#61 - Amazing Board Game Hooks

Music. Hello, and welcome to Fun Problems, the problems of AJ. I'm Peter C.

Hayward. I'm the problem. And today we're doing a, I guess, would you class this as follow-up? Kind of. We gave the community some homework based off of an interesting creative exercise that Jay from Australia came up with, where you come up with three strong hooks for your game, and that's the only description of the game.

And that should alone be enough to sell it and excite you for it this is done before you start working on the game something to like something to like cement the idea as a vision so the idea of the exercise was if you do 10 of these you probably come up with one where you're like oh actually i want to make that and having started from hooks makes the selling process a thousand times easier we are we we realize we've been very industry heavy lately so we just recorded two

craft episodes back to back and we're gonna we're going to continue trying to focus on craft but this was just such a fun little exercise and the community came up with some really cool stuff so we just wanted to share our favorites and share thoughts so we already did some homework as follow-up on a previous episode where we did the exercise but since then we've had a lot of really interesting submissions so we did have one thing come up which i just want to briefly address a lot of

people were sharing something as a hook that I wouldn't count as a hook. And it's a loose definition. I'm not the arbiter of what is a hook and what isn't. Actually, AJ, do you want to very quickly just describe a hook, just the general term for a hook as the way that we use it on the show? Yep. A hook is a very brief description, usually one sentence, that describes something about the game that whets the appetite of the person that you're trying to interest into the game.

And the whole point of it is to get that person to say, oh, I want to play that because you just said the heck out loud, and that sounds really exciting. So just by itself, like just from hearing the hook, I want to play your game. And that's really important because I think some people would come up with like maybe one really good hook and then just fill in the others with descriptions.

Whereas this exercise was specifically come up with a single product that has a thematic hook, a component hook, and a mechanical hook. And the idea, and we were talking about this between episodes, most published games don't have three big hooks like that.

My best-selling game is things in rings it doesn't really have a no you know what it does okay that's a bad example because i think that hits three quite nicely but um my second best-selling game is critter kitchen and critter kitchen has like cute animals cooking that's a hook for some people for sure it doesn't really have a component hook it has a bunch of animal-shaped meeples i guess but i don't think i don't think anyone's buying the game just for those meeples right that that's

that's a good way to put it by the way it's like yes maybe the theme is is kind of interesting yes maybe this mechanic is kind of interesting but would someone hear this description and be like i'm going to buy the game i don't even need to hear anything else oh i i lie uh critic kitchen has a massive component hook which is the art by sandra tank sandara tank but as the designer i had no control over that right you know we presented like you could do this right exactly and.

Then critic kitchen's mechanical hook i i don't think i don't think it summarizes into a sentence so critic kitchen almost like as a product as a final game i think it hits it sees more than it did in a pitch so you don't you don't need to have these to sell a game to a publisher the publisher definitely needs at least one to sell it to consumers i would argue but the point of this exercise was not yeah come up with something that could be a game someday it was like come up with a component hook

that just from the component you would buy the game a thematic hook that just from the theme you would buy a game and a mechanical hook that just from mechanics you would buy a game and i just want to make that differentiation because i think that is quite difficult to understand especially if you're like i've got one that i'll just describe the other two cool that's great and you're already like in in a good position if you have one really good

hook but that's not the exercise the exercise was three different hook three you know a hook that hits all three combined into one product.

Do you want to read the first one? Yes. This is from Jeremy. Let's just do first names because we didn't actually ask anyone's permission to put these. So this is Jeremy on our Discord. The game is called Echoes of the Deep. The thematic hook, you're a crew of telepathic divers exploring an alien ocean beneath an ice moon, where spoken language is impossible and memory is fragile. This is not a cell sheet episode. We are not going to pick these apart the same

way. I do think this is a few too many things to be a hook. This is like five different ideas. But I think it's cool. Like, for me, the thing here is spoken language is impossible and memory is fragile. I'm like, oh, how does that play? How do you, you know, I'm intrigued by that. Yeah. And my only note here was the telepathic divers. I said this in the Discord. I don't think that's super necessary. Like, if you're already exploring a moon,

this is already in the future. It's sci-fi. You can just explain that away as something else. Just a few less words and focus on the really cool stuff that's in there.

