Written by Mathijs Jansen
I would have never expected to be making a game about anthropomorphic animals on a river cruise. In game design, you are trying to set and deliver on expectations. On the other hand, in comedy you are trying to subvert expectations. So here is a little story about both. River Rats wasn’t always called River Rats. I remember sitting down and one of our design session with Robin, and he showed me a game called Dream Guardians. A cooperative deck building game that only used a single deck of cards. I was instantly hooked, I do love me a deck builder and seeing what could be done with only a single deck of cards sounded intriguing to say the least! So the deck was shuffled, the rules explained aaand….
Our playtesting group was left with a distinctly unsatisfied feeling, something about the core loop just didn’t quite click.
I told Robin this with my usual bluntness, he took my feedback well – there was quite a bit of it. Appreciating the frank feedback and making some changes, he came back with a new and improved version. We tested again, and again, but the fun wasn’t there. Now Robin already made a fun game before Monsters of Lochmond, so I knew he had it in him to make another fun game but Dream Guardians just wasn’t it.
Another session more of the same, the whole table seemed to agree that something just wasn’t quite clicking, my feedback remained as frank and brutal as ever. Surprisingly, after all this brutal feedback Robin was not starting to get fed up with me. And in fact asked me to help out, time to put my money where my mouth was. I spent some time coming up with my own versions. I tested it with a different group. But in the end, coming to the conclusion it was time for something new.
So time to start anew. We put Dream Guardians in the freezer for now, and decided on three core principles that we had liked about it that we would like to see come back in whatever this new version was called. I nicknamed it Joker Poker after Baltro’s playtesting name. This name sadly did not make it to the finish line, nor did another of my personal favorites: Jokerface. The game needed to be A) playable with a regular deck of playing cards, B) cooperative, ideally playable by solo, and C) offer something for both new and experienced players.
Eventually, I came up with the idea of building poker hands in a cooperative manner. In the initial version players played cards into a communal hand, trying to beat the hand of the Nightmare Kings (the name of the enemies in Dream Guardians). This proved to be a solid core loop, and a great foundation to build upon.
Raising the stakes
More playtests and a few more changes to be made. The game comes with limited information and communication about the hands. To instill the feeling of true collaboration, we came up with a ‘prediction’; if you managed to build a specific poker hand (e.g. a flush), you would unlock a powerful Joker.
This had a couple of benefits: it gave direction for the players for each new hand, and it also provided a good tool to counteract some of the variance. As an added bonus, it helped people to remind to place an ante card down. Which was something players tended to forget.
Next, we wanted to introduce a suit specific power to add a little more spice to the game. We tried dozens and dozens of different variation and combination, but we finally decided that having each suit work on one ‘axis’ was the best way to differentiate the suits and make them feel different. Hearts allowed players to raise the stakes, diamonds allowed for swapping, spades gives you the option to discard cards you don’t need, whilst clubs provides the opportunity to add cards to the market.
It still brings me such joy when players figure out clever things to do with the powers. I can raise the stakes, if I think I am winning, I can add a card to the market to communicate a plan for the next round. It created this wonderful wrinkle, do you want to play a card that works well to form a stronger hand? Or do you really want to raise the stakes? Is it worth it to give up on this hand to set up for the next?
Every story needs a good villain.
Another piece of consistent feedback playtesters gave that they were feeling that amazing moment when defeating the bad guys. So we added some boss powers, each bad guy would have its own nasty negative effect. And to add to make the victories feel more awesome, a little bonus effect when defeating it.
Cruisin’ for a theme
I was already leaning into the poker theme: the enemy’s hand had two face down cards and five face up cards simulating a poker hand, stakes were raised, and poker hands built. Based on the poker “river rat”, which refers to a player who gets lucky in a Texas Hold ‘Em game by the final card dealt, known as the river. This set the stage for a game set on a luxurious river cruise, where the bad guys represent the wealthy elite (aka the River Rats) and the rest of the cards are the various members of the crew working together to take defeat them in a high stakes poker game.
It was a bit of a struggle to have a theme that worked with a deck of playing cards. Robin wanted to make sure there was a hierarchy in the value of cards (e.g. an 8 is higher than a 2), since this is also the case in poker. En we needed a world where this hierarchy feels logical. Additionally, there needed to be conformity within each suit, because all the cards of a suit can trigger the same action. And, the cards of the same value all needed to have some synergy as well. This would be most logical for poker combinations such as four of a kinds.
I feel Rixt did an amazing job bringing Robin’s idea to life. She gave each card an evocative and lively character, and was able together to make a consistent and fitting deck.
Thanks so much for reading this design diary, and check out the Kickstarter coming out on May 12th: