Winning and Losing

The main conflict in almost all board games is how to win the game. In most competitive games, all players have the same goal and whoever accomplishes it first (e.g. scoring 7 points) or best (e.g. highest score after 10 rounds) wins. Losing is usually implicit: you lose if someone else wins. In a cooperative game, however, the game itself is your opponent and its goal is opposed to yours. Therefore, cooperative games usually have explicit loss conditions. 
Their main conflict is: Can you win before the game makes you lose?

NEON HOPE has two loss conditions:

• The Surveillance reaches the final threshold.
  (At the end of the round the Surveillance increases automatically by 1 per character.)
• One character exhausts by reaching 0 Endurance.
  (Whenever you have no cards in hand your Endurance is reduced by 1. Then you pick up cards equal to your remaining Endurance from your discard pile to form a new hand. Therefore, there are two ways to lose your cards: You either play them to enhance your tasks, or lose them by suffering Stress. 1 Stress discards 1 card.)

Both, Surveillance and Stress, are also caused by all different kinds of effects. As a rough comparison, you can think of the Surveillance as time and Stress as health. The increasing Surveillance ensures that you need to act quickly, while Stress lets Enemies and other dangers pose a serious threat.

Thematically Surveillance represents the megacorporation’s ability to completely overpower you, if they ever become fully aware of your activities. While Stress represents the physical and mental strain your character can endure before breaking down.

The Goal Spectrum

Let’s take a closer look at the main conflict: Can you win before you lose? The players can distribute their assets (actions, cards, support markers) into winning or not losing. I like to think about that distribution as a spectrum, where at one end the players put everything into fulfilling their objective,accepting Stress and Surveillance. At the other end the players try to prevent as much Stress and Surveillance as they can.

At the extremes the play experience is one-dimensional, the pacing is off and the game becomes either too fast or too slow. However, in the middle area the players make constant progress in the story, while at the same time interacting with enough threats the corporation throws at them. Naturally, it is important for me and Dominik to design NEON HOPE in a way where players naturally gravitate to the middle of the spectrum. Our most potent tool to enable this is the encounter deck.

The Encounter Deck

The encounter deck is my favorite mechanic from my favorite cooperative games (Arkham Horror: The Card Game & Pandemic). How does it work? At the end of the round each player draws 1 card from an encounter deck that presents them with some form of challenge or punishment. The mechanic enables  emergent storytelling and scales well with player count – and as a designer it gives you endless opportunities to create unique experiences for each episode.

In NEON HOPE you will face three different types of encounter cards: 

• Dilemmas force you to make a choice between two or more immediate effects. Afterwards they are discarded.
• Enemies appear at your location. They attack you (dealing Stress) when you reveal a Skull from the Grid. Also at the end of the round they increase the Surveillance by 1 if they are at your location. By fighting them you can force them to retreat (removing them for 1 round) or deal damage to defeat them for good. 
• States are placed in a global zone called The Network and have an ongoing negative effect. They are discarded when enough hacking cubes are placed on them. You can Hack them to place hacking cubes. Though, at the end of the round 1 Hacking Cube is placed on them automatically.

Functions of an Encounter Card

Let us look into NEON HOPE’s encounter card design and how that relates to the goal spectrum: Each encounter card fulfills a function – trying to make you lose or stop you from winning. To explain our design philosophy, I want to introduce three terms that describe an encounter card’s function:

• Punch: Hits you with a negative effect, but does not slow you down.
• Wall: Stops you until you deal with it.
• Thorn: Presents a decision. Deal with it and lose time or endure it and suffer a negative effect.

Here is one example for each category (Punch, Wall, Thorn):

• »Profiling« is a prime example of a Punch – you can choose between Surveillance or Stress, but you cannot avoid both.
• The »Corp Loyalist« is a typical Wall. Because of his Confrontation ability you can not move away from his location until you defeated or retreated him. In most situations you have to move eventually to fulfill your objective. Therefore, he must be dealt with if you want to win.
• »Advanced Surveillance« is a Thorn as it gives you a choice. It will increase the Surveillance by 2 in the following round (and is then discarded, as States receive 1 Hacking Cube automatically). That is twice as much as Profiling does. However, you can try to Hack it to avoid the Surveillance altogether.

While Punches and Walls have a specific function, they still give you a choice: »Profiling« explicitly and the »Corp Loyalist« implicitly, as you can take care of him temporarily by retreating or take him out permanently if you defeat him. By giving the players multiple ways of dealing with an encounter card, we want to avoid frustration (“I couldn’t do anything!”) and at the same time give room for different strategies. 

Putting it Together

By design most Punches are Dilemmas and most Walls are Enemies. However, all three card types can have the Thorn function.

• »They are Watching You« lets you choose between suffering Surveillance or drawing an Enemy.
• The »Freelance Security Officer« does not have the Confrontation ability. Therefore you can move away from her instead of dealing with her. But then you risk suffering Stress from her attacks or Surveillance at a later point.
• »Data De-Anonymization« is similar to the previously mentioned »Advanced Surveillance« in that you can simply suffer 3 Stress or try to avoid it by Hacking it three times. Any combination of these is also possible. 

