I appreciate the explaining on the design change for Wingspan, really! Do you think you could do videos like that?Talking about design changes/choices in past games? Cheers!
I like when games have several game end triggers. Take King of Tokyo, for example. There's victory points and player elimination. If you're doing poorly on one strategy you can try to switch to a different one.
I know it's fashionable to hate on Fluxx, but the end condition is cool - meeting specific criteria that are 1) constantly changing, and 2) decided by the players. Choosing what end condition to play and when to play it can be a fun and chaotic experience, if that's your thing.
I also like how in Great Western Trail the job market decides when the game ends. Sometimes there's quicker games, where everyone rushes the route from start to finish as fast as possible, and sometimes there are slower games where everyone takes their time reaching Kansas time and time again. :)
I love Cooperative games so I'm a bit biased, but besides that anything that is not set number of rounds is cool and interesting. 7 Wonders: Duel is one of my favorite games of all times, so having different ways for a game to end is probably my favorite. Scythe has that "you can end the game, but you might lose to everyone and actually by last". This is always fascinating to people (especially non-serious gamers) when I explain that whoever places his 6th star ends the game, but doesn't necessarily win.
The timing mechanism in the Legends of Andor cooperative series is interesting. You have so many moves and you need to eliminate enemies but the more you kills the less time you have.
I really liked your explanation of why you went with a certain number of rounds for wingspan vs your traditional user controlled mechanisms. Also I think the Race series highlights a lot of these user controlled mechanisms for ending the game since it is a Race.
As you mentioned Keyforge, I think it is more complicated (for better) and the design choices were really interesting. You need to forge keys, so you are collecting aember. If you only focus on battling your opponent, you will lose. If you focus only on collecting aember, you will lose. The winning is in balance and knowing when to attack and when to reap (collecting). It ties with ending the game "you can kill my minions all you want, I am ending the game either way". I would like to mention your Scythe, too. We played it last week and one of our friends decided to end the game very soon (playing black nation) by fighting. He knew he wasn't going to win, but he hoped for being second, as I was rather going for strong endgame. All players feared I would win if the game would go for another 2 rounds. In the end, the player who triggered the ending was third. What I love about it, you have a sense of who is winning, but you can never tell for sure. And it is really interesting trying to predict when the game will end. It makes the game really interesting.
You've mentioned Yedo in a lot of your videos. I've had a very difficult time finding a copy of it and now I hear it is coming to Kickstarter with a deluxified version. Is it worth it for someone who really likes worker placement games and the Japanese theme? I know worth can be hard to quantify... Are you planning on upgrading?
I do really like Yedo. It's a very tight game, though, and some actions aren't quite as appealing as others, so I'm curious to see if the new version addresses some of those concerns. If so, I'll likely get a copy.
Related to changing game state to end a game, I like how Flash Point Fire Rescue gives players agency in choosing if they move closer to bad end game in an effort to win the game. Building collapses and players lose if too much damage occurs but players can also punch through walls, causing damage, to get to areas of the building faster that aren't normally accessible. So there's an incentive to make the game shorter but not always clear if good or bad for the outcome A lot of games do this but FPFR came to mind first.
I think Five Tribes is interesting, and I'd put into a slightly different category to the ones listed. One way that Five Tribes ends is when there are no legal moves. Toward the end of the game players will often make a tactical decision as to how many legal moves they want to create or remove from the board in the course of their own action.
I really appreciate games where everyone gets the same number of turns and the same opportunity to win. This is great in theory, really difficult to accomplish in practice. I tend to like the "everyone takes one more turn" model. If I go early in the turn order and get an extra chance to win that you can't defend, it can be an unfair advantage. On the other hand, if I play more aggressively because of that, I can turn it in my favor. Played four games of Risk Legacy over the weekend. Seems like the player who goes first has an advantage, but three out of four times the last or second to last player won. You may have an advantage late in the game, but you may start out behind the 8-ball because you are making decisions with less information (knowing what other people have done or where they have set up). The worst condition for me is anything where someone can lose without getting a turn. If that's even possible I tend not to like a game no matter what else it has in its favor. It is also true of Risk. One player in one Legacy game almost had this happen and was never able to recover fully.
Star Wars Rebellion is pretty interesting since it has 2 different end/victory conditions for each player. It's a very asymmetric game (rebels and empire as per franchise) who have to embrace their tactics in order to stand a chance. The Empire is ultimately aiming for an elimination condition by wiping out the rebels' hidden base. Find it, wipe it out, win the game. The rebels, on the other hand, have a round timer with a movable end goal. (just guessing numbers since don't remember off hadn) - It starts at 15 rounds, and as the Rebel player completes their random hidden objectives, they'll cut down the number of rounds they have to survive for. The thematic being they're gaining support and can eventually cause a galactic wide upheaval. But yeah, somehow didn't register prior to this vid that the victory conditions were that different from each other.
Great topic, I think it's good to have multiple win conditions, but at the same time you have to watch about overall balance or emphasis, like your Wingspan example. Behind the Throne uses a random element in the 2nd round, which sounds annoying, but forces you to stay on your toes and weigh risk, kind of like in Knock Rummy where if someone knocks you have one turn before ending, it creates a different tension.
In the Civilization board game eliminating one player triggers a win condition for the attacker and the game ends right after. I think there are a few games with this mechanism.
@14:11 I'd like to see a deeper dive into the topic of player-initiated endgame triggers/conditions, specifically when they are not (or closely tied to) the winning condition. If you don't want the endgame trigger to be the win condition, why not? How often would you want the player who triggers the endgame to win? How much do you want to separate a player's actions required to work towards endgame from their ability to work towards a victory condition? In what situations would you want to obscure information from players so they do not know for certain who will win if the game ends? In what situations would you want all information available to players, and do you find it problematic if a player knows for sure who will win if the endgame is triggered? What if it requires a lot of math to figure that out- do you avoid such possibilities that may result in a player spending too much time calculating other players' points before they determine whether they want to trigger the endgame? I liked your example with Wingspan- that you initially did not want to use a round structure, but decided to go that route because the player-triggered endgame you initially implemented just did not work. Did you consider any other endgame triggers with Wingspan- like when you run out of one or more resources in the supply, or when you run out of cards in the deck (you start the game with a certain number of bird cards in the deck based on the number of players)?
For Wingspan, we discussed various endgame triggers, but once we realized that the engine building didn't work with the racing element, we focused on the round structure, and it worked great.
Thanks a lot for the insightful vid! One of the challenges I'm facing in design at the moment, is how to make the end of the game feel climactic. I have 2 conditions that need to be met for the end-game to trigger, and then the winner is the player with the most points. In early versions it felt a bit like "Oh, the game has ended and this is the winner." There wasn't a real wow moment. From what I've experienced in other games, it's nice to have some additional end-game scoring come into play as well, like hidden player objectives, bonus points, etc. which make it a bit less predictable. Does anyone have some more ideas on how to make the end pop a bit more?
I think it depends on the type of game, but you're right that some games can benefit from a score calculation at end of game. Check out how we do this in Scythe, Wingspan, and Red Rising.
Wooly Bully has an interesting end-game mechanic - players can step out of the game at any point, and are incentivised to do so, as the earlier you step out, the more points you get. The last player left in the game gets no bonus for stepping out but can keep on playing (alone) till they run out of valid tiles.
Your example of removing the race element from Wingspan reminded me of the change the first expansion to Oh My Goods, which added the event deck and a fixed number of rounds. Excellent expansion.
Just played Archipelago and March of the Ants on sunday, two games with very different end game triggers. Archipelago is a semi-coop game where each player is dealt with a card that has an end game trigger that is kept secret, so you are aware of one possible trigger, but not the others. The card also reveals a way to score separately from the end game trigger, but all players score based on it. When the end game is triggered, all players will reveal their cards and score based on the bottom half. Also, at the beginning of the game, you will decide on a short, medium, or longer game and draw your card from that deck. In addition, the game could win if the locals rise up and rebel, so the players have to work together to prevent that from happening or all players lose. In March, it is a specific round amount (and you have the choice of having 1 extra round or not. I always go with the extra round, as the game plays quick and the extra round is usually always fun. And then players score based on certain in game factors or completing sets for their queen (you play cards on the head, thorax, and abdomen of your queen that grants you new abilities and each set of these is worth points)
Inis has a really interesting end game condition. There are three win conditions. If anyone meets more win conditions than anyone else, they win! Otherwise, the game continues!! (One player, the Brenn, can break a tie).
I love a fixed amount of rounds/years/phases/turns/actions but I do like it when players can influence the game end like in Yokohama, where there's several ways for the game to end. And yes, in Yedo, if you kill the Emperor, the game will end at the end of that round but the player doesn't automatically win; but it's 14VP + two bonus cards so it would be very rare for the player to kill the shogun to _not_ win the game.
And also 1 one my favourite is Scythe endings. Also i think Terraforming Mars has GREAT game ending mechanism. I hate number of turns endings like Terra Mystika.
