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Reducing parts

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Thu, 06/04/2009 - 11:33
sushi
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Joined: 05/28/2009

Without giving too much of the game concept away, here's what I'm dealing with. I'm starting to believe I've got too many individual parts to the game which may, or may not affect the desire of a producer.

I've got meeples for movement, two die, encounter cards (approx 80), resource cards (25), tiles (30), counters that symbolize the player and chips to represent $.

I'm thinking about making the counters and chips color coded and marked to the individual player so they have a dual task ($ and markers for both the tiles and the resources). Right now I'm using dice, poker chips, and colored plastic markers (clear) - obviously too confusing.

The game needs the meeples, the encounter cards, and the tiles. But as for everything else, it can be modified.

Thoughts?

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Thu, 06/04/2009 - 12:18
#1
SuperSize
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It doesn't sound excessive

Without knowing more about the game, that doesn't sound like an excessive amount of parts.

Having said that i guess where you can reduce you should.

I'd be interested to hear what more experience game designers have to say.

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Thu, 06/04/2009 - 14:59
#2
gameprinter
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Reducing parts

It will depend on what the price point of the game is going to be as to whether you have too many (or not enough!) bits and pieces. From a manufacturing perspective, I'm all about reducing the number of parts to save cost, but never at the expense of game play. If you need it, keep it. If you can change it to save money and it works, then that's better though.

If the encounter cards and resource cards are the same size they can be printed together to save money. Bridge size cards fit 100 to 110 on a sheet, so that might be a good goal. The other components are all unique and can't be combined, so the overall cost will depend on how many of each there are. If you can standardize on materials (if not sizes) so that the parts can be bagged together easier, then that might save some money/time on assembly cost.

Good luck!

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Thu, 06/04/2009 - 15:22
#3
sushi
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Great tips

I did decide to make the resource and encounter cards the same size. I have about 9 to a page now (but I know this could be optimized with a professional printer).

I think your comment "...never at the expense of game play" is exactly what I'm looking for here. The $ system could be configured somewhat closer to a bridge board, but would it be as interesting as stacks of $$ building up next to each player?

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Thu, 06/04/2009 - 23:47
#4
SiddGames
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Game Weight

In addition to component/publishing costs, I would also suggest that piece density should not exceed "gameplay density" if you know what I mean. For example, if it is a fairly light game that plays in, say, 30-45 minutes, then having 15 pawns, 120 cards, 20 tokens, 16 dice, 2 boards and a partridge in a pear tree wouldn't feel right. Conversely, having a lot of pieces in a 2-3 hour game isn't necessary, but I would normally expect (and not be intimidated or put off by) a lot more pieces in that sort of game.

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 02:58
#5
Martin_cy
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Joined: 04/24/2009
that doesn't sound that bad!

that doesn't sound that bad! :)

I've just gone through my component list and if it will make you feel better, I got a lot more components hehe.. 12 paws, 3xA4 gameboards, 85 hex tiles, 220 card (standard play card size), 60 blue disk counters 15x4mm, 40 white disk counters 15x4mm, 20 black disck counters 25x6mm...

When I started to look into what it would cost to make this as a prototype using using perforated card sheets to print on, and proper hex tiles.. one prototype was running at around 50€ to make.. ouch.. if I make a few more like 10 copies i could get the price down to 35$ per game.. but will be a bit of a cost.. but will probably do that eventually for blind play testing.. (I really want it looking professional for blind play testing)

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 10:18
#6
gameprinter
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sushi wrote:I did decide to

sushi wrote:
I did decide to make the resource and encounter cards the same size. I have about 9 to a page now (but I know this could be optimized with a professional printer).

I think your comment "...never at the expense of game play" is exactly what I'm looking for here. The $ system could be configured somewhat closer to a bridge board, but would it be as interesting as stacks of $$ building up next to each player?

Money is fairly cheap to print, so if you're using Monopoly-style money, let it pile up. My wife loves Empire Builder because she loves having a huge, secret pile of money. Still, stacks of money are great in an economic game, less so if it's not the primary focus. Again, a lot depends on where you want the price to be. At $30/game, you can put a lot less in the box than at $50 - $60!

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 14:51
#7
MatthewF
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sushi wrote:I did decide to

sushi wrote:
I did decide to make the resource and encounter cards the same size. I have about 9 to a page now (but I know this could be optimized with a professional printer).

Indeed. They won't be printing on that size of paper, anyway, they'll be printing on a much larger sheet, a press sheet.

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 16:53
#8
sushi
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gameprinter wrote:Money is

gameprinter wrote:
Money is fairly cheap to print, so if you're using Monopoly-style money, let it pile up. My wife loves Empire Builder because she loves having a huge, secret pile of money. Still, stacks of money are great in an economic game, less so if it's not the primary focus. Again, a lot depends on where you want the price to be. At $30/game, you can put a lot less in the box than at $50 - $60!

For the game time period, something akin to poker chips is what I'm looking at (and using now).

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 17:04
#9
gameprinter
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Poker chips

Full size poker chips get expensive quickly - there's a lot of plastic in them. You'll probably want to use the 3/4" or 7/8" chips if you have a lot of chips. "Lot of chips" in this case being more than 20-50.

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 18:22
#10
sushi
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Chip sizes?

Oh! A smaller chip size would be greatly preferred. I'll have to look around at options there.

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Fri, 06/05/2009 - 18:46
#11
apeloverage
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sushi wrote:I've got meeples

sushi wrote:
I've got meeples for movement, two die, encounter cards (approx 80), resource cards (25), tiles (30), counters that symbolize the player and chips to represent $.

If the resource cards are drawn randomly, could you combine the encounter cards and resource cards (ie have both on there, and the player looks at the relevant one)?

If the resource cards are just used to keep track of amounts of resources, you could have one resource card of each type per player, and keep track of amounts with counters.

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Sat, 06/06/2009 - 01:52
#12
sushi
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apeloverage wrote: If the

apeloverage wrote:

If the resource cards are drawn randomly, could you combine the encounter cards and resource cards (ie have both on there, and the player looks at the relevant one)?

If the resource cards are just used to keep track of amounts of resources, you could have one resource card of each type per player, and keep track of amounts with counters.

The resource cards are tied to the map tiles and are used to help the player track control/value. Although, I probably could combine that on the board and give the player some sort of mechanism to easily track the value (akin to a cribbage board).

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