Travelers of Teach (Devlog)

Welcome to the devlog for the game “Travelers of Teach”. As usual, it started as a really really small idea that I wanted to make over the weekend, then turned into something bigger and better that warranted its own devlog. Hopefully it’s interesting (or educational!) to read about the journey, though I’ll leave out a lot for the sake of not boring or overwhelming you.

What’s the idea?

I was drawing up a list of “summer (holiday) games”. I’d already made something for all other categories (summer quiz, summer puzzles, etc) and games were the only thing left.

Because I made all the other categories first, I already had a lot of ideas (and even drawings/assets) for these games before I even made the first one. So many, in fact, that I could only make a few “bigger” ones and decided to finish summer making the tiniest ones. (And move the others to next year, probably.)

Well, this idea was one of the “tiny ones”. It’s based on the game Tokaido, which, at its core, has a very simple move mechanic.

• You don’t take turns. Instead, the player in last place (furthest behind on the path) always takes a turn.
• You can move as much as you want, but only forward.

With just these two rules, you suddenly get an entire game that’s very interesting. It’s a push-and-pull between wanting to visit more spaces ( = moving slowly/lagging behind) … and needing to jump ahead to visit a good space before anyone else does so.

I saw a way to use this core and make a game about traveling/tourism during the summer.

Frankly, I only wanted to apply a few minor “twists”.

• The path is random: you place random cards in a row, where each card is one location. (In Tokaido, it’s a fixed board.)
• After visiting a place (and getting whatever bonus/action it has), you simply take the card out of the path so it can’t be visited again.
• And let’s heavily simplify by just having one or two “things” you can collect or earn along the way.

Sounded good, right? I could create some pretty locations based on tourist attractions (e.g. Eiffel tower, pyramids, etc), design some simple layout around it about what you get/pay and how it scores you points, and we’d have a solid traveling game. Both literally and figuratively.

Then It All Changed

A few days later, when it came time to make this, I realized some things.

• Such simple games are ideal candidates for a more explicit “educational approach”. Because the core is so simple that kids of any age can play, I can attach expansions/variants/cards that practice topics they are still learning/might struggle with.
• In this case, because the entire game is one simple path … I can create “sets” of cards around topics!
  • For example, “Your kid is still learning to count? Include the Counting Set!” That set would contain a few cards that score points in such a way that the kid has to do some simple counting.
  • Similarly, we’d have a “Shapes Set” and “Colors Set” and so forth.
  • During setup, you simply include the cards you want to play with/explore/practice, and don’t include any other sets.

This felt too potent to pass up. So even though time was running short, I wanted to pursue this.

I wrote down all the sets I wanted.

• (Visual) Discrimination => like in Tokaido, this is a “painting” made of several puzzle pieces that you can paint over time.
• Money/Resources => a rudimentary “buy/sell/trade” thing to introduce the concept of money
• Counting
• Math Operations (+ - x /)
• Alphabet/Letters
• Colors
• Shapes

I considered some more advanced sets, like maybe something based on history or geography … but it became too convoluted. If I do that, it’s better to do it as a completely different game or spin-off/expansion.

And now …

The Big Question: Scoring Points

This is obviously the most important thing to specify. How? How do specific places earn points or help you? What are you working towards?

It has to be simple. It has to allow completely random paths.

I realized putting the cards into “sets” had a major advantage: I could balance the set with itself. As long as you included the entire set, synergies between cards and systems would work.

For example,

• A set might include one card that gives you money …
• .. then it also needs to include one card where you can spend that money.
• If it includes a card that gives you some unique item …
• … then it needs another card that allows trading/using/selling special items.

If I do this just right, sets will work on their own, but also together. Because it’s obviously fine if a card from set A gives you money, and you spend it on a card from set B.

This only works if cards (mostly) use shared language and shared resources. If they all give/use/exhaust the same things, so visiting one place from set A might give you something useful for a card in set B, C and D too.

I decided to split it into three shared resources with different purposes.