For example, an alien ocean beneath an ice moon. beneath a nice moon does not add to my desire to play the game right it's it's a description but not not hook uh component hook a modular board simulating ocean currents with translucent uv reactive tokens representing alien life forms and discoveries only visible under a special light aj this is cool as heck cool as heck and i i clarified later i was like just just to be clear like it's not just you know

shine a light on it and it looks cool like that impacts the gameplay right and they said yes it does i'm i'm already in like that's so strong yeah yeah and and and part of what this exercise does really nicely is it means you're not coming up with like a game and they'd be like what's the component hook i can add oh this like they are integrated right from the start and i think i think this came up with the one that i suggested with the like the rising water like if all

three parts of that i didn't have much of a thematic hook but the component of the mechanical hook were very directly tied together like they it wasn't like it's got gears and it's got this they were one thing that was unified uh mechanical hook players communicate only through a limited pool of abstract symbols drawn randomly using a memory decay system where information vanishes from the board over time unless reinforced i don't think he captured this this

came up in the conversation do you want to describe what he talked to us about they didn't go into more detail afterwards but but to me what the way i read this is.

There's you're sort of building a language as you go over the course of the game like there's no like set this is what the language means it's like over the course of the game you ascribe oh this symbol means this but i think the idea is like over time like generations of people might forget a word or language evolves and if you want to keep that word in the zeitgeist you have to like spend effort to reinforce it that that's my interpretation

of it that sounds really the thing that i remember and maybe i made this up in my head was that the uv light was going to be set up in a way that like over the course of like the hour-long game it gets dimmer and dimmer and. Oh, maybe they did say that and I missed that. That sounds sick. I might be confusing with something else, but I thought that was more of a component hook. But like that mechanics of like information vanishes from the board unless reinforced.

So you can see something using a UV light, but every time you go back, it's dimmer and dimmer. Oh man, there's so much cool stuff here.

Nice work, Jeremy. Okay, do you want to read Duncan's? Perchance to dream, thematic hook. Players are all dreams within the sleeping consciousness, trying to be remembered when the sleeper awakes love it love it, so cool yes that's awesome I feel like there's going to be a little wave especially off the unconscious mind of like.

Internal games I think that's such a like inside out style I think that's such a rich territory and I think that this is like you are a dream trying to be remembered when the sleeper wakes up ah that's so cool that's great, mechanical hook network building game with ribbons that players can move between nodes because of brain plasticity and that leads into component ribbons have metal aglets that attach to magnetic points on the board

yeah i i've played a decent number of string games in my time things and rings has like strings so that you can make different areas larger and smaller but that's just a utility thing not a mechanical thing and there is there is something really cool about like, putting physical ribbons and strings out and like navigating between them i love that yeah and i'd play the heck out of this game and the idea of like you're connecting like neural nodes and stuff like that to like that just

sounds so interesting yeah great job i i think we discussed this a few episodes back but i can't remember if it's on the podcast or not so remind me if it wasn't but like we do a lot of these like pitching and and product and market stuff.

But oh no that's right i was going to talk about this okay i want to i want to tangent immediately okay i want to talk a little bit about promise and delivering on the promise because i think that those are the two halves of being a professional game designer and i think that they are two very distinct halves and i think we normally talk about it in terms of industry or like pitching and craft but we we looked at a sell sheet in our most recent sell sheet episode about

it was something like you know criminals by by night policemen by day that's such an incredible promise and then the game wasn't that and so i just wanted to briefly talk about like the way to to to get ahead in this industry is being able to craft a promise that gets people in and that's literally what we're doing here like that's what these hooks are, and then much much harder i think is delivering on the promise and that's the craftsmanship,

So Duncan, your game, oh man, I want to play the heck out of that. The challenge, challenge is a weird word, but like if you, if you make this game deliver, this will be a hit. Like, cool. You've got a hit on your hand. And the challenge is in balancing those two, because I can make a very easy promise and deliver on that promise really well. Cool. That game's less likely to be signed than somebody who makes a great promise and doesn't deliver on it, which is frustrating.

But the hits are the ones where you make a great promise and then deliver on them. And I think people tend to get intimidated by that. So they lower their standards for the promise so they can hit it. Whereas if you, if you swing bigger than hit, that's how you get a hit. Yeah. Whenever I hear something that's like, you know, it's something really thematic. I'm like, oh boy, I get to be an astronaut and I get to fly to the moon.

