Among other things, I will use this space to write some about the history of how my forthcoming game, Space Station: Phoenix, was designed and developed. (Partly because, someday, I think I’ll turn some of these ideas into a “Designer Diary” on Boardgamegeek.com.) In the meantime, I’d be interested in any comments or questions people have about the game, so I know what would be interesting for people to learn.
To start us off, I want to explore how a couple of factors combined to influence the origin of this game.
(1) Exodus Fleet: Exodus Fleet was my first published game. In short, players take on the role of leading a fleet of ships away from a dying Earth. When I was starting the design process for the game that eventually became Space Station: Phoenix (SSP), I originally thought I would design something that was a thematic sequel, though with completely different mechanics. I decided that the Exodus Fleet survivors would eventual turn to building a set of space stations to survive on. (Note: the story took a strong turn later in the design process, but the idea of building space stations was a continuing theme.)
(2) A Famine: I used to spend a lot of time reading game design blogs, websites, facebook posts, etc. Somewhere along the line, I read a post that inspired lots of different game ideas. It basically outlined the idea of basing a game around the idea of a famine. So, instead of a game where you are building up an empire, you would be simply trying to be best at helping your empire survive its collapse. While I came up with a number of ideas that more directly built on that theme, I took just one element of it as an inspiration for SSP: the idea of having fewer and fewer choices as the game went along. So, as opposed to many games (think worker placement games like Agricola or Troyes, where more and more choices become available throughout the game), instead, in SSP, players would have fewer and fewer action options as the game progresses.
As I delved into the idea behind the game more, I realized these ideas meshed quite nicely. An isolated fleet floating in space would lack a ready supply of resources with which to develop their stations. Therefore, they’d need to start cannibalizing their ships in order to get enough metal to build with…
