Game Design Update: Balancing contraband

This week I’ve been building the cards for a the card game Stand By Your Beds. The game involves prisoners smuggling contraband into their rooms in an attempt to gain reputation, which will reduce their time inside. The cards have different tags on them to indicate which category or categories of contraband they fall under – food, comfort, decor. Having made one full set of cards, I spent a long time going over the maths, calculating probabilities and balancing the different tags on the contraband. So a whole new set of cards is in the making. In addition, some cards will have special abilities which may give players additional scoring combinations, or indeed penalties. The game involves card drafting, so players have some control over which cards they try to smuggle and which they pass off to others. Players will also have ‘Snitch’ tokens, which they use to stop others from successfully smuggling contraband. More work is needed on the cards, then proper play-testing can begin.

I’ve also begun working on a card placement game using the imps. There will be a Dark Imp playmat, which can be used for this game, but will also have a scoring track that can be used for any game. I’ve experimented with several different card placement rules and objectives, but the mechanics aren’t right yet. I need to find the right combination of simple to learn and interesting to play. Tile placement rules must be intuitive and not too confusing. Back to the playmat for more experimentation.