And it's got all this sort of like interesting stuff about like how you, I don't know, I'm just making an example out of the spot. Right. But something that like really gets me going and then I play it and it's like, oh cool.

This is just you know this you know it's dominion a different coat of paint like that's super disappointing i think yeah none of this is an attack on duncan by the way oh no like duncan it just this is what triggered the thought yeah i i think there was a really informative time for me when i was playing descent back when i was very young descent first edition you could oh wow.

And in that game it's like you target that's what you've invented yet you target space and you attack it or target enemy and attack it whatever and if you're a melee character you're right beside them if you're a ranged character it's up to whatever spaces away it's like yeah i mean okay whatever you you can it works it works no no shade on it i played a lot of that game i like that game yeah but then you see a dragon and how many

board games have you played where it's like here's a dragon wow that sounds really cool dragons have conjure so much resonance in me that that sounds so awesome what does it do it has a 10 health and six attack oh all right what what the dragon does in this game is it flies what does that mean that means it can stand on top of anything like you can put the model over top of obstacles it ignores them it flies that makes sense how does the dragon attack does it attack melee yeah it could or

it could use ranged attacks because of course it has the fire breathing but it doesn't do that it has a fire breathing breath template that looks like a cone of fire and what does it hit exactly what that cone of fire overlaps ah pay off so good.

Amazing jay the starter of the of the whole thing aj do you want to do jays. Handle with care. So this one, they had a meme sort of giving the flavor. But basically, it's tongue-in-cheek handle with care. It's like the classic delivery person who just throws your package instead of carefully placing it kind of a thing. Mechanical, deliver packages by literally throwing them to their destinations. The more you throw, the more you can earn. But if it breaks too much or doesn't

reach its destination, you get nothing. I love this.

And component? custom chunky chunky custom dice that look like packages with sides like fragile stickers for bonus points or damage failure return to senders keep to reroll etc so overall as a package this is excellent excellent excellent my only note would be i feel like the chunky dice just like oh it randomly is lying on the bad side versus the good side i'd prefer if it was a little bit more like i don't know how you would do it or what component you

would use or something but i want it to be something like oh you threw it too hard well then the thing falls apart like imagine like a cardboard like folded box instead of a die yeah you throw that and if it unrolls it's like ah it broke but overall this is awesome you could do like a custom die where they're actually really loosely attached right totally and i think too there's something to be said for a throwing dexterity

game there's not too many dexterity games that are throwing based most of them are balancing carefully or or flicking. I do just want to use this as an example. I think we both really love this. Oh, yeah. This is a good example where the thematic hook, I would say, isn't strictly a hook. Because it gets a chuckle. It's a cute idea. You're a delivery guy who is really bad at delivering.

That by itself is not enough to buy me a game. Now, I think it integrates so well with the component and mechanics that it's not a problem. But I would not say that is strictly a thematic hook. That's just a theme. Right. But this is exactly what you're just saying, right? There's a promise. It's going to be a tongue-in-cheek delivery game. Is it a dry Euro where you're, you know, collecting cards? Right, right. No, no, no. You're checking them. That's what you want to feel like.

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, great job, Jay. Hey, Carl.

Game is called Capricious. Thematic. As a god, you want to grow your flock faster than the other gods, but to gain power, you must sacrifice some of them. This, for me, is a thematic hook. Like, just from that, I'm like, oh, I want to play this game. Like, that gets me, like, I love playing gods in games. I love that idea of, like, you're trying to, like, get people but sacrifice them to get more. Like, that's just all really interesting.

Yeah. I'm hoping it doesn't feel something like, oh, victory points are money. You can spend money to get ahead and just one-to-one. But yes, like you said, I'm still on board with this. This sounds cool. Yeah. Component. Beads you toss for floods. Meteors you drop on villages. String slash thick fabric you roll out is an earthquake fault line. Did you play SimCity when you were younger? Oh, I guess recently.

Disasters in SimCity were always one of the most fun parts. Like, you had the cyclone come in and destroy your town or the floods, or like one of them had Godzilla kind of attacks, a kaiju. This feels like that. Like, I'm just like, oh man. And like using different, so I don't know how much of a component hook this is for me, but the integration between the component and the theme of like, it's disasters that are each a different physical component. That is a hook for me.

