❖ Version History ❖

November-February, 2023-2024
Alright folks. It’s that time again… that horrible time again… where we have to finally nail our rules for Phoenix Farm down into a permanent (and digestible) format for total strangers to easily understand……….. aren’t you excited?? (I know I’m not)

Okay, but in all seriousness, the process of assembling a rule book for the game is notoriously one of the hardest pieces of any game’s design, and it is something that I also specifically struggle with. I spend MONTHS trying to get it just right. I put together all sorts of layouts, I play test lots of specific sentences with people when I try to verbally explain the game, and I try my absolute best to keep it short & concise with the help of lots of images…. But it is hard! It is so hard to try and answer every question a player may have with such little space and such vast possibilities on the rules!

So….. How do we do it?
Well, for today’s epic narrative of Librarium Games Design Journalism, I am going to walk you through the transition of my final hand drawn prototyping process of the written rules, and how I inevitably translate them into a complete rules document digitally. No more time for dilly-dally. Let’s get cooking! Here’s page one of my very first prototype:

As you can see in this image above, my final round of prototype doodles do not mess around. I try to capture exactly the essence that is going to appear in the final documentation of the rules when translated to digital. This includes features like ‘Section Headers’ & ‘Image Placement’ as well as ‘Potential Text Layout’.

You may have noticed also that the pages here are listed “0” & “1”, that is specifically because the left side of this spread is actually the outside cover page of the book, here labelled “0” so as to not confuse the fact that the first page on the inside cover is where the pagination begins at “1”.

Here are the images of the final rule book cover & first page after touching up with the digital pen:

And, in the hopes of keeping this post for the design Journal somewhat concise, here are the spreads showcasing the next set of pages:

To me, it is an absolutely amazing & cool process to see how these documents transform. Of course, I use my hand drawn doodles to make the digital versions, so I spend so much time looking at both instances… but up until actually writing this blog post, I never really take the time to compare one to the other!

One thing that is also always interesting to me is the subtle changes from the penultimate design to the final design. These changes occur because in our house, the rules & components are always shifting a tiny bit at a time until the very last minute. Sometimes we play test a rule for years until we try to write it down and discover {wow that just doesn’t make sense} or {this would be so much easier if described like this}.

Additionally, some components seem -for sure- like they are going to be a part of the game until you go to the manufacturing phase & discover you can’t afford to do that thing you thought you could. The best example of this in this pair of images is the “Day & Night Card” described in the handwritten notes of page #3. This card inevitably could not be included in the final game design without adding a stupid cost to the game that made it not worth it… so instead we chose to move forward with adding that card as a special “Kickstarter Exclusive” to save some money & help promote the game better.

One of the top challenges about constructing the design of the rule book is trying to pack an enormous amount of information into a very small space with the simplest wording possible. 90% of the time, it is easier to bridge this gap with simple graphics like the ones used for the dice rules here. This makes organizing the information so much more digestible & it also make for a fast and easy reference guide when people need to refer back.

Unfortunately, the other 10% of the time, there is just no way to make the images to the work. This is how you end up with color coding & box layouts as your best friend. By dividing the information into smaller segments on the page & listing the data in bullet points, it makes for so much less writing, and a much cleaner translation for the reader. If even one rule is too confusing for a new player, their odds of giving up on the game skyrocket.

And let me tell you, the most concerning amount of writing for the rules I have ever faced came up on this next page spread, which I spent… forever… trying to make as easy to understand as possible using all of the techniques described here. Look at how this worked out:

This graphic shown above is one of the most complex images I have ever created for one of our games. It is effectively every possible thing that can happen on your turn while engaging in the “Farming Mechanics”. But it is also a flowchart of how the game progresses from one phase to the next, with images. These pages, when opened in the rule book, perfectly combine into one huge spread of information that (i hope) truly connects the dots for players when it comes to “which tool they need for their turn” and “how does this tool work” and “what happens next”. Even though it is a lot to look at, I am really happy with how this page turned out, and it is so helpful to use this page when explaining the game to a new player!

But, as you may have noticed, our pagination between the example documents and the final results has started to get a bit wacky. This is because the final layout of the rule book changed a bunch when trying to form the printed images. So, while my notes were good… my handwritten page numbers of: 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 actually ended up being a bit more like: 0,1,1,4,3,6,5,8,9,7,11,10 hahah. So, to circle back a bit, here is the next hand drawn illustration, with a now slightly out of order display of the final rule book images (digital pages 6 & 9 shown below):

One of the most exciting (and terrifying) things about designing this rule book was the process of scoring the game. It was terrifying because it involves a tricky rule for ‘bonus points’… but it was exciting because if you can remember way back to design journal entry: Part #12 Website Score Tracker we actually already made a tool on our website that makes calculating the score so much easier! This was such a gift of an idea, and it really saves players who are not fond of doing math by giving them a fun & easy way to get the scores (and it also gives all us super nerds a great way to track games over time, because your statistics are send to you in an email for your final numbers!).

And then, finally, we have the last spread of the pages for this book:

To finish up this blog post, I will just cover a quick explanation behind the dedication.

Cyril Massar was my Grandfather. He lived to be 99 years old, and quite unfortunately died the week before we opened our store for the first time ever at the CT Renfaire in 2023. This means, that despite playing phoenix farm with us, and watching the game grow from its silly hand drawn version to the moment I was actually constructing these rules, he unfortunately did not make it to seeing the final box design & published version of the game. Though this aspect makes me sad, I can’t even be sad about his passing… he was a legend of a man, and never had regrets. But, it was especially important to me to include his dedication in this book, because he was my number one fan for a very long time, he supported the start of this business from the get-go, and I unfortunately had to miss his funeral to open our shop, because his burial was our true birthday as a successful company… and for that I am eternally grateful & filled with sadness all the same.

In any event, this has been an epic narrative of our design for the rule book of Phoenix Farm! I know that it was a lot to read and look at, but hopefully this helped show the process that we use, and some of the interesting design challenges that we face all the way up to publication!

Please stay tuned for our next adventure in the Librarium games Design Journal, where we will discuss some more of our accessory design challenges!