❖ Version History ❖

12th of October 2020
There are some days in the Design Journal history that are so memorable. They are the kind of days that leave an unexpected permanent mark on the project, and this was definitely one of those days.

On this fateful afternoon, I had the plan of journeying out to Amherst Massachusetts to visit Ben and discuss several Librarium project concepts all coming together at the same time. We have (in the last few weeks at this point in time) just been given the green light to work on The Great Chase project, and we have a playable paper prototype that needs to be tested. We are also ready to be discussing the newly printed *first* rule book iteration for Calendra, and last but not least, we have the new rules to try out for Phoenix Farm.

But, there was something lurking in the fates that was the cause of today’s story, and that was the unplanned visit of another friend of ours: Mary Marcil-Labbe.

Mary had planned to come by and visit Ben & Aimee this afternoon, and Aimee was a particular fan of Phoenix Farm. So, when Ben and I had concluded our brainstorms on the other projects, we set up the first official play test with Phoenix Farm and someone who was not a regular part of our friend group. I was a bit anxious to give it a go for the first time, but I was also excited to see the new flow of the mechanics. To get everything going, we gave Mary a rough explanation of the rules as we prepared the table for our 4-player skirmish that was about to go down:

By this point in time the rules for the start of the game are as follows:

1. Each Player begins the game with: x1 Broom, x1 Phoenix Ash, and x3 Feathers.

2. During each turn, a player can do two actions: Farming or Shopping. If the player is to go shopping, they must do this first (before farming), and they can buy any number of items from the shop that they can afford. If the player does not go shopping, then they may attempt to farm twice during that turn (rolling the dice twice to use farm tools).

3. Gold costs x5 Feathers, and can be purchased at any occasion that the player visits the shop. The cost of gold goes down by x1 feather for each phoenix that has been returned to ash from the Elder status.

4. Once all the gold has been purchased, the game is over. The score of each player is determined by adding: # of Phoenixes that have been returned to ash + # of gold pieces each player has collected during the game.

The nature of this game is a simple economy game that is intentionally cute, so the rules are very quickly learned, and within just minutes we are already shouting at dice and having a fun time. In probably about 30-45 minutes after we have begun, the game ends and everyone has a good laugh about the final results.

Unfortunately, because the rules had been completely in-flux up until this time, there is no actually recorded score history for this game that I can even find at this point in time (its probably lost in an ancient text message to be honest). This does not matter however, because the important part of this day was what happened next, as, I was deadly curious to get a review for the game experience from Mary, and so I started asking what she thought of it.

Without a single moment of hesitation, Mary’s first response to me was:

“This game is absolutely adorable, and I love it. COMPETITIVE NURTURING is the whole point of the game! Like… how could you even be mad about losing?! All I was focused on through the whole experience was taking care of my cute little derpy birds!”

This review left a mark on my heart. I told her right in this moment that: “No matter how things play out, if we ever end up publishing this game, I am absolutely making certain that Competitive Nurturing! is the tagline for the product”. And, as was prophesied on this day, I have held true to this promise: ‘Phoenix Farm, A Game of Competitive Nurturing!’ will still be the project title, because this is the heart and essence of the fun this game brings with it for all ages!