Santaspotters (Devlog)

Of all our Christmas games, Santaspotters took the most work and revisions. That’s why I wanted to write a short article about it to give my thoughts, lessons learned, and hopefully other interesting background for this game.

I usually keep such a devlog / diary for every project anyway, as I make it. But because it was Christmas time, which always means lots of other things planned and other festivities, I worked on this game a bit on and off and never got around to tracking a diary! As such, these thoughts are mostly written down after the fact.

What’s the idea?

The main reason for creating Christmas games is to give families something to play together during the holidays. As such, I wanted at least one game that could support large groups. I wanted at least one “social” or “party” game, as casual as possible, that would support playing with a larger group of people (if so desired).

This naturally brought me to hidden role games like Werewolf / Mafia. An idea was born:

• Everyone gets a secret role. Most importantly, one player is Santa (Team Nice) and one is Krampus (Team Naughty)
• Everyone has a deck of cards they’re not allowed to look at, except on their turn.
• Your goal is to secretly place gifts in the decks of other players (if Santa/Nice), while Krampus watches and wins if they correctly guess who Santa is!

Hence, Santaspotters. It’s about spotting Santa and/or not getting spotted. Soon, I had written some small introduction/story about kids trying to stay awake on Christmas Eve in hopes of spotting Santa as he visits.

To add to this theme, I added one more rule: “Once per game, at any time, you may wake up. You immediately pick up your cards, without looking.” This wasn’t just thematic, it also had strategic purpose, because it allowed you to know (for sure) who inserted what cards into your deck.

Finally, I needed a way to actually end the game. “Instant wins” seem the obvious choice here, for example “At any time, Krampus may say I THINK THIS PERSON IS SANTA, and if correct they win.” But such rules are not very fun or useful, unless you’re playing with expansions/advanced roles. Because now games can end way too quickly or too easily. One player not understanding their role, or forgetting what other roles did, can ruin the whole game now. Remember, the point is to make the absolute simplest casual family party game. Any higher strategy or cutthroat tactics should be optional/expansions.

As such, I changed it to “every round, you VOTE on whether you believe the game should end”. You’re Team Nice and you think Santa has the right cards to win? Vote yes! You’re Krampus and not 100% sure who Santa is yet? Vote NO! Majority wins, so nobody can permanently keep the game from ending.

With this general idea, I started working

A Unique Situation

For the first time in a while, I actually made all the assets first. Normally, you’d create the whole game, perfect the rules, and once you’re certain about the content of the game, you start designing all the illustrations, cards, material, etcetera.

But I’d already created all Christmas illustrations for other Christmas products. And no matter how the rules ended up changing, I knew I would always need the secret role cards. So I basically made 99% of the material before finalizing the rules, and only left some things open to be filled in later.

Doing so, however, already helped me improve the rules.

• I had to simplify ideas for rules and action cards, because otherwise text wouldn’t fit.
• I created action cards in different colors, basically by instinct (“variety in look is always good!”) … and then realized I could use those colors for collecting sets or other nice rules!
• I realized that I could mark playing cards as NICE or NAUGHTY too. By simply reusing the Santa/Krampus icon on those cards, it’s very clear where they belong. This allowed improving our Santa rule. It used to be a vague “all gifts need to end up at Santa, somehow, at some point”, but now it could be the simpler and more specific “Santa wins if he has ONLY SANTA CARDS at the end”.
• I realized we really wanted some “marker” to remember if you’d already “woken up” once in a game. As such, I created a little “clock” for each player.
  • And once I had a clock, I realized I could add different things to every hour. Different “status conditions”, if you will. For example: “If a vote were to happen now, you have to vote YES if you’re team Nice”.
  • This felt like a great step forward for the game, as it differentiates players and forces them to be creative if they want to keep their role hidden. For example, you’re a Naughty role and worry about a vote coming, so you try to convince someone to help you rotate your clock.