Exactly. I don't necessarily need it to be beads for floods specifically, but having different components to represent those different things sounds great. They're going to have different tactile feels, so each one of those is going to play differently, and it's going to presumably affect the board in different ways mechanically. It sounds super cool. Mechanical. Grow your power exponentially by sacrificing your workers or other gods' workers.

Go from accelerating crop growth to creating landscape-changing disasters.

I don't think this is a mechanical hook for me. it's to me i think the mechanical hook of like the the thematic hook was already enough for me, yeah it's kind of tricky because the component hook is also i would say the mechanical hook here right like yeah it's sim city disasters but as like ancient gods that's really cool yeah one thing that i i feel compelled to note is that hook is also very subjective yes there are games that i would not touch with a nine-foot pole that aj would drool over

and absolutely vice versa based on their various hooks. I'm going to do Nathaniel's. Sure.

Nathaniel, mechanical hook. The center of the game is a metronome with a ticking slowly getting faster and faster. Players must take an action at every click, either passing, drawing, or playing a card. I really like this. Yeah. I don't know that it would work. And so this is one where this feels like a really ambitious promise. And I love that. I pessimistically would be like, yeah, this is such a cool idea that won't work.

But it's one of those things like aim high. And if you get to work, I think you've really got something. Yeah, it could play in the same sort of space as something like kites. Yeah. Oh, hey. There's definitely could be something there for sure. That's not something that excites me. But there's a lot of people out there who get really into those sorts of dexterity timing based things. And I think absolutely it could have an audience.

Thematic hook. Players are humans posing as robots to take down central AI to do so having to blend into robots following the beat, the speed at which the robots act. That's cute. That is so good. That makes me, as someone who didn't really connect with mechanical hook, like it so much more. You also have a soft spot for players as humans pretending to be robots.

I just think it's it's so clever to be like yes i'm a robot that's why i'm doing things only at this example i'm absolutely timing the same as you guys are yeah absolutely that is like 10 out of 10 connection there great great job component the central metronome has four or five speed parameters which players can adjust for difficulty and well and gameplay hopefully made to look like some sort of evil robot so i i think he's over over like the the component hook is

a metronome right yeah like the rest is is kind of irrelevant like you you're sort of slipping in extra like oh buy the game for this reason whereas like it's a game based around a metronome that is a component hook and with a different theme you could even target those like you know musicians like every single aunt is like oh a game with a metronome my my son is a drum player i will buy him this game i'm not saying the theme is about to change this theme this theme works for different reasons

but i just think like i don't know any other game that has a metronome let alone one that is based around a metronome that's i don't know if i'd buy it because of that but that is that is the component hook in my opinion does pendulum do that i've never played pendulum oh i don't i don't think it does but i haven't played it either it makes sense for it too well well i don't think it does yeah who cares this is cool let's keep going

yeah yeah very cool i'm just curious i think pendulum's all owlglass based.

I saved my favorite one for last. Mine? That's nice of you. So this is Hendrix. Toy Story RPG. So it's an RPG, not a board game. A little bit different. But kids play their favorite toys through diverse chapters slash missions. A continuous storyline all over the house. Yeah, that's amazing. This is the, like, why didn't I think of that? I mean, I don't do RPGs, but this is amazing. Kids get to use their literal toys in this system.

And presumably you would have different rules for the different types of classes of toys. That just gets my brain going so much. An adult is the game master and acting as all of the NPCs. To me, this is description, not hook. Agreed. But, you know, that's fine. But they're about to follow up with something that's absolutely killer. Defend the toy village against suppressing household items brought to life by wobbly eyes.

It's so good. Yeah, you pull out an iron, you stick the two eyes on it, bam, it's an iron villain. Like, so good. Listen, I don't know a whole lot about the RPG world, but I'd be shocked if this wasn't a huge hit. Yeah, this is so fun. Especially because there's a massive audience right now for RPGs you can play with your kids. I know my friend Allison bought one where you like, it's an RPG, it's like a D&D style thing, but it's very, very simplified.

And all the characters are like cat princesses or something.

Like it's just it's done in a way that you're like kids like oh yeah i want to do that like yes i mean um this this is this is amazing this is so good 10 out of 10 this is one of the best hooks i've ever heard yeah i don't think we're going to do another one of these but please do keep showing your hooks because they are so fun and so inspiring we got a huge influx of people after we we set this challenge so come join our discord it's it's popping off at the moment

and it's a great place to get feedback if you want to see yeah is your hook a really juicy hook there's plenty of people who will tell you and everyone's being very polite and kind to each other you know even if we've got some criticism i haven't seen anyone being anything other than polite you know that's been great yeah uh if you do see that always feel free to pm us, we are we are the moderators we just don't have to because our community is

amazing come join us aj can i give you a mini publishers tip sure.

