Over the past couple of weekends, I have been playtesting Monster Zoo with a few different groups (and participating in Grant Rodiek’s Prototype PenPal Program). Most players are enjoying the game and I’m pleased with the feedback so far.

Here are some of the findings at this stage:

• The game is fun: The response has been good from a mix of gamers. The theme is great and a lot of people really like the art. The game is easy to learn and new players can learn how to play in a short amount of time.
• Minor edits for clarity: While most players felt the rules were easy to understand, there were a few minor tweaks that could have helped clarify a few things. There is some wording that could be modified such as “Swap a Monster from your Zoo with another player’s Zoo”. The edited version will say “Trade a Monster from your Zoo with a Monster from another player’s Zoo.” The previous version could be interpreted to mean that you only need to swap one Monster from your zoo to take ALL the Monsters in another player’s Zoo.
• Reduce food costs: There are too many of the top end cards with high food costs. I need to tweak the food cost distribution down slightly to speed the game up.
• More combos: While there are some interesting combos in the game, players were eager for more.

Based on this feedback and earlier comments, I have made the following changes to the game:

• Increased the game speed: Instead of starting the game with 3 Zookee Zoogly / 7 Dirty Socks cards, players will now start with 4 Zookee Zoogly / 6 Dirty Socks cards. This has the effect of increasing the chances that players will be able to move cards into their Zoo, speeding up the rate of point gains throughout the game.
• Tweaked the Food cost distribution down: I reduced the food cost values for a few cards and introduced a few more food bonuses. This has helped increase the # of cards that players can typically catch during a turn and speeds up the game.
• Reduced number of ”resets”: There is one “reset” card in the game (Ohno Oogly) that forces all players to discard all Monsters from their Zoos. Essentially this is a game reset since everyone needs to rebuild their Zoos from scratch. While this is a great strategic card that can make a huge difference in the game, playing the card too many times during one game will cause the game to drag out and become less fun. I’ve reduced the amount of cards like this in the game to keep the game progress steady and rapid.
• Introduced new card combinations: I added a few more cards that have good synergy with other cards – which should offer some extra strategic depth along with fun combos.

Thanks everyone who has playtested Monster Zoo thus far. I think you’ll like the new revised version.

A month ago, I started blind playtests for Monster Zoo.

Before this, I was present at all playtests. I could explain rules in person, answer any questions that came up, and generally guide the gameplay to a smooth experience. There were major benefits to doing these playtests in person. If the game broke down in a session, I could quickly tweak the game and everyone could play another round. Players could ask how a specific card or action could be used. The immediate feedback and prototyping cycle was great.

Based on all the playtest feedback, I continued to improve the game little by little. (The advice from this post was extremely useful during the feedback process.) After a few revisions, I decided to move onto blind playtesting.

Blind playtesting is nerve-wracking for a designer. During a blind playtest, you provide the physical game to a tester, and without any additional input they go off to play the game. You can’t help them with the rules or answer any questions. You assume that all the work you’ve put into the game has created something fun and playable. But you never really know.

So after deciding to move on to blind playtesting, I packaged up the most recent version of Monster Zoo and sent it off to my friend in San Diego. I purposefully didn’t give him any details regarding the game. His job would be to introduce Monster Zoo to his gaming group and give me feedback.

And this is when the nerves start to kick in.

I started to wonder if the game was even playable, if the gaming group would enjoy the game enough to get multiple plays in, whether or not the rules were clear enough, etc.

After a few weeks of trying to ignore these nagging thoughts, my friend came back to me with tons of feedback. It was a success!

Turns out my friend and his gaming group had been playing Monster Zoo daily for a few weeks.

Here’s the feedback I received:

• Really enjoyed the game, played it multiple times daily.
• Different groups enjoyed the game, introduced it to several different types of players.
• Rules were good. Easy to read.
• Liked the relatively short play time.
• Good variety between plays.
• Good variety of cards.
• Liked the theme.
• Liked the card names.
• Did not run into any game breaking issues.
• A few of the cards were overpowered, everyone wanted them.
• One “broken” card in particular caused score spikes.