• Items => specific items, which could be attached to LETTERS of the alphabet, or colors, or shapes, whatever. They all look different and might be unique, but they fall into the same category called “items”.
  • Items are “dynamic”: you can use them for a special power or action. (Example: “Use your bike to travel twice in one turn.”)
• Money => the middle man. Lots of cards allow converting to/from money. For example: pick up an item somewhere, sell it for money somewhere else, then use that money on a third card to buy a different item.
  • Money is always “simple/static”: just a token with a value, nothing else.
• Condition => this relates to you, the player, the one traveling. Think of things like exhaustion/energy levels, hydration, etcetera.
  • Condition is a “property”: it has a sustained effect that always holds. (Example: “If exhaustion > 3, you can’t move more than 5 spaces on your turn.”)
  • NOTE: This also includes “scoring methods”! A condition card might also say “For every 5 bikes that you have, score 5 points”. It gives players unique, tailored ways to design how they score points as the game progresses. That scoring method is permanent, so it belongs to “condition”.

This is nice on paper, but if we use different tokens/tiles/“things” for all these … it quickly becomes a mess.

When visiting a place it becomes yours anyway. It’s taken out of the route and placed before you. So … the cards can just BE the token.

For a simple example,

• A card might say “You earn a fishing rod.”
• You visit, take the card, and now … it clearly says, right in front of you, that you have a fishing rod ;)

For a more dynamic example,

• A card might say “Pay 1 money per 1 hat.”
• You get that card and place 2 money tokens on it.
• Now that card is a permanent, visible reminder that you have 2 hats.
• (This also gives space to write reminders for item actions and such on the cards, though that’s optional.)

This feels much cleaner than handing out all those individual tokens all the time. You simply look at the cards collected—spaces visited so far—and immediately see how you’re doing. And if you use the items or change them? Then the card goes away.

Now, you might have realized that this only works if I design the cards to make it work. For example, if a card says “earn as many hats as the number of players on RED places” … there’s no (easy) way to remember that number when you get the card. Once the card is in your possession, you don’t know how many “hats” it represents :p And you can’t use a single hat either, you’d have to use them all at once and discard the card.

Things like that make the game messy, so I decided to just design the places to avoid all that entirely. If I do that right, we just need …

• Money tokens (a few different shapes/colors/values) => as shown in my example above, these are the primary “markers” for more dynamic cards, used to remember the value of them.
• Cards to visit in different sets. (And each card gives/trades/uses/checks some of those resources I just introduced.)
• And maybe some spare tokens for special items or things that can’t work the usual way, but I’d want to avoid that if at all possible.

Designing The Cards

Illustrations

I made a list of possible tourist attractions or diverse places to visit on a journey. Then I asked a random AI, that gives me enough free credits for this, to generate images for them. Because I know exactly what I want, I can prompt very specifically and this usually works quite well. Saying “pretty image of Eiffel Tower” obviously won’t do much. But stating the exact style, colors, environment, perspective, etcetera will bring you far. Having said that, I always need to do serious editing afterwards, and perhaps draw a few things myself if they turn out completely impossible.

At the moment, my resources (time/budget/personal skill) allow me to execute a sort of mixture/blend between AI and personal work for the visuals. I’m experienced enough to do most of the work manually, but detailed complex illustration is just out of reach. I can, however, get an okayish image of a scene and then manually fix things, draw extra details, change the aspect ratio by continuing the image in the same style for a few more pixels, etcetera. I see it as a learning process and the path to eventually being able to do such drawings fully myself too.

I used these as the background and designed a layout around/in front of it. I always go for layouts that are simple and flexible. The visual detail/interest comes from that background image already, so no need for me to get fancy with the rest. By using some gradients, boxes and subtle tweaks/details I can also hide many imperfections or distracting elements.

Because this game has such an “educational” slant now, though, I wanted the look to be colorful and appealing to kids, as well as mostly textless. I opted for a set of consistent icons to do most of the communication. I made the style a bit more cartoony and simplified, less “detailed rich paintings and texture”, than I otherwise would have done. But not too much. I like rich detail! Everyone does!

Here’s a list of other quick remarks that I wrote down while iterating on the design.

