Last time I posted in the design diary, I told you how we finally arrived at the version of Bloomhunter we thought could go the distance. We had a combination of mechanics that felt fresh, interesting, and full of potential. But as any designer at any level can tell you, that’s only step one of approximately bleventeen thousand.
Since we had scrapped our first two versions, we were reluctant to invest in materials before seeing if this ruleset worked. Anneka and I cobbled together a mockup from construction paper and pieces from other games — tiles from Calico, cubes from Dominare, minis from Flamecraft, and those cool compass thingies from Lost Ruins of Arnak. After our first few plays, we realized something: it was fun. This new design built its own emergent gameplay in a way the first two versions had never managed. Seeking to make the decision space understandable and meaningful, we hit on the idea of using flowers to hire assistants and purchase tiles from a market, while also making sets of flowers the quickest way to score points. Since trading away flowers too often could hurt, we added atlases as another currency; thematically, you’re gathering information on flower fields and using it to seek them out.
Next, we imported an idea from version 1.0: character cards that would add color and depth to both the world and gameplay. These were initially just one-off powers, but came to play a vital role in another way to score points. Not wanting the race for bouquets to be the sole object of the game, we decided to add points for area control on each island, with influence coming from a combination of hirelings and favors done for passengers. We soon added a third method of scoring points, a set of noble families represented by tracks (based on the cults from Terra Mystica). This added yet another thing that flowers could be used for, expanding the game yet again.
We were hesitant to fall in love for a while, but after repeated plays, the bones of the game held. We played it at two, three, and four players, used different strategies, added powers for each island to put further hitches in the experience. We made a 3.1, a 3.2, but never a 4.0. Bloomhunter v3 had become just…Bloomhunter.
It wasn’t long before we were ready to put the basic design before people outside our family. In the next post, I’ll talk about how that went, and what it changed.
No responses yet