The “broken” card that came up in the feedback process was “Wild Zoo”:

This card is an Event card that affects all players when it is drawn. In a few cases, when this card was drawn, there were players with really high scoring Monster cards in their hand. This then created a situation with huge point swings that felt a little too random.

There are other Event cards that allow players to move one Monster into their Zoo, so reducing the effect of “Wild Zoo” would make it a redundant card. For now, I’m removing this card from the game as I rework the effect.

Overall the feedback was extremely positive, much better than I could have hoped for. It totally floored me that a group of gamers with no real connection to me was playing Monster Zoo daily. Most of the new players introduced to the game had no problems picking up the game and playing within a few rounds. Players seem to be enjoying the combination of a light deck building game with strategy around managing the cards in their Zoo.

In Monster Zoo, I try to keep cards balanced according to their cost to acquire. Cards with stronger effects typically have higher costs and weaker cards have lower costs. However, after a few rounds of play testing Monster Zoo, I realized that some cards in the game were out of balance. A few cards felt really strong and could easily sway the game towards a player’s favor quickly. And a few cards seemed really weak, when played they had little effect on the game or felt too expensive to acquire.

One of the best discussions I could find on the topic of balance is a lecture from Ian Schreiber on Transitive Mechanics and Cost Curves. In the lecture, Ian talks about breaking down all the individual effects of your game into two things: costs and benefits. By doing this, you can get a sense of how balanced all the components of your game are relative to each other. If a particular item has a much higher benefit to cost ratio than other similarly costing items, then you know something is out of balance.

Here’s how I went about applying this principle for Monster Zoo.

First I broke out every single card into it’s individual effects. For example, the card Whompo Boogly has the following stats: “+2 Food. Zoo Effect: Draw an extra Card this turn.” This card has two unique effects:

• Food Gained
• Zoo Effect that Draws Cards

After identifying every effect, I then gave a rough benefit score to each effect in relation to other effects. Then I added up the value of every benefit per card, giving me a benefit total score.

Now I have a rough cost / benefit comparison for each card. But it’s hard to really get an idea of where some of the cards might be unbalanced.

This is where a cost curve (basically a visual representation of your cost / benefit) comes in handy. Charting out the cost / benefit of all the cards gives me this:

With this, I can see that there are a few cards that are unbalanced in a few ways:

• There are cards with a cost of 3 that have less benefit than some cards with cost of 2. (Underpowered)
• There are cards with a cost of 5 that have less benefit than some cards with cost of 4. (Underpowered)
• There are cards with a cost of 4 that have more benefit than some cards with cost of 5 or 6. (Overpowered)
• There are cards with a cost of 6 that have much higher benefit than the natural cost curve. (Possibly Overpowered)

Let’s look at two specific examples.

One of the cards that seemed overpowered in play testing was Fifi Oogly. This card has the following stats:

• Cost: 6
• Benefit: 9
• Gain +2 Food
• Monsters cost 1 less Food to catch this turn.
• Zoo Effect: Monsters cost 1 less Food to catch this turn.

Based on the cost curve, you can see that this card has much more benefit than it’s cost. So we have two options here, we can increase the cost or we can reduce the benefit. I happen to think it’s a fun card to play with, so I’ll likely test increasing the cost.

Here’s another card, Yummli Oogly. In play testing, this card seemed weak and no one really wanted to acquire this card. Here are the stats:

• Cost: 6
• Benefit: 5
• Double all Food gained this turn.

While this card seems like a really strong card, it definitely is below the curve. If you compare it to a card like Chunky Oogly which has the following stats:

• Cost: 3
• Benefit: 4
• Gain +2 Food
• Draw an extra card this turn

You can see how Yummli Oogly is fairly weak, on the cost curve it is seriously below everything else with a cost of 6. Having 2 Chunky Ooglies would be much better for the same cost. In this case, I might add an effect to Yummli Oogly to get it back in balance.

Some guidelines for creating your own cost curve and using it to balance your game:

• Break down all effects into individual unique effects
• Assign a relative benefit value for each effect
• Create one cost value for each item
• Compare the cost / benefit to understand balance