About the Game
All Fathomed Out is a family friendly, exploration and discovery based "Tile Game" played by 3-6 players, targeted to an audience of ages 8 and up. In this game, the players play the role of scientists in the year 1878 venturing on the H.M.S. Shepard into the briny deeps of an unexplored ocean, to discover hidden species and gain notoriety. The players race against other players in an adventure to explore the depths and secure the title of being the greatest explorer to ever catalog previously unknown creatures. For more project details, visit http://www.allfathomedout.com
Process
MDA Approach
Using the Mechanics-Dynamics-Aesthetics framework, and Marc LeBlanc’s “8 kinds of fun”, we first researched the different kinds of emotions and decided to evoke two kinds of emotions from our players- Apprehension and Surprise
Game Concept
After coining the aesthetics for the game, keeping in mind the emotional responses we intend from our players, I proposed the idea of creating a tile-based game which supports both the emotions, by the run-time behaviors of the rules. The core concept of the game is exploration and discovery, so I suggested the theme of an undersea exploration where the players play the roles of scientists discovering specimens for notoriety. The players feel apprehensive to explore tiles because of the dangers that await them, and also surprised when they see what is under the explored tile. I was responsible to create the flavor text and develop narrative content for the game. I helped in contributing some cheesy lines and titles for the cards that are used in the game.
Game Mechanics
The players explore the tiles whenever they move on to an empty space and perform the actions in the order of their choice that are listed on the tiles. When moving into (or starting a turn in) unexplored territory, players reveal the top tile from the tile stack and place it on the table in the location of where the token has moved. After the events on the tile have been resolved and the players have played any cards you wish to, their turn ends. At the end of each of their turns, players must discard down to 2 cards - these must be placed faced down on the table in their bag.
Specimen Cards: These are specimens the players can collect and choose to bring them back to the ship to catalog them before other players, so that they gain scientific credit (the player with the most at the end of the game wins!).
Event Cards: These cards are played as soon as you draw them. If players draw an event card, show it to the rest of the players and follow the instructions on the card.
Shenanigan Cards: These are cards the players can choose to target on other players or themselves. They can be played at any time. Shenanigan cards can also be used to move the ship.
During a player's turn, they can choose to discard a Shenanigan card to move the ship 2 spaces in the direction of their choosing. Any number of Shenanigan cards can be discarded this way in a single turn. If the ship moves into unexplored territory, mark its path with face down tiles. These tiles remain unexplored. If there are no more tiles to place, the movement ends on the last available tile. Players that are more than four tiles away from the ship at the end of its movement are moved to be four tiles away from it (via the shortest path). A player may be moved into unexplored territory, in which case their path is marked with face down, unexplored tiles. If there are no more tiles to place, the movement ends on the last available tile. A player starting their turn on an unexplored tile must immediately explore it.
The game ends when a player catalogs 5 specimens on their catalog sheet. The total publication values of each player’s catalogued specimens are calculated, and the player with the most publications is the winner.
Game Balance
After several iterations of the game and balancing the initial mechanics, we followed this workflow model for fixing bugs and achieve a fun and balanced experience for the game.
Play-test – Find bugs – Iterate – Play-test
The mechanics of the game required balancing to make the game fun and balanced for all the players. Some cards were over-powered and needed to be nerfed and other rules needed adjustments to achieve optimum balance. It was after several play-tests and iterations of these rules, that we achieved the best balance for the game.
