by Karl Lange
The Thought
In April 2017 at Incubator Melbourne, Australia – my native board sport playtest occasion – I used to be testing a card sport that had a “folding” mechanism in which you’d flip a sq. card or stack of playing cards head to head onto an adjoining card, rising the scale of the deck.
A superb buddy and fellow designer, Aaron Lim, mused that the motion felt harking back to the online game Katamari Damacy. That received me pondering: How might I make a board sport by which you roll a 3D object round, selecting up gadgets?
Magnets
As an engineer by commerce, my thoughts instantly jumped to magnets. I went to work, raiding the fridge for outdated magnets and beginning experiments with magnet and cardboard thickness to see how this might translate right into a multi-player expertise.
Leaning into the cardboard sport that spawned the concept, I made a decision to stay with sq. tiles stacked on prime of one another and cubes with steel faces for the participant items. Having the tiles stacked meant that the magnets wanted to be robust sufficient to stay to the steel dice, however weak sufficient to not stick to one another.
A number of the first magnet samples I made
Magnetic sheet — the stuff fridge magnets are constructed from — has a really quick magnetic subject. The answer got here from making a tile with a thick sufficient cardboard again on the magnetic sheet to create sufficient separation that just one tile can be held on the steel dice — however with a thick sufficient magnet that the tile would maintain onto the dice because it rolled across the desk.
August 2017: first prototype mid manufacturing, with a roll of magnetic sheet hooked up to cardboard and with full-size sticker sheets for graphics
Gameplay
Most of my video games begin as a spreadsheet, and Octocube was no exception. I began with 5 gadgets of accelerating rarity in 4 background colours, giving me two axes to play with the scoring, along with cash creating a unique path with which gamers might rating.
The actions gamers might take — roll, pivot, rating — by no means modified all through the design, though the scoring went by means of a number of iterations.
To make sure there was an arc as the sport progressed, I got here up with a number of layers of scoring each mid- and endgame.
Within the first prototype, midgame scoring had two components: scoring factors for every merchandise you had collected (with rarer gadgets being value extra factors), and progressing alongside a observe for every merchandise in the event you collected units of the identical gadgets (and the extra gadgets within the set, the additional you moved).
August 2017: First public check at Incubator Melbourne, with an merchandise observe for the 5 gadgets
The endgame scoring had three components: the merchandise tracks would give factors to the participant furthest alongside every observe; the participant with the vast majority of cash scored factors; and every participant scored factors based mostly on what number of colours they’d collected.
I shortly decided that having to take level tokens for each merchandise and transfer alongside a number of tracks for units was an excessive amount of downtime through the scoring motion, with a number of participant items to trace all the pieces, taking gamers’ consideration away from the “enjoyable” of manipulating their dice across the board.
The following iteration tightened the screws, eradicating the merchandise observe and altering the midgame scoring to factors for units of things every time you rating (as within the now-published model) however with cash counting as wilds towards the units. Endgame scoring had factors for every merchandise you had collected (that’s, a part of the earlier midgame scoring), with gamers scoring factors if they’d the vast majority of every shade (one thing that remained till the ultimate model).
September 2017: Playtest of the second model
This was beginning to work nicely. The cash being wild labored, but added complexity to the scoring actions and was not nicely balanced throughout the gadgets. Having all gadgets rating factors on the finish of the sport did not actually change the general scores as you have been already scoring the units, so this was on the chopping block for the subsequent model.
One attention-grabbing factor I noticed was a participant inserting all of their collected tiles in a grid, with colours on one axis and gadgets on the opposite. This led to the creation of the participant board and scoring majorities on each axes.
The third iteration of the sport, mechanically, was near the ultimate model you possibly can see in the present day. With the introduction of the participant boards after the earlier check, it was straightforward to have scoring of majority colours and majority gadgets with out gamers having to type by means of their tiles on the finish of the sport. The participant board was additionally an excellent visible indication of how everybody was doing as you might look round and see “Oh, the participant to my left has a number of footballs, however not many pink”, and many others.
