Moonborn Games
Creating board games with my wife!
The Beginning
My wife and I were driving home from a trip. We were talking about the board games we had played - discussing what would have made them more fun. We played some very popular games, but it felt like they were missing something. They were both one of those systems building games - the kind where you build out your board, and you win if your system generates the most points. They were fun, but one of them was a bit more fun than the other - and it was because the choices you made in the game could affect your opponents. Many of these games don't require much player interaction, or the interactions have little or infrequent consequence.
We were kind of discussing the anatomy of a game. The conversation made me realize that I prefer games that have high interaction. Ideally a game would make your choices feel like they matter, but where you always have some chance of winning - nail-biters to the end. I don't prefer where you check out because you have no way to get back into the game. Nor games where being in first can cause you to lose, and you have no real ways to prevent it except pretending to be less strong than you are.
This made us wonder - how hard is it to make a game? Well, the concept of Worms Rising was born on that drive. I stayed up all night writing rules. I drew the board on Excalidraw, printed it out, grabbed some pieces from an old copy of Pandemic Legacy, started printing cards and cutting cardstock, and played the first round of Worms Rising.
The Journey
I'm here to report - it was... fine. It had good bones (not the worms - they don't have bones). The game was cool, but just a bit boring. There weren't enough satisfying things to do on your turn. There weren't many decisions to make. There were moments where your turn felt like a wash - "yeah, I'll just stay in my little bedrock hideout, thanks".
So I thought, how can I make this more fun? The player needs to make decisions. The player needs things to do. They need to feel like their actions matter, and when they lose they should wonder if they made the wrong choice.
This is when I realized that a really great game about worms and birds would have zombies. Zombies are the answer to my problems. That, and the bird having a health pool and the worms being able to fight back. Oh, and special abilities not just special events. And every worm should have a different special ability. Oh, and the birds should have special abilities too. Okay... so that took a few more rounds to come up with, but the game was immediately becoming more fun.
Fast forward a month, and 90% of the game was complete. I had made a huge number of worms, birds, special events, worm actions, and bird actions. Then, came months of balancing - wait, this is why board games are hard. I'm writing this a year later, and the game isn't done being balanced.
But, when you put so many things into the game, you get a lot of levers to tweak. Birds are losing too much? Allow them to trade actions for health. Birds are still losing and aren't as much fun as the worms? Let's add drills so they have another decision to make. Let's tone down this card, or remove that one.
It's been an absolute blast. We took the game to a local game convention and had some awesome feedback. I started building the website - which almost has a working version of the game cross my fingers that it's soon - and kept having game nights and playing with friends.
I keep thinking of new games. Right now the only other one that's close is Worms Brawl (small) - a game to fit in your pocket where 2 worms compete to collect fishhooks while throwing wormhole grenades and wrestling each other for the better position. But, honestly it sucks. It's just not fun. I think it should be though, and I bet I can fix it! Once I stop focusing on Worms Rising.
I hope you try Worms Rising! Please feel free to challenge me to a game online - once it's done being built. For now, check out the page!