In the first two posts in this series, I have covered the types of solo mode and a lot of my thoughts on them. In this, the final part I’ll cover a bit more of how I go about putting these together and testing them.
Using the brief
By now I should have instilled the importance to my methods of writing a brief. We know what we are trying to achieve now’s the time to work out how. I’ll play the game 2-handed and with another person. During these plays I’ll write lots of notes on all the things we have already covered. With all that information I should be able to start to form my idea of how to make a solo game. I’ll look at our 3 types and work out what style to go for, much of this will be determined already, but it’s always good to look at the overlaps in our Venn diagram. For puzzles I’ll concentrate on variability or story telling, challenges is about the framework, and opponent how to recreate another player.
If you have a restriction on components now’s the time to make sure you can do it. No point in designing a system with custom dice if the publisher won’t pay for them. Always keep the publisher in the loop with component count, going one card over a print sheet, or a token over the current punchboard can be a very expensive choice. My default AI method is cards so I’ll think about what the cards need to do and what information I need on them. Look at what the games comes with anyway, re-using existing stuff can be very helpful, especially if it’s nice stuff to play with. When you’re ready, sketch up a draft and play it. A lot.
Playtesting
It’s a solo game so you have no excuse for not being able to test it. Just keep playing it and making changes as you need to. In the early stages it’s all about the experience, are you fulfilling the brief? Is it working? Are you winning or losing? Don’t worry too much about balance, just get something that does what you want it to.
As you play the game more you can start to refine and balance it. Recording data is essential for this. You need to know how you’re scoring well or exactly where the tides turn within a game. Start to work on balancing and difficulty but be warned: By now you will be good at the game!
I know my solo win rate on the sort of games I play is around 85% on normal settings, once I’ve playtested a solo game enough to think it’s in a good state, I’m probably winning 95% of the time. It is very easy to think at this stage that the game you have designed is too easy. It isn’t. You’ve just got good at. I played Chocolate Factory about 50 times in a 3 week period. I got good at it. I was winning every game. Then we shared the files, almost all the feedback came back that it was too hard.
Get other people to playtest your game. It’s a bit ironic but you can’t playtest solo games without other people. You need lots of new players to make sure it’s going to be great straight out of the box. I’ll often return my draft to the publisher or designer to do this and put pressure on them to get it tested as much as possible. Yes I’ll want general feedback but this mostly about balancing and difficulty.
Difficulty
Once you have difficulty set, look at how that can be varied, what can you do to make it easier and harder. There is merit in both fixed levels and some customisation. Nick Shaw does a great job of this, providing around 3 set levels, say easy, normal, and hard but also a number of small tweaks to tailor the experience. These all need testing but that’s something you can do as you have a baseline to work from. The wider playtesting should give you all you need to build normal, test yourself against normal then build an easier version and a harder version. Don’t be afraid to make hard really hard, perhaps verging on impossible, some people enjoy falling just short over winning easily. Be wary of making easy too easy, if a player plays on easy for their first game and finds it boring or satisfying they may never make the effort to play it again!
Conclusion
There is as much to learn and explore about solo design as there is about game design in general and I love it! There is a unique thrill when you design a solo mode and beats you for the first time in a close and exciting game. I always likened it to Doctor Frankenstein and his monster. In the same way not everyone is a solo gamer, not everyone can design a good solo experience. If you need help, ask, as with all things board games the community is very supportive. Sometimes designing solo play will feedback into your multiplayer game, this happened with the corner shops in Chocolate Factory. Solo gaming is a huge market now so it’s always worth having a look at solo play for your game, but it has to be good, if it isn’t don’t do it. Hopefully these blogs will help you make more good solo modes, or get me to do them for you! 🙂