Throughout the sport, gamers scored factors for units of matching gadgets picked up on their dice, and cash transitioned to straight factors on the finish of the sport.
October 2017: Take a look at of the third model at Incubator Melbourne
Numerous playtests happened over the subsequent two years, with an intricate balancing of factors for units, majorities, and the cash to get the scoring within the mid- and endgame feeling proper. Ideally, gamers can be invested in each phases of play, with a pivot level from specializing in units to specializing in majorities, someplace simply previous the center of the sport.
The format and variety of the tiles on the desk went by means of a number of adjustments, too, shifting the upper stacks of tiles towards the center of the board to create the sensation of a “sinking island” as the sport progressed and gamers have been compelled collectively, rising their interplay.
Underneath the Sea
As you may need seen from the photographs above, the sport initially had an summary theme, with gamers amassing timber, footballs, bicycles, sport consoles, and gems. (Shout out to Sport-icons.web.) After making an attempt the prototype, a writer instructed that the sport wanted a extra compelling theme to be a viable product. This led to a lot of potential re-theme choices, from a robotic in a manufacturing unit amassing gadgets, to a slime rolling round a dungeon amassing races and lessons of adventures, and (after all) to an octopus amassing gadgets below the ocean.
Finally, the octopus theme was chosen because it was probably the most household pleasant and felt contemporary. “Octopus Scramble” was born, and with the assistance of fellow designer Giles Pritchard, I had the brand new and improved octopus cubes able to roll round below the ocean.
Octopus cubes, with artwork courtesy of Giles Pritchard
The participant boards turned a view of the ocean from sand, to the shallows, to kelp/coral, and to the deep, with the gadgets changing into extra sea acceptable.
October 2019: Octopus model midgame at SPIEL ’19
Cardboard Edison Award
In January 2021, after purchasing the sport round to publishers at a lot of occasions and with many unanswered electronic mail submissions, I made a decision to enter “Octopus Scramble” into the Cardboard Edison Award, a yearly contest recognizing nice unpublished board video games.
To my shock, “Octopus Scramble” was not solely nominated as a finalist however tied for first place. This was an unimaginable honor and (I feel) finally the popularity that received the sport signed.
Youtube Video
Sit Down!
Shortly after co-winning the Cardboard Edison Award in Could 2021, I had a buddy counsel the sport would match nicely with Sit Down! and kindly gave me a contact electronic mail. After I despatched them the pitch video used for Cardboard Edison, they promptly requested a bodily prototype. After some quick backwards and forwards, the sport was signed by the top of the 12 months, with a deliberate launch for 2025.
Leap ahead to the beginning of 2024 and improvement of the newly named Octocube kicked off. I labored with Michaël Derobertmasure from Sit Down! to develop the sport additional, and together with his lead, we tightened the tile format within the beginning set-up, added abyss tiles to take care of participant motion all over to the ultimate flip, created the abyss powers and promo tiles so as to add additional spice and selection to the sport, and (my favourite factor) added the youngsters model to the sport.
The youngsters model of the foundations condenses the sport to its easiest tactile type, whereas sustaining the core enjoyable of the sport: rolling round and amassing gadgets below the ocean. On this model of the foundations, gamers use the again of their participant board and race to fill it by amassing considered one of every of the gadgets proven with simplified motion guidelines (that take away rotate and permit placement on any face of your octopus). The primary participant to fill their board wins. This makes the sport accessible to a lot youthful gamers and remains to be actually enjoyable for extra skilled avid gamers, too.
The prototype and remaining model of the youngsters participant board
I am unable to finish this diary with out concerning the spectacular artwork by Clément Masson.
Clément did an incredible job capturing the texture of the sport, from the participant boards to the tiles and the cubes themselves. I particularly love the field artwork with the dice of water and octopuses surrounding it, and the stylization of the “U” in Octocube as a magnet is extremely intelligent.
To see one thing that I labored on for thus lengthy, with so many individuals’s enter, as a completed product is extremely rewarding and what actually makes designing video games one thing that I like doing. My hope now’s that the sport will be loved by individuals the world over.
Thanks for studying,
Karl Lange