By this point, the rules had expanded a bit.

• Every secret role has a “personal deck”: a few cards that you always start with. Why? It’s simple—you only need to grab the right cards during setup and you’re set for the game, no more rules to remember. It also makes every turn more tense, because you might be the only one with that specific card, so giving it away would reveal your role to that specific player.
• Your deck of cards can’t have more than 6 cards. This is simply to keep it manageable, to prevent loads of material, to prevent ganging up on one player, etcetera. Limits like this are always good in games—and you usually want to set them lower than you think.
• The “wake up”-rule remained in base game, but all other actions of your “Sleepy Clock” were an expansion. How does a clock change? After giving a card to someone else (the one thing you do on your turn), you also rotate their clock.
  • This is better than the reverse, “rotate YOUR clock on YOUR turn”. Because then everyone’s clock just moves forward 1 hour, predictably, never different.
  • With the other rule, your clock moves faster if more people give to you, slower if nobody trusts you. Which adds more variation, more things to manipulate, more possible future problems to plan for, etcetera.

It juuust about fit on a single page. That’s my personal absolute maximum for your first game (or “base game”). Rules, including illustrations and everything, that fit on a single A4 page. It’s been a great principle through all these years, forcing me to streamline and improve each game, because there is ALWAYS a way to do so and make it fit ;)

And so, with this template, I started finishing all the specific Role Cards, Play Cards and Sleepy Clock actions.

That work is never “wasted” … but I did have to rework a lot of it. Because once I was done, I clearly saw some issues at the game’s core.

The Biggest Question

I’ve learned that there’s really only one question to constantly ask yourself when designing a game (or just “something interactive / to be used”).

At any point in the game, but especially on your turn, what would a player want and how would they go about getting it?

This question was easy to answer with the advanced roles and actions. Whatever role you are, you can use action cards to get info out of players (or protect yourself). Whatever role you are, you can help/hinder another player by moving their clock to an annoying position.

But … I had moved all that “complexity” (advanced roles, action cards, sleepy clock, etc) to optional expansions. They’re not in the base game. And in its current state, with no special roles or whatever, most players have nothing to aim for. No clear thing they’d want to do and/or how to actually get it.

At the same time, the base game wasn’t even as simple as it could be. This was a lose-lose situation, which you usually get with your first version of an idea. It was both needlessly complicated and not complicated enough to get real strategy or fun gameplay.

How do we change that?

I picked three core rules for the base game. Three things I must actually explain on that one page of rules. But it also means three things I can actually “tweak” between players to get interesting gameplay from the base game already.

• Your role. The “simplest/default” roles should still have some simple rule that gives you something to do. (I’ll give specifics soon.)
• Your turn. With a slight tweak, your turn remains simple, but also much more important/revealing. Namely,
  • You shuffle before picking up your cards. Hence, if two players gave you a card … you wouldn’t know anymore which came from who.
  • At the end of your turn, you put your deck back down, with the top card revealed. This means revealing at least one card you have + thinking about the order in which you put it down.
• The end-the-game vote. I almost overlooked this, but it’s an even better rule than I first thought. Whether you vote YES or NO to end the game … means a lot! It shows how confident you are, it makes players ask questions (“why NO, James? When you were so sure before?”). Even more, I can add voting restrictions to your role, so your pattern of voting might even reveal who you are over time.

These were the only three things allowed in the base game. It allowed two great simplifications.

• Moving the “Sleepy Clock” entirely to an expansion. (Both the setup, the rotating, the explanation, everything.)
• Moving the “personal deck” to an expansion/optional too. (Because now the roles have different roles, and you reveal your top card, starting with a random set of cards is fine and perhaps even more interesting.)

It also allowed me to add a handful of “default roles” (Sleepy Kid), just like you have your standard batch of “innocents” in Werewolf / Mafia, for your first game. Any more advanced roles (which are very exciting, but also harder to understand) can be left for after your first game.

