From Prototype to Publication - The Bazaar Diaries Part 1: Early Playtesting
[Read our full Froggy Bazaar series here: www.pineislandgames.com/bazaar-diaries]
I’m working on a game that I expect us to bring to market in 2024 or 2025. It’s called Froggy Bazaar.
Now that I’ve been through this process a couple of times, I thought it would be elucidating to write a series exploring – in real time - the entire process of bringing a game from an idea to publication and beyond.
Just a frog doing frog things…
My goal is for this to be a resource for other publishers, where we delve deep into everything from balancing the game, to building a budget, hiring an illustrator, finding a manufacturer, marketing, fulfillment, getting the game into distribution, localization and more.
So, let’s hop on in… This is Froggy Bazaar.
Genesis
While this series is intentionally not a design diary – I do need to level set where we are in the process, and how we got here.
I first had the idea for Froggy Bazaar back in summer 2021. That first iteration was an economic game where you have a frog avatar which hops from lily pad to lily pad collecting resources. You could build shops on the lily pads which could be activated by any player – giving a bonus to the player who owned them.
The game had some legs, but I never solved the economic side of it, and the project slipped into the background as I focused on other games and projects (but not before I somehow managed to lock down a BGG page for it).
What always stuck with me though was the simple movement mechanism of hopping the from lily pad to lily pad collecting resources.
A few weeks ago I had the idea to use that movement mechanism and combine it with tableau building a la Sagrada (Safrogda?).
I whipped up a prototype with pen and paper and gave it a whirl.
Is it Fun?
My design process is a little counter to what I recommend, and for what most designers recommend. I tend to do a lot of design in my head thinking through how the mechanisms work together and playing out sequences of the game. I do this before I even put pen to paper.
I think an approach that is more useful to most designers is to get pen to paper as soon as possible and start playing, and tweaking, and iterating.
Either way, eventually I get my components out in front of me and I get to ask myself the most important question: is it fun?
And, if you haven’t realized it by the fact that I am writing an entire series on publishing this game, Froggy Bazaar is fun, it is a lot of fun.
It also works, right out of the bat the gameplay was smooth. There is still a lot of work to do, but I’m already confident that we have something on our hands that people like (although we’ll eventually need blind playtesting to really solidify that assumption).
Quick Overview
Within the next few weeks I’ll have a Tabletop Simulator version of Froggy Bazaar up for general playtesting, but for now I think it’s worth giving a brief overview of what this game is mechanically.
Froggy Bazaar is a tableau building and movement game, where you play a frog hopping from lily pad to lily pad collecting bugs (dice) to add to your rucksack. End of game scoring is based on secret and public bugjectives based on the pattern of dice (numbers and color) in your rucksack.
On a player’s turn they have three optional actions
Hop to an adjacent lily pad – collect the die on the tile to add to the top row of your tableau. Then replace the die with a random die from the bag.
BIG hop – re-roll all dice on the top row of your tableau and re-distribute them (get one bonus froggy buck).
Go to market – trade dice the top row of your tableau with the communal market.
The game ends at the end of the round when a player fills their rucksack (12 slots). Whoever has the most points wins.
Early Playtesting
In early playtesting with my closest circle, I’ve answered two of the most important questions about Froggy Bazaar – 1. is it fun? and 2. does it work?
I am in the process of making a basic Tabletop Simulator version so that I can test the game with a broader group of people – like our Pine Island community, and a broader group of friends and colleagues.
We have very serious playtesters…
In this next round of playtesting I’ll be focused on a couple of things around design and development.
I’m not 100% happy with the market mechanisms I’ve tried – so will be testing some more.
I need to make sure that other people like the game and identify where there is friction in gameplay.
I’ll be balancing the bugjectives.
Like most things game design, playtesting is iterative. As we continue to playtest and broaden our playtester base what we focus on will evolve. Eventually we’ll focus more on player experience, where there is friction, whether our target demographic (psychographic) likes the game, and whether it works in blind playtesting.
It might take me a few installments to really find the right structure and voice for these articles. Let me know in the comments whether you like this kind of content, and what topics you’d like to see covered.
In the next installment I share early thoughts on Froggy Bazaar’s market positioning and comps and what that means for box size, artwork, and MSRP.
When were you confident that your game was publishable?