It’s important for us to have a high density of Thorns in an encounter deck. A typical encounter deck is 25% Punches, 25% Walls and 50% Thorns. This distribution enables players to decide how carefully or recklessly they want to play. At the same time, it guarantees that the game does not end up at one of the extremes – stalling out with too many Walls or feeling non-interactive because of too many Punches.

What about Leads?

Leads are cards specific to one episode which you interact with to fulfill the objective. Naturally, they are Walls, as you need to clear them to progress the story.

A Wall has the risk that their combination of attribute and difficulty could be hard to succeed at for your character. Then it can feel like you cannot do anything (except going for a lucky shot) and your experience becomes frustrating.

To prevent this, we applied the philosophy of Thorns to Leads using a game mechanic that gives Leads multiple ways of approaching them: threat and secondary Hack tasks.

Let me explain this by comparing a fictional simple version of »Strangers in the Dark« (left) with the actual version that is in the game (right).

The left version simply requires the characters to perform the Investigate task against difficulty 5 three times to remove all 3 Secrets. This can be a moderately challenging endeavour for a character with high Perception, but could be frustratingly hard for a character with low Perception.

The actual version of »Strangers in the Dark« on the right has only a difficulty of 2, but has a threat value of 5. Meaning that reaching 2 is enough to remove a Secret but you must suffer 1 Stress unless you reach 5 or higher. But that is only the case, if you do not Hack the card beforehand. By succeeding at Hacking you can place a Hacking Cube on the threat icon to deactivate it. Therefore, turning the task into a simple Investigate with difficulty 2.

»Strangers in the Dark« presents you these options:

• Investigate with a high value to reach 5 or more.
• Investigate with 2 or more and suffer 1 Stress.
• Hack the card first and then Investigate it without suffering Stress.

By having multiple options on encounter cards and Leads we are enabling different strategies and character builds. Your character could for example be focused on playing quickly, rushing through an Episode, before the Surveillance catches up with you. Or you could take more time, Hacking every State and Lead, collecting Resources, and purchasing powerful Tools to overpower the episode in the late game.

Let Us Know Your Thoughts!

Encounter decks are used in many cooperative games. I hope this article gives insight into our focus of designing them for NEON HOPE. Do not hesitate to leave a comment, if you have any questions!

And let me know:
What is your favorite game that has an encounter deck? 
Tell us in the comments!

Have a great week! 
Until next time!
Francesco
(Lead Game Designer)

What is the Grid?

Whenever you perform a task, you must reveal one modifier from the Grid to modify your attribute and find out if you succeed or fail. It is basically the die of NEON HOPE or its “random number generator” if we are talking jargon.

The Grid’s distinctive features come from how it is constructed: At the beginning of the game 19 modifiers are shuffled and 16 of them are arranged in a 4×4 grid. The remaining 3 modifiers are set aside into a zone called the Archive. Whenever a modifier from the Grid is revealed, it stays revealed until all 16 modifiers have been flipped. Only then the Grid is reset. Reshuffle all modifiers (including the ones in the Archive) and place 3 new ones into the Archive.

The number modifiers in the Grid range from -3 to +3. There are also the Epic Win (you immediately succeed and get an additional Impact), the Epic Fail (you immediately fail and activate Enemies), and 3 Skulls (you get -1, reveal an additional modifier, and activate Enemies).

Why is the Grid a Good Fit for NEON HOPE?

The Grid was chosen over other methods to generate random numbers for two reasons:

• Fairness: As you reveal almost all modifiers, the extent of fortunate and unfortunate outcomes is limited. You could be unlucky and reveal the Epic Fail, a -3, and another -3 during your first turn. But now these modifiers are out of the equation for a while and your future actions are inevitably going to succeed more likely.
• Predictability: As modifiers are revealed, you get an idea of which modifiers are still in the Grid. Players can use this to their advantage. For example: a Grid where all remaining modifiers are negative should be approached with different strategies than one that just has been reset. 

These features support the theme of NEON HOPE and the style of play we want to encourage.

• NEON HOPE promises that there is hope in the face of despair. Even if it is tough right now, things will get better in the future. This is supported by the fairness characteristic.
• The Grid’s predictability supports the idea that you’re going up against a man-made system that does not behave completely randomly, but can be predicted to some degree, especially in a future where data is abundant.

What is the Point of the Archive?

So why do you need to set aside 3 modifiers every time the Grid is reset? Pretty early on, we found that while we wanted a certain level of fairness and predictability, going too far in that direction can make the game less exciting. With the Archive, we are making sure that even when revealing the final modifier from the Grid you never fully know what it will be. This can lead to games in which you can be lucky or unlucky. Both leading to memorable stories.

We tried setting aside more or fewer modifiers into the Archive, but quickly landed on three as the perfect number. Predictable enough to feel rewarding for players who pay attention, yet random enough to create occasional difficulty spikes.