If you play Jamaica with the "Crew" expansion, there is a crew member you can acquire who gives you an instant win if you can collect all the cursed treasure.
Great video Jamey, I am going to throw two at you that I do not think fit any of those categories. First, Inish you have to maintain a game state till your next turn. It really feels like a chess ending, not only do I need to set up the win, but prevent all ways of avoiding the win by my opponents. Second, is Pandemic avoid triggering the bad endings. I feel like this is one of those only in co-op, or semi co-op systems. But it does create an alternative ending to those games. It also, works in reverse of trying to have players end the game, and instead players are trying to prolong the game in order to get the ending they want.
Love the end trigger of Scythe's 6 achievements. My wife surprised everyone by suddenly getting 3 in one turn and ending the game. Amazing... A second one I really like is Pax Pamir 2nd Edition. If you have 4 more points then the player in second place you win! Could make some games very short but also very exciting.
I find that games that end when one person is eliminated should be a separate category(not 2 player kinds). They create a very different player dynamic as you only want to eliminate players when it leads to your victory and doesn't have the problem of dead players just sitting around waiting for the game to end.
Nice list! I would love you to do one on Win-conditions. There are several games that have great ways for players to change the objective of the game (Lowlands, mombasa, archipelago & rajas- both as you mentioned are great examples)
Founders of Gloomhaven! Game locks when the 6 structures are built. I like how the first half creates such a relaxing but strategic approach to the game. Then, the last 3 structures seem to speed up and create this urgency to get your points up before the game locks up. With the games trickle down point system, you can really prepare early enough to cash in on future points. Really interesting design concept in my opinion. :]
We've had games end abruptly when the cat suddenly jumps up on the table and lays on the board or starts chewing and slapping components around.
Silver Fang Every game of Monopoly I played as a kid ended when someone flipped the board and stormed off! 😂
I appreciate the explaining on the design change for Wingspan, really! Do you think you could do videos like that?Talking about design changes/choices in past games? Cheers!
Artur Carvalho seconded! It’s so fascinating to have a behind the scenes look at board game design!
That was cool and I really appreciate the change. I think the 4 round structure works beautifully for Wingspan!
Elizabeth is mega talented
I like when games have several game end triggers. Take King of Tokyo, for example. There's victory points and player elimination. If you're doing poorly on one strategy you can try to switch to a different one.
I like how AH:card game ends. Player lose helth, or just escape, or trigger end game triggers with different scenario endings.
I know it's fashionable to hate on Fluxx, but the end condition is cool - meeting specific criteria that are 1) constantly changing, and 2) decided by the players. Choosing what end condition to play and when to play it can be a fun and chaotic experience, if that's your thing.
I also like how in Great Western Trail the job market decides when the game ends. Sometimes there's quicker games, where everyone rushes the route from start to finish as fast as possible, and sometimes there are slower games where everyone takes their time reaching Kansas time and time again. :)
I love Cooperative games so I'm a bit biased, but besides that anything that is not set number of rounds is cool and interesting.
7 Wonders: Duel is one of my favorite games of all times, so having different ways for a game to end is probably my favorite.
Scythe has that "you can end the game, but you might lose to everyone and actually by last". This is always fascinating to people (especially non-serious gamers) when I explain that whoever places his 6th star ends the game, but doesn't necessarily win.
The timing mechanism in the Legends of Andor cooperative series is interesting. You have so many moves and you need to eliminate enemies but the more you kills the less time you have.
I really liked your explanation of why you went with a certain number of rounds for wingspan vs your traditional user controlled mechanisms. Also I think the Race series highlights a lot of these user controlled mechanisms for ending the game since it is a Race.
As you mentioned Keyforge, I think it is more complicated (for better) and the design choices were really interesting. You need to forge keys, so you are collecting aember. If you only focus on battling your opponent, you will lose. If you focus only on collecting aember, you will lose. The winning is in balance and knowing when to attack and when to reap (collecting). It ties with ending the game "you can kill my minions all you want, I am ending the game either way".
I would like to mention your Scythe, too. We played it last week and one of our friends decided to end the game very soon (playing black nation) by fighting. He knew he wasn't going to win, but he hoped for being second, as I was rather going for strong endgame. All players feared I would win if the game would go for another 2 rounds. In the end, the player who triggered the ending was third. What I love about it, you have a sense of who is winning, but you can never tell for sure. And it is really interesting trying to predict when the game will end. It makes the game really interesting.
You've mentioned Yedo in a lot of your videos. I've had a very difficult time finding a copy of it and now I hear it is coming to Kickstarter with a deluxified version. Is it worth it for someone who really likes worker placement games and the Japanese theme? I know worth can be hard to quantify... Are you planning on upgrading?