So it's just a regular publisher tip uh i just we're just doing a mini side so i wanted to say mini this is this is something i see a lot of people doing and i'm just this is a mini one because it feels really obvious to me people will have a game that works some of the time and when it works it's amazing and so they'll pitch that game and that's just not good enough because the pitch game could fall down or it'll be amazing the pitch and they'll take it home and it won't work.

And i have the amazing example of this which is a designer i don't know if you know him he's called peter c haywood and he had a game that he really fell in love with and it only worked if he was running it and i didn't do enough due diligence so i pitched this publisher was like this is amazing took it home never got it to work that's a problem this is why we call play tests this is why we do other things that was my fault i took a shortcut i shouldn't have i learned my lesson but do

not do not have a game that mostly works if the times where it doesn't work it collapses or i mean just generally like you want a game that is consistent publishers need like if a publisher is seriously considering your game they're gonna play it before they sign it and if their play collapses they're not gonna sign it and that sucks because you've wasted their time you've given yourself false hope but also i feel like the publisher is going

to and this publisher did quite fairly like view you in a different light of like oh he tried to trick me into signing a game not literally what anyone has ever said but the publisher then signed another game so i haven't i haven't irreparably damaged my relationship with them but i definitely felt embarrassed of like ah man i have burned some goodwill goodwill with publishers is very valuable and very hard to get,

don't burn it by not doing due diligence this is similar to my last note of like do the work.

Yeah and i hear a lot of times when you know i look at a game that i'm playtesting and i'm like you know this situation could come up and they're like yeah that's like a 1 in 20 chance it's like well hold on a second that's all that's a huge like like even if even if you just forget the publisher which obviously like you know 1 in 20 is going to happen pretty early and that sort of thing but if you sell 20,000 copies and it's a 1 in 20 chance yeah

you know like that's a lot of people even if everyone played your game once yeah 1,000 people i will say that this is actually unrelated to manic that last time of the roguelike where it broke i didn't see that combination i didn't think that i didn't think of that combination i perhaps should have but it just never occurred to me and it was so unlikely and then it happened straight away with the publisher after they signed it of course

but this this is a different situation to that this is like make sure you've played your game 10 times the game the game where that happened i played that hundreds of times peter makes a lot of content for his games yes yes this this was a like there's a hundred cards and, 15 to 25 enemies and one card with one enemy doesn't work and the rest do flawlessly this wasn't one you know it only works when i'm running it though it was the same publisher coincidence.

Cool aj how do you feel about it's a video episode we're only allowed to have a little bit of fun oh maybe a very quick one then what's the nicest thing you ever smelt my girlfriend.

I love the smell of her yeah i think that's probably my answer did she just have a really good perfume or no i just like how she smells it's like a biological chemistry compatible thing i just really like the smell of my girlfriend i know how weird that is but it's just really nice to be around her because i'm like oh i get to smell this this is something that bothers me is when people are like oh you said like she smells nice that's kind of creepy it's like smell

is a really important human function and like smells deeply tied to emotions and memory and stuff in fairness you were you were talking about someone who was sleeping. When they said that to you that was more the context i think than the phrase it took me a second you whispered it into your sleeping neighbor's ear another peter joke got it got it yeah guys he's joking occasionally for me i think it would be a friend of mine i was saying goodbye I'd like to give him a hug.

This is when we were in high school. I was like, you smell amazing. How much money is your cologne? I'm going to hand you that much. Next time I see you, please hand me some cologne. That's the cologne I use to this day. My wife loves it. Oh, that's great. That's lovely. So when I'm out of the picture, she's set up with him. He already smells like it. Yeah, yeah. That's fair. What is this cologne? Just for reasons I'm related to trying to seduce your wife.

It's actually just a Walmart brand. It's called Swiss Army and Swiss Army Classic. It just smells really good when you're over next i'll uh i'll spray my shirt and let you come in for a whiff i was i was gonna do that either way so that works um as some future fun problem remind me to tell you about my cologne woes a little stupidity aj how do we end a mini episode by saying goodbye. Music.

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