• Anything with a “border” around it just doesn’t work with this style of background image. Yes, there are “outlines” in the background images, but they’re very thin and only exist when needed (for contrast/clarity in this style). It looks much better if the elements on top do not have an outline, and blend with the background much more (instead of heaving their own assigned color).
• Because one of the sets is “Colors”, I realized that I needed to have two distinct sets of colors: one with very BRIGHT colors (for the items/that set), and one with very DARK colors (for differentiating the different categories of cards; I’ll explain this below.) The card category is just a nice way to instantly recognize the general gist of a card, and to categorize cards of course, but it’s not “crucial information”. That’s why those colors became dark and far less pronounced/visible on the card.
• Similarly, one of the sets is “Shapes”, which means that every item icon should be placed in front of a SHAPE with a certain COLOR FILL. These three things are independent (every icon can have any color/shape around it). As such, to prevent icons from clashing with the rest, I set them to “Luminosity” (blend mode), which means they take over the color of what’s behind them.
• Because the background images can be darker or brighter, I needed two variations (basically inverses of each other) of the layout: one for dark backgrounds and one for light. For maximum contrast in all cases. In the end, it’s nice if cards look pretty, but it’s more important that they’re instantly readable and recognizable.
• I had to play a bit with font sizes, outline sizes, glow/shadow effects, and more until everything seemed to fit in the layout. Not just with the few test cards I did, but also for future cards (which likely will have more icons/text/details).
• I kept the general vibe of the game that inspired this (Tokaido), giving the whole thing a more “Asian” look and style. For example, for the money I looked at typical patterns found in on old coinage from Japan/China, and by copying that I created nice coins for the game that look clearly different from anything I drew before, which is nice.

Contents

And then I started brainstorming loads of ideas, and actions, and possible scoring methods, and all that I needed.

For the most part, this is indeed just “brainstorming”: over the course of many hours, as I take breaks and exercise and all, the list of possible cards grows longer and longer. When it’s long enough, I start picking the best and most cohesive ideas and actually make those. Usually, executing on ideas reveals a few more problems (which I didn’t foresee), but also a few more ideas/solutions for future cards, so it evens out.

One fun thing I realized is that making the card BE the “token” has interesting strategic consequences. I hinted at this earlier: if a card gives you 2 items, how do you use only one of them? In the current system, one might be tempted to never give more than 1 item, because you can’t track that and it’s messy.

Instead, I simply made it an interesting restriction: when using a card, you have to use the whole card (that turn). So if a card gives you a hat and a bike, and you decide to use the bike, then you also must use that hat. Because at the end of your turn, that card has been “used” and will be gone. You can’t split it, but if you plan it well, you also don’t need to “lose” or “waste” anything.

General Categories

I also decided to sort the cards into general “destination categories”. It streamlined the creation process by adding the restriction that every new idea of mine had to fit one of the established categories. But it also greatly streamlines playing the game, as players can now recognize what a place’s general purpose is just by seeing its color/icon.

After imagining some ~20 cards, I saw the following categories emerge.

• Seller => lose items => get money
• Buyer => lose money => get items
• Maker => get items => no payment needed, but it might CHECK for a specific condition (e.g. “you get a bike only if you are not exhausted”)
• Trader => convert items into other items
• Destroyer (very rare) => lose items => no reward, but it might CHECK for a specific condition (e.g. “discard 3 items if you have less than X money”)
  • Yes, you can “choose” your movement in this game, so why would you ever visit this? Many special actions and modifiers can restrict your movement or force your hand, especially in more advanced sets.
• Activity (very rare) => loses or changes your condition/cards => this is usually a bit of a “wildcard”, high risk/high reward, as losing an entire card is a massive payment
• Rest => gives you a condition change ( = “scoring method”) on the card itself
  • Just a raw number of points is also a “scoring method”, of course. That’s the easiest card for the base game: you literally just get the points written on it.

Essentially, each resource has two types: something that creates/gives the resource, and something that takes/destroys/trades it. If each set has a balance of these, then there are enough different strategies and enough ways to “convert” between things.

What’s the “first set”?

Finally, I had to figure out the “base set” or “core set”. The thing included in every game; the thing you start with by default.

• This set had to be slightly larger than the others, because you have to be able to play the game just with this one.
• It had to be textless, not requiring any serious counting/letter skills (and no money yet), as those are added through the sets.
• It needed a very simple rule for scoring and very simple actions for items, all of which fits on a single “Set Card”. (Every set has one such card that adds the default way to score and the items included in this set. It’s simply the same size as the other cards, which isn’t very big.)