The Probabilities of the Grid

Because the Grid is a novel method of determining a random number, I think it’s interesting to look into the probabilities. Below you can see a chart showing the cumulative distribution function for the standard Grid. The x-axis shows the difference between your modified attribute and the difficulty of the task. The y-axis shows your chance of success. (The extra modifiers from potentially revealing one or more Skulls are also factored in.) 

Let’s consider this example: You have 2 Technology and attempt a Technology task with difficulty 3. The difference is -1. Therefore your chance of success is 41.5 %. Assume you use an Attribute Marker to get +2, then your chance of success increases to 66.5 %.

One key takeaway from this chart: You will have an above 50 % rate of success, if your attribute matches the difficulty. This was an important foundation for our design. We wanted it to be a fine choice to attempt a task this way. As we knew from playtesting: especially inexperienced players regularly took actions at +/- 0. And we wanted to reaffirm their assumptions, by making actions like this more or less a good choice.

The other main takeaway: There is no magic number! Up to a difference of +3, every extra point gives you an extra 12.5 % chance of success. (Because of the Skulls the chances are not perfectly linear when the difference is -1 or lower.) 

At its foundation the Grid is a simple system. But the complexity comes from the changing nature of the Grid. For example: after revealing all modifiers but one -3, both -2’s, and both +1’s the chance of success looks like this:

If you have a difference of -1 in this example, it would not make sense to use an Attribute Marker to go to +1, as the chance of success remains at 40%. You really want to perform tasks with a difference of +2 or even go to +3 to have a 100% chance of success. Because the probabilities change dynamically you are incentivized to employ different play patterns.

Of course, players are not expected to calculate probabilities. However, in playtesting it was common for many players to keep track of how many bad modifiers were left in the Grid. They would then play it safe if many negative modifiers remained, or take higher risks if there were still a lot of positive modifiers left.

Enemies and the Grid

Enemies are tightly linked to the Grid. Namely, you activate Enemies, after a Skull has been revealed. This means all Enemies at your location attack you and then 1 Enemy moves to your location.

This makes them less predictable than if they always attacked at the end of the round. At the same time, the nature of the Grid ensures that the amount of skulls you reveal over the course of a game is not too random. 

From a thematic point of view, this provides a feeling of suspense and opportunity. You can absolutely try to ignore the »Freelance Security Officer« while investigating the »Hidden Basement«, but it does not come without risk. Gameplay-wise the possibility of Enemies acting between your actions means: the player’s plan A can quickly turn to plan B or C. We included this disruptive element consciously into the game, because NEON HOPE characters have access to all their cards right from the start. Therefore, we balanced the reliability on the character side with the unpredictability on the Enemy side.

Interacting with the Grid

During playtesting we quickly found that players love the Grid. However, sometimes for different reasons. While some were enthralled with the implications of the dynamic probabilities, others liked that the sting of revealing the Epic Fail is always accompanied by the knowledge that you will not see it again for a while.

We leaned into different aspects of the Grid with these two Base Game characters:

Deniz Yılmaz has many cards that Analyze modifiers, meaning you can look at unrevealed modifiers from the Grid, put one away into the Archive, and shuffle the rest back into the Grid. This lets you potentially avoid the worst modifiers by archiving them. At the same time, it gives you some knowledge about which modifiers remain in the Grid. I have witnessed situations where the players were able to deduce the last 2 or 3 modifiers due to previous Analyze effects. 

We found that his playstyle speaks to analytical players who enjoy paying close attention to the Grid. Quite fitting for our [Analyst] character.

In contrast, Larx Krajewski is a bit of a hothead. Their cards often have the Reckless keyword, which means you must reveal not one but two modifiers. However, you can turn that into your advantage by triggering powerful effects if you reveal a Skull. And these effects activate regardless if you succeed or fail. 

Larx is often loved by players who like a risk-reward style of play. These players still pay attention to the Grid, but usually only have eyes for the Skulls.

Let us know what you think about the Grid!

This is all for now. The Grid is a centerpiece of NEON HOPE and it was exciting to crunch some numbers with you. I hope you got a good understanding why we chose the Grid, instead of going for a more conventional randomness mechanic. 

I would love to hear how you feel about the Grid in theory and in practice (in case you have already played the demo). 

Maybe you even have an idea for future mechanics that use the Grid in an interesting way?

Let us know in the comments!

May you reveal lots of Epic Wins! 
Until next time!
Francesco
(Lead Game Designer)

Why is the Progression System so Important?

NEON HOPE is a campaign-based game where you play one character over the course of multiple episodes. Advancing your character during the campaign is not only something players expect, but is also a large part of the fun for many of them. For example, it can feel very rewarding when you easily defeat an Elite Enemy later in the campaign that gave you a lot of trouble in the first episode.

In NEON HOPE, the progression system is also especially important, because it is where almost all of the character customization takes place. One of our core design goals is to offer a great experience to players who do not want to construct a deck. You should be able to pick a character, immediately start playