“Fish Reproduction” was the first serious board game I have ever built, and I greatly enjoyed the process — aided especially by the proactiveness and brilliant ideas of my teammates! In our game, 4 players each take the role of a specific type of fish in an Indonesian coral reef. Their objective is to maximize their number of progeny by wisely choosing when to reproduce and mitigating or leveraging ecosystem changes (enacted by event cards) to help their species thrive. The goal of the game is to teach characters about fish reproduction dynamics, ocean ecosystems, biodiversity, and climate change.
A major reason why this game was so enjoyable to build is because we chose a dark horse idea. Brainstorming a topic always feels like trying to boil the ocean. Zoe, who has a marine biology background, wrote down the card “fish reproduction” as a joke. When I saw the card initially, I laughed, and then thought a bit deeper — it’s a bit of a funny topic, but it could be an excellent channel to learn about the underpinnings of marine ecosystems in an unconventional way. So I cast all my votes for her idea!
On reflection, working on a dark horse idea spurs explosively generative creativity. It feels like since you are not working on something you expected to, you are freed of any expectations and can just have fun creatively. I especially had fun crafting the event cards — coming up with spontaneous ecosystem changes that players need to adapt to in order to keep their fish populations alive.
Another reflection I have is to fail fast. Our first meeting was a bit slow because we tried to come up with the entire ruleset in one go. Thankfully, we came out of the meeting deciding to just make a prototype with the incomplete ruleset and playtest it. It turns out that the incomplete ruleset was essentially a finished game, and that adding the additional rules would have unnecessarily convoluted the game.
Watching others play the game was a whole new ballgame. For the final playtest, we started observing players leveraging mechanics in the exact opposite way as what we intended. For instance, players made extensive use of event cards (nearly every turn!), even though sacrificing children is a more advantageous move. The reason why was because they enjoyed the spontaneity and whimsicality of the event cards (“Oh look! A volcano has erupted. Warmth decreases by five points”), even at the cost of winning the game. I simultaneously took this as a compliment and as something to be fixed: The night before, I had furiously crammed designing and printing an extended set of event cards, which made them very satisfying to play; but their overuse made our game duration way too long.
Overall, I learned about the value of quick prototyping, dark horse ideas, and playtesting. Thank you for a wonderful first game experience!