I settled on 4 items. One does nothing, three have a very basic action (e.g. take another turn). This provides just enough variety to actually differentiate players and make picking your next destination meaningful.

I also settled on 2 basic scoring methods. The usual ones:

• DIVERSITY: You can score sets of all different items. (You have all the 4 unique items once.)
• EQUALITY: Or a set of the same item 4 times.

Then I distributed these items over the cards of the set in as many different ways as possible. I chose 2 cards to add a new scoring method (Rest), and one Trader card (to turn some items into the other possible items). This felt like just the right amount of complexity that the game needed to work.

At first, I added nice round numbers as the “score” of certain sets. A DIVERSITY set was 10 points, an EQUALITY set was 5 points. But … then I realized the game needed to be playable by kids who can’t really count yet. So I lowered numbers to just 1/2/3.

Then I realized we don’t have enough cards in this single set to make the EQUALITY type work: 4 of a kind is just too much. So I lowered it to 3 of a kind.

Then I finished this core set … and started to doubt myself again. Isn’t there a smarter way? Isn’t there a way to make this base game playable without tallying points? So it’s truly playable by very young kids who can’t count yet? Here’s how that thought process went.

• Most games for that age solve this by being a “race game”: the player who finishes first wins. This is NOT POSSIBLE for this game because you literally decide how far you want to move forward.
• The alternative solution is often some binary check: the first player to have THIS THING or THAT THING wins. But how would that even work? You can’t just pick one location, or one type of item, and say “you have that? bingo, you win instantly!” If you twist this a little, into something like “the person with the MOST of item X wins” … then you still have to do some counting anyway.
• We can make this counting a little easier—but not remove it entirely—if we add “point tiles”. Or we use the money tokens for this. You instantly get something as soon as you score it, and you keep this nice pile of points in front of you to count regularly. This, however, would blow up the material requirements of the game, make some of the best sets/ideas/cards impossible, and still not get rid of having to count a few things.
• Any other solution requires modifying the entire core of the game, which would just make it a different game, so let’s not do that.

I had to change my perspective. Think the other way around, because changing the “win condition” or card content led nowhere. I was quite satisfied with that.

And then I realized … I had planned a Counting Set. But what would that set even do? What different thing would it do from the core set? Nothing! The core set already requires some simple counting and low numbers.

So … let’s just change the Core set to BE the Counting Set.

The very first set, for your very first game, required in all of them is the one that teaches counting points. Because that’s the only essential skill needed to actually play and know if you’ve won!

To help with this, I changed the “reward” for sets again. In this set, the reward is always EQUAL to the number of items.

• “All items once” means 4 items, so reward is 4
• “3 bikes = 3 points”
• “3 backpacks + 2 bikes = 5 points”
• Etc

This actually “teaches” the number icons and counting up to at least 7, if not further (because you might score two or three different things, adding them into a higher number). If you can do that, you can play the rest of the sets/game.

This gave the first set a clear purpose and allowed me to finally make/finish it.

Designing The Sets

And then … I had to design the other sets. After having finished the first 15–20 cards, I was able to see some patterns and decide on some general principles.

• The Score Card really only has space for 2 scoring rules and 2–4 items. (Though having two default ways to score is already more than enough I think.) This isn’t new items, just items in total. (Because each Score Card has to explain all items included in that set, even if they were also used/explained in an earlier set.)
• About ~12 cards feels right, but it’s not set in stone.
• The breakdown of category distribution is something like …
  • 2 cards: extra scoring methods.
  • 1-2 cards: traders (converting one thing to another).
  • 4 cards: get items some way (either for free or by paying)
  • 1-4 cards: get money / use money for some wildcard unique thing

Why this breakdown?

• The “new scoring method” (just for you) is the most interesting kind of special card, in practice. It’s such an interesting choice/gamble. Also, it allows removing those scoring methods from the Score Card by default.
• Without a strong number of cards that create value (items/money/etc), you can’t do anything at all, so that needs to be the “meat” of each set.
• “Money” is the main thing binding all sets together. Each individual set barely uses it, but play with multiple sets and those cards start to synergize and become powerful. As such, the money cards per set can be quite low/flexible.