I do really like Yedo. It's a very tight game, though, and some actions aren't quite as appealing as others, so I'm curious to see if the new version addresses some of those concerns. If so, I'll likely get a copy.
Related to changing game state to end a game, I like how Flash Point Fire Rescue gives players agency in choosing if they move closer to bad end game in an effort to win the game. Building collapses and players lose if too much damage occurs but players can also punch through walls, causing damage, to get to areas of the building faster that aren't normally accessible. So there's an incentive to make the game shorter but not always clear if good or bad for the outcome
A lot of games do this but FPFR came to mind first.
I think Five Tribes is interesting, and I'd put into a slightly different category to the ones listed. One way that Five Tribes ends is when there are no legal moves. Toward the end of the game players will often make a tactical decision as to how many legal moves they want to create or remove from the board in the course of their own action.
I really appreciate games where everyone gets the same number of turns and the same opportunity to win. This is great in theory, really difficult to accomplish in practice. I tend to like the "everyone takes one more turn" model. If I go early in the turn order and get an extra chance to win that you can't defend, it can be an unfair advantage. On the other hand, if I play more aggressively because of that, I can turn it in my favor. Played four games of Risk Legacy over the weekend. Seems like the player who goes first has an advantage, but three out of four times the last or second to last player won. You may have an advantage late in the game, but you may start out behind the 8-ball because you are making decisions with less information (knowing what other people have done or where they have set up). The worst condition for me is anything where someone can lose without getting a turn. If that's even possible I tend not to like a game no matter what else it has in its favor. It is also true of Risk. One player in one Legacy game almost had this happen and was never able to recover fully.
This is a great resource as a game designer. Thanks!
Star Wars Rebellion is pretty interesting since it has 2 different end/victory conditions for each player. It's a very asymmetric game (rebels and empire as per franchise) who have to embrace their tactics in order to stand a chance.
The Empire is ultimately aiming for an elimination condition by wiping out the rebels' hidden base. Find it, wipe it out, win the game.
The rebels, on the other hand, have a round timer with a movable end goal. (just guessing numbers since don't remember off hadn) - It starts at 15 rounds, and as the Rebel player completes their random hidden objectives, they'll cut down the number of rounds they have to survive for. The thematic being they're gaining support and can eventually cause a galactic wide upheaval.
But yeah, somehow didn't register prior to this vid that the victory conditions were that different from each other.
Thanks for the great video, I'm definitely a fan of the players racing to the end game myself!
Or monopoly, all players decide they're not having fun anymore, regret picking it up and stop playing.
Great topic, I think it's good to have multiple win conditions, but at the same time you have to watch about overall balance or emphasis, like your Wingspan example. Behind the Throne uses a random element in the 2nd round, which sounds annoying, but forces you to stay on your toes and weigh risk, kind of like in Knock Rummy where if someone knocks you have one turn before ending, it creates a different tension.
I think I'd like to see a game where the first player eliminated trigger the end of the game, the winner is chosen from all remaining players.
In the Civilization board game eliminating one player triggers a win condition for the attacker and the game ends right after. I think there are a few games with this mechanism.
The best way to end a game is the table flip. Unlike all the other methods that has been mentioned, the good ole' flip can be applied to every game.
Depends on the table, mate.
@14:11 I'd like to see a deeper dive into the topic of player-initiated endgame triggers/conditions, specifically when they are not (or closely tied to) the winning condition. If you don't want the endgame trigger to be the win condition, why not? How often would you want the player who triggers the endgame to win? How much do you want to separate a player's actions required to work towards endgame from their ability to work towards a victory condition? In what situations would you want to obscure information from players so they do not know for certain who will win if the game ends? In what situations would you want all information available to players, and do you find it problematic if a player knows for sure who will win if the endgame is triggered? What if it requires a lot of math to figure that out- do you avoid such possibilities that may result in a player spending too much time calculating other players' points before they determine whether they want to trigger the endgame?
I liked your example with Wingspan- that you initially did not want to use a round structure, but decided to go that route because the player-triggered endgame you initially implemented just did not work. Did you consider any other endgame triggers with Wingspan- like when you run out of one or more resources in the supply, or when you run out of cards in the deck (you start the game with a certain number of bird cards in the deck based on the number of players)?
For Wingspan, we discussed various endgame triggers, but once we realized that the engine building didn't work with the racing element, we focused on the round structure, and it worked great.
