Your cards ain’t worth a dime if you don’t lay ‘em down.
If you’ve been hanging out with us for the last couple of weeks, you know that we’re pretty well jazzed about Galaxy Trucker, the iPad adaptation of the board game of the same name that’s coming out this Monday.
After 2013′s flood of top-quality board games for iOS (Agricola, Pandemic, Brief History of the World, Lords of Waterdeep… just to name a few), this year there’s been barely a trickle. Dave and I have been playing a preview build of Galaxy Trucker, and it’s easily good enough to compete with that beautiful 2013 bumper crop.
Maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised. Vlaada Chvátil, the designer of Galaxy Trucker and the head honcho at publisher Czech Games Edition has a career that spans the worlds of tabletop and video games. Chvátil is a bona fide board game legend thanks to designs like Space Alert, Mage Knight, and Through The Ages on his CV, but his first notable game design was the 2001 PC RTS Original War, a cult hit that still has an enthusiastic following today.
After the jump, I ask Vlaada Chvátil about Galaxy Trucker and where he sees the intersection of board games and digital platforms taking us in the future.
Different varieties of Galaxy Trucker’s dastardly pirates.
For the unfamiliar, Galaxy Trucker is a game where you assemble a spaceship out a of a pile of junk parts, then compete with other players to survive a gauntlet of challenges as your ship falls apart around you. It’s wonderfully chaotic fun that is hugely replayable — you’ll never make the same ship twice, or face the same set of challenges in it. Galaxy Trucker for iPad builds a big single-player campaign that introduces new situations and gameplay variations, plus a wide array of online and same-device multiplayer game modes.
This digital Galaxy Trucker has been in development for a good long while, but that long gestation shows in the quality of the app. Chvátil took time out from the run-up to release to answer some questions for us.
Owen Faraday: Galaxy Trucker will be is the first CGE mobile game to see release [Through the Ages was indefinitely postponed after a long and troubled development cycle earlier this year], but it’s also one of the more complex CGE games to implement. What made you choose Galaxy Trucker to port to mobile?
Vlaada Chvátil: Me and Petr Murmak (who is in charge of CGE) understand each other well regarding board games, including their digital versions. After all, we started to work together in 2007, when I was playtesting Through the Ages using an online prototype.
When we saw the first iPad, we both immediately agreed – Galaxy Trucker would play great on this device, and it will not be so difficult to implement. Time proved we were right… in one of these two statements.
OF: The game has been in development for a good while, what were some of the challenges to get it to where it is?
VC: If we had been going for a 1:1 implementation, it would be not so difficult. Actually, we had a good playable version last fall. The biggest challenge here was the fact that there are two parts of the game, and each plays differently — you build the ships in real time mode, and fly them in traditional turn-based mode. It requires two different approaches, especially in multiplayer. Or one very universal.
But we decided to go further, trying to improve every aspect of the game. We created a turn-based building mode, so the game is suitable for pass-and-play and asynchronous play. For the flight phase, we went for a 3D-like visualisation with a lot of eye candy, to support the theme of the game. We added an autopilot option, for those who prefer just the ship building part. We implemented different AI personalities and various adventure decks to enhance replayability. And especially, we added many hours of solo experience by implementing a non-linear campaign for the game — scripting of that monster took lots of my time during the past year.
And we should not underestimate the tutorial — doing it right requires lots of thinking, work and playtesting. Of course, you have to playtest all aspects of the game, and tweaking and balancing them until everything feels right.
But that’s still just the game itself. We wanted also a great app. System of menus, settings, player profiles, achievements, leaderboards, game logs, helps, localizations… To do these things right requires lots of work regardless of whether the game itself is simple or complex. In a small team, you really feel that.
And last but not least, we took this as an investment, developing not just the game, but an entire board game engine for our further implementations. Especially challenging task was our own multiplatform solution for multiplayer.
I have to say, despite several of us having experience from the videogame industry, from developing mobile applications, and from implementing digital prototypes of boardgames, we underestimated how much effort it will take to deliver an app we can be proud of. We hope it was worth it and the players will appreciate our work.
OF: What do you see as the role of mobile and digital in the future? Is it a second platform to bring board games to, or do you see opportunities to make games that are part digital (like FFG’s XCOM game) or wholly digital designs?
VC: Well, I think we can consider it rather present than future. The success of purely digital games designed as if they were board games (Hearthstone, SolForge) suggests we will see more of them. Board games have been played online since the internet started to spread, and the idea of an artifical opponent is actually even older than electronic computers (like the Mechanical Turk in late 18th century: yes, it was just a clever illusion, but the idea was there).
And as for digital elements in board games, there is going to be more of them, as smart devices are becoming a common part of our lives, and we at CGE were never afraid to use them. Space Alert is driven by soundtracks instead of an app just because it was published too early — but during development, the sound was generated dynamically by a program on my notebook, and a mission-generating app appeared soon after the game was published.
I personally see digital devices as an interesting game component that open a wide space of opportunities. Generating the mission and handling the game flow is just one of them. Another one (handling of information that has to be deducted) can be seen in the CGE game for this year called Alchemists (including a nice use of camera). And I have a game in development that uses a device in yet another way.
I know there are people who do not like this trend, but I take it just as one of the game elements. There are also people who do not like dice in games, yet we have seen many original and clever uses of dice in the past years. But still, there are enough games that do not use dice, and there will be sure enough games that do not use digital elements. But both as a designer and as a gamer, I welcome anything that enhances the variety of board games.
Galaxy Trucker for iPad is out this Monday, September 29th.
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