All the sets (on their own) are a bit “tight”. You really can’t miss a single card you need, or you might score 0 points. This is partially a choice (because I like minimalism and keeping things small and simple), and partially just a necessity (only 13 cards fit on one A4 page, adding more would make the game far too long if you do use multiple sets, etc)

I simply encourage people to use the core set + one other set for the first game. It should have enough cards and ways to score for 2–5 players to work. With 6 players you probably want 3 sets minimum. A single set is only playable with 2 players, maybe 3, really. But that’s fine. I just try to balance each set with itself as much as possible, while keeping clear connections to other sets and allowing them to “synergize”.

Improving Trading

Most of my card categories are very self-explanatory and worked from the start. A “seller” allows you to sell products and get money, a “maker” makes new items for you, etcetera. And this is always the case, no exceptions, which makes it consistent and intuitive.

The “trader” card, however, gave me the most trouble.

• I realized that the new items would also need a shape and color. So the cards became something like “2 bags -> 1 red square water + 1 blue pentagon water”. This became a bit much to fit on a single card, but it was “fine”.
• Once a few sets were finished, I realized the trader card was just a little too weak. It only worked if you had that highly specific input, and wanted that highly specific output!
• So, instead, I removed the shape/color around your “new items”. I simplified it to just “the other properties of the converted items stay the same”. If you use the trader to convert a “Red Square Bag”, then the new item is simply still a Red Square. I should’ve done this from the start, it’s much better :p
• This change then allowed me to make all trades go both ways. Now you have multiple situations in which you can and might want to trade, making these cards as valuable as they should be.
• Which finally allowed me to do more creative trades. Such as “any Square for a Circle”, instead of merely allowing trading specific items and that’s that.

The “destroyer” card also found a better place once I had a small Eureka moment. I realized … we can just force players to pay the cost when they pass by. Like a toll booth, or a border patrol, or something. Now this becomes a really interesting wall and you have to ask yourself if it’s worth trying to cross it now, or if you take some smaller steps and wait. (I repeat this behavior on every Destroyer card, so players don’t need to remember “Oh! Exception! The cost listed on that card must be paid if you pass by, not only when visiting!”)

Intermezzo

At time of writing, I’ve finished the first four sets. This game became much harder to figure out than I originally wanted, so I’ve been “pushing through” with some effort I must admit. But now things are finally starting to come together. Exceptions are being removed, easy clarifications added to the rulebook, and I think I can still keep the whole thing to a single page rulebook.

The biggest thing here is that most types of cards only appear in later sets. As such, I decided to explicitly split the rulebook into …

• First Page = Basic Rules needed for first game
• Second Page = “After your first game”, which clarifies how money works and what other card types do
• Third Page = Actual expansions and variants

When playing your first game, with only the Counting Set, you only need to know how getting/using items and scoring works. All the fancy stuff you can do with trading, the destroyers, money management, those only appear in later sets. So their clarifications/examples also come later.

I’ve also settled on 10 different “things” in this game: 9 items + Money. One item has no action, the others have a very simple action.

I tried to lower the number of items, but that seemed a bad idea.

• Firstly, you lose the diversity needed to make the game work long-term. If I had only done 5–6 items, then I would have already gone through basically all permutations of them in the first few sets. It’s not much use creating 2 (or even more) cards that basically do the same thing, like multiple cards that sell ice cream for 2 money, or multiple cards that yield exactly 2 bags. Remember, the first 4 sets already create 52 cards, which all need to have at least a slightly different purpose/reason to exist.
  • Also, things like Trader and “using money as the middle man” lose almost their entire value if there are only 5 items. Why convert if there’s probably a Location just ahead that gives you the exact item needed?
• Secondly, you lose diversity between players. The game isn’t interesting if there are so many of each item type that multiple players can snatch them all up, never getting in each other’s way or actually blocking anyone, and in the end they all … basically score the same number of points in the same way.

Maybe I’ll change my mind on this later. I would like to lower the number of items a bit, but I need to finish all sets ( = get the final/bigger picture) to see if and how to do so.

When I tried to “play” (against myself) with the cards I had now, I noticed that some of the scoring rules were too specific. For example, the Colosseum said “4 circles -> 4 points”. Which is nice, and it matches the theme of the circular building of course, but also too specific. It’s hard to gather 4 circles at all, and then you’d also have to gather that card, and all that would only help one player. Instead, I changed the card to be “4 identical shapes -> 4 points”. Same idea, just a more fun and usable execution.