And what should the Sleepy Kid do? What is a great “default role”? It needs to give them something to do all the time. It should not give them an extra win condition or whatever, as that would clash with the simple base game rules. It should not overpower the main Santa/Krampus roles.

After trying some meh options, I finally found the answer.

If you start your turn with only non-Santa cards, reveal your role and cards. (Which makes Team Naughty’s life easier, as you’re not a potential Santa anymore and they know which cards are going where.)

This means innocent players will beg for a Santa card. Or they’ll give away a non-Santa card, instead of helping, because otherwise they’d “die”. It makes people do suspicious things for good reason. It gives weight to what card you give away.

At first, I wanted to say that you “die” if that happens. You’re eliminated from the game! But elimination isn’t much fun in a large group, it’s probably too harsh with little kids, and it would require some extra rules about how to handle e.g. if only 2 players are left.

My only doubt left was whether this rule should apply to ALL PLAYERS, or just SLEEPY KIDS. It’s tempting to say all players. Make it a core rule of the game, add tension at all times. But this felt like too much pressure (and too much to “remember”) at all times. Additionally, what if Santa/Krampus gets “eliminated” because of rules like this? I’d need exceptions for that, and we don’t like exceptions here!

And, so, I kept this limited to the simple default role for first games.

Because, now, we can answer that question. The all-important question!

• Say you’re Santa. What do you do on your turn? You get rid of non-Santa cards, while trying to look like a different role to Krampus (by, for example, keeping one non-Santa card to keep revealing at the top of your deck). You look at what is given to you and try to decide if that player is on your team, so you can subtly ask for more Santa cards. You will vote YES if you have a winning hand and try to subtly convince others to do the same.
• Say you’re Krampus. What do you do on your turn? You try to make Santa cards go to you, while figuring out who Santa is so you can insert your non-Santa cards there.
• Say you’re a Sleepy Kid. What do you do on your turn? Make your Santa cards go to Santa (and not wasted on Krampus), but not too much or you “die”. Make yourself not seem like a Sleepy Kid, for example with the top card you decide to show, while making sure your deck stays healthy.

We can repeat the same thing for other (first-game) roles. (With high player counts, I can’t just add 10 Sleepy Kids, there still needs to be a bit more variation.)

• Say you’re a Toy Elf (Nice). Your rule is “You must vote YES if you have majority Santa cards, NO otherwise. Tie = vote freely.” What do you do on your turn? You try to control your deck so you’re not forced to vote something (that might give you away/end the game too early). This often means giving away useless non-Santa cards, which can make you look suspect.
• Say you’re a Gnome (Naughty). Your rule is “Can’t give, use or show cards of type X (unless you have no other choice).” What do you do on your turn? You try to hide this restriction with what you give (and to whom), while trying to get a deck of ONLY type X so you have “no other choice” and can do as you wish.

These roles seemed like the simplest ones that could still support about 4-12 players. They give you enough to do in your very first game, without all the other rules and actions and special stuff.

As usual, I’d love to do “more”. There are so many cool abilities you can come up with, so many roles with interesting tweaks. But the base/first game absolutely has to be as simple as possible, I’ve learned that after 10 years of making games, and this is the simplest I can make it. While keeping clear goals and strategy for all players.

Once you’ve played that first game, and you liked it, that is the moment you can opt for an expansion and add all those funky extra ideas.

Finishing Touches

Once I had my rules set in stone and my general illustrations/cards all designed and laid out, all that was left were some finishing touches.

