game has not brought me much pleasure and it certainly hasn't brought me any financial reward the highs of designing throne were all pre-release falling about laughing with friends developing masses of special powers and seeing how they interacted with each other realizing my own personal goal of creating a dice based trick taker essentially designing a game just for me and frankly that's where it should have remained so lessons learned listen to your play testers especially the negative ones watch your play testers how do they feel when they play your game just because you enjoy the game that's not enough not everyone is like you listen to publishers if your game is rejected over and over again there comes a point where it's time to have a word with yourself and shelve the project be honest with yourself that review might be flawed the publisher might not have done their best work but if your game is good enough it will overcome these hurdles well it's been cathartic getting this off my chest i might do a few more retrospectives like this for some of my other games but probably not until enough time has passed from release i can offer a more objective less emotional response in the meantime please check out the many many other game design videos and reviews on my channel and even better subscribe so i can keep you up to date with the latest videos and i love it when you comment to let me know your thoughts until next time all the best