Thanks a lot for the insightful vid! One of the challenges I'm facing in design at the moment, is how to make the end of the game feel climactic. I have 2 conditions that need to be met for the end-game to trigger, and then the winner is the player with the most points. In early versions it felt a bit like "Oh, the game has ended and this is the winner." There wasn't a real wow moment. From what I've experienced in other games, it's nice to have some additional end-game scoring come into play as well, like hidden player objectives, bonus points, etc. which make it a bit less predictable. Does anyone have some more ideas on how to make the end pop a bit more?
I think it depends on the type of game, but you're right that some games can benefit from a score calculation at end of game. Check out how we do this in Scythe, Wingspan, and Red Rising.
Wooly Bully has an interesting end-game mechanic - players can step out of the game at any point, and are incentivised to do so, as the earlier you step out, the more points you get. The last player left in the game gets no bonus for stepping out but can keep on playing (alone) till they run out of valid tiles.
Interesting! That reminds me a bit of the end-of-round passing mechanism in Clans of Caledonia.
Your example of removing the race element from Wingspan reminded me of the change the first expansion to Oh My Goods, which added the event deck and a fixed number of rounds. Excellent expansion.
Just played Archipelago and March of the Ants on sunday, two games with very different end game triggers. Archipelago is a semi-coop game where each player is dealt with a card that has an end game trigger that is kept secret, so you are aware of one possible trigger, but not the others. The card also reveals a way to score separately from the end game trigger, but all players score based on it. When the end game is triggered, all players will reveal their cards and score based on the bottom half. Also, at the beginning of the game, you will decide on a short, medium, or longer game and draw your card from that deck. In addition, the game could win if the locals rise up and rebel, so the players have to work together to prevent that from happening or all players lose.
In March, it is a specific round amount (and you have the choice of having 1 extra round or not. I always go with the extra round, as the game plays quick and the extra round is usually always fun. And then players score based on certain in game factors or completing sets for their queen (you play cards on the head, thorax, and abdomen of your queen that grants you new abilities and each set of these is worth points)
Inis has a really interesting end game condition. There are three win conditions. If anyone meets more win conditions than anyone else, they win! Otherwise, the game continues!! (One player, the Brenn, can break a tie).
I love a fixed amount of rounds/years/phases/turns/actions but I do like it when players can influence the game end like in Yokohama, where there's several ways for the game to end. And yes, in Yedo, if you kill the Emperor, the game will end at the end of that round but the player doesn't automatically win; but it's 14VP + two bonus cards so it would be very rare for the player to kill the shogun to _not_ win the game.
And also 1 one my favourite is Scythe endings. Also i think Terraforming Mars has GREAT game ending mechanism. I hate number of turns endings like Terra Mystika.
If you play Jamaica with the "Crew" expansion, there is a crew member you can acquire who gives you an instant win if you can collect all the cursed treasure.
Great video Jamey, I am going to throw two at you that I do not think fit any of those categories.
First, Inish you have to maintain a game state till your next turn. It really feels like a chess ending, not only do I need to set up the win, but prevent all ways of avoiding the win by my opponents.
Second, is Pandemic avoid triggering the bad endings. I feel like this is one of those only in co-op, or semi co-op systems. But it does create an alternative ending to those games. It also, works in reverse of trying to have players end the game, and instead players are trying to prolong the game in order to get the ending they want.
Love the end trigger of Scythe's 6 achievements. My wife surprised everyone by suddenly getting 3 in one turn and ending the game. Amazing...
A second one I really like is Pax Pamir 2nd Edition. If you have 4 more points then the player in second place you win! Could make some games very short but also very exciting.
Tapestry sounds interesting. I like the mechanisms in Everdell
I find that games that end when one person is eliminated should be a separate category(not 2 player kinds). They create a very different player dynamic as you only want to eliminate players when it leads to your victory and doesn't have the problem of dead players just sitting around waiting for the game to end.
Tapestry box looking at me in the back :)
26 rounds in Wingspan =)
Nice list! I would love you to do one on Win-conditions. There are several games that have great ways for players to change the objective of the game (Lowlands, mombasa, archipelago & rajas- both as you mentioned are great examples)
I think you'll find a number of videos on this topic if you search my channel for the keywords (separately) "victory" and "win". :)
Founders of Gloomhaven! Game locks when the 6 structures are built. I like how the first half creates such a relaxing but strategic approach to the game. Then, the last 3 structures seem to speed up and create this urgency to get your points up before the game locks up. With the games trickle down point system, you can really prepare early enough to cash in on future points. Really interesting design concept in my opinion. :]
Agreed! Very underrated game :(
6 stars up top!