• I initially made all Role cards the same color. After making the play cards different colors, though, I simply saw it looked much better to match the entire card’s color/design with the specific illustration on it. Also, I generally made Nice roles light and Naughty roles dark, to help differentiate them even more easily.
• Additionally, I almost forgot to add the “personal decks” to the cards! When I did, I realized a few things …
  • There was no space to fit 3 icons on there.
  • I didn’t have enough cards to guarantee a type wouldn’t run out in certain role combinations!
  • It was a bad idea to have 3 personal cards anyway for game reasons. It made setup longer, it was harder to remember for other players, and might lead to subtle cheating. If you are one of the first to grab your personal deck … the exact cards that will be gone will tell you what role came before you.
    • I considered this issue for a bit, then saw it wasn’t actually an issue. Because, the first few players to grab their personal decks will grab them from the full 70 cards, which makes it impossible to know which 2 cards are gone when it’s your turn to grab your deck. The last few players will only be picking from 50 or 60 cards … but at that point, the players before them could be any role, so it gives no hints anyway!
  • So, I scaled it back to 2. Furthermore, I made them “make (thematic) sense” when possible, so you can remember what someone’s personal cards are.
• I found ways to shorten the text in the rules and on cards, saving even more space. (Your first attempt at writing down information is usually much longer and more unwieldy than it could be. So I’ve learned to write my rules/card texts … and then re-read and shorten them drastically the next day.)
• I created a “roles overview” at the back of the rulebook (1 page exactly, of course). Even though roles and their decks are simple, even though action cards explain themselves with a simple oneliner, it’s still very useful if players can look things up at any time. (Without being suspicious or giving anything away about themselves.) You can simply play a lot smarter and deduce a lot more if you know what other roles can do, what specific cards they start with, etcetera. Keeping that information secret, or forcing you to memorize it or whatever, just is not fun at all. So, I added a clear role overview.
  • Also, this made me realize that all duplicated rules (e.g. the Sleepy Kid appears 3 times, exactly the same) should also have identical personal decks. Like, duh. Much simpler and more consistent. But it took this moment for me to realize I’d subconsciously given them different decks!

Things like that. I’m forgetting a lot of minor things. That’s what happens if you don’t write the devlog while making the game, but after the fact.

Conclusion

The final rules for the base game easily fit on a single page! You can absolutely setup and explain this game in 5 minutes, even at high player counts, which is great.

At the same time, as explained, that final version was much better than my initial attempt. Many people have this misconception that making things more simplistic automatically means making them worse and less interesting. But in my experience, that simplification actually allows the fun core of a game to shine through and stand on its own two feet.

That is, perhaps, the second “big question” that matters for a game, and the one I ask myself regularly: “How do you explain this game? Can you explain it in 5 minutes, to an impatient group, and get started without obstacles?”

In the final version of Santaspotters, a “teach” would be something like this:

• “This is a hidden role game. You’ll secretly belong to Team Nice or Team Naughty, and try to figure out who is with you and win together.”
• Deal 1 Role each. Let everyone read/explain the roles.
• Deal 5 playing cards each. Let everyone touch/check/study as they wish.
• “On your turn, shuffle your cards first, then give one card to another player, then put your deck back down with the top card revealed.”
• “After each round, we vote if we want the game to end. Majority YES means it ends.”
• (Optional: “This is a social game. You want to figure out who Santa is, while confusing the real Krampus. You want to give cards and tell truths to gain certain people’s trust, but lie and confound at other times to protect yourself. You may SAY and DISCUSS freely, but never reveal your role/cards.”)
• Any questions?

I feel like that’s a very tight and intuitive explanation of a game. You can do it while people are looking at materials/cards/still settling a bit. Now imagine if you had to explain the “clock” too … and “waking up” … and roles that are more than a one-liner … and maybe even neutral roles or actions … Brrrrr!

Of course, the issue with my favorite kinds of games (social, multiplayer, interactive, etc) is that I can’t test them on my own. I simply can’t emulate a full group, with secret roles/knowledge, on my own. And it’s not like I have piles of people ready and waiting to instantly test my games every evening :p As such, the real test for this game will come when I can finally get it to a table a few times. When that happens, I’ll likely write an extra section to the devlog with all changes/improvements/lessons learned from that.

Until next time,

Tiamo