I also decided to use dotted outlines for such “wildcard” or “match same/any of type” rules. It clearly sets the icon apart from items or money (which are always a solid outline), and it simply looks better and more fitting.

Finishing The Sets

If you’ve read this whole devlog, you might notice how far we’ve strayed from the original idea :p The “Condition” aspect (of getting tired, or dehydrated, etcetera) … is nowhere to be found. Sets are simpler and more “tight”, with ways to score/trade being more specific and simple too.

This happens with basically every project. I simply write down the old idea as a “maybe do this for another game one day” and move on with the current state of the project.

Yes, the idea of “getting tired” and such is very sensible for a traveling/hiking game. But not this one, not anymore. Adding it now would make it messy and complicated. I’ll probably just make a similar game, maybe a spin-off, where that kind of system is the core.

Similarly, the idea of “need to pay to take the train/bus/airplane” seems sensible for a traveling game. But not this one, not anymore :p Because the movement is completely freeform and flexible, so creating an entire system to undo this and make you pay for the privilege of travel goes against this game’s entire core.

And so I finished the 8 sets I’d planned by building on the core of the game. New combinations of items/colors/shapes, new things that give money or cost money, some wildcard/chaotic actions that are completely unique, but not any more complicated systems or rules.

I tried to make sure every item appears equally often, which required having a few more items in the final set, but that’s fine.

• In the “Math Set” I made all cards do something with multiplication or division. For example, “count the item you have the least; you score DOUBLE that number”
• In the “Alphabet Set” I used the fact that all Locations already have names, which already gives me letters to work with! But I expanded that by adding “Letter Items” (just literally a letter) because that was clearer and provided more opportunities to do something fun.
• In the “Logic Set” I placed all my more “advanced” ideas … because they required logic! They are actions that require “conditions” or “checks” (IF this is true, THEN), or LOOPS, or any other “logic concept” you’d typically find in a course about programming. It has cards that require more logical thinking or planning ahead if you want to figure out how to use them well. It’s the final set for a reason!

Honestly, at this point, I was running out of time and getting burned out on this project. I needed to get back to regular webshop work and I had to constantly edit a book together with a publisher, which meant I literally had to finish this game on the final Sunday of summer. After creating 50+ Locations, you can probably understand that the energy and inspiration for 36 more was hard to find.

So I decided to just “finish what I have” and be done with it. The final sets maybe could’ve been a tad more creative or unique, but it is what it is.

Conclusion

As usual, I have mixed feelings about this project.

On the one hand, the cards and design are gorgeous and taught me new things about illustration. The rules are simple, the sets make sense, and the game works.

On the other hand, it feels like I’ve overcomplicated a few things and strayed away (more and more and more) from the original vision of the idea. I feel like there’s a much smaller and simpler version—a “kids” or “mini” version, if you will—of the same ideas and core gameplay. If I hadn’t made it about “educational sets”, then each individual set could have been larger, which would have solved some issues with scarceness of items and possibilities.

But, as stated, it’s usually better to try again with a new project than turn this one into some sort of Frankenstein monster of different ideas. I made a file with all the missed opportunities and areas for improvement/simplification. That game will probably just be one set of 30 cards or so that, placed randomly, create your “path”. With only a few items and a slightly different (scoring) system that perhaps eliminates all counting/numbers entirely.

As for this project, it is done! Of course, I can always fix issues later (improve sets, change cards, clarify rules, etc). For example, I just noticed some tiny visual changes were introduced when exporting to PDF (… for some mystical computery reason), causing icons to be slightly different sizes left and right. But for all intents and purposes I’m done with the game and have finished my personal list of important fixes/tasks.

I really do hope people enjoy the game and that they try playing specific sets with kids to teach them about the concept. I also hope they’ll let me know what they think and give me any feedback if so, because I desperately need it on this weird game! Based on the massive amount of work that went into it, the game will likely be priced higher than others in my online store, and I always add a bit more screenshots/marketing images and marketing text for these products.

With that, summer was over, and I closed the book on this project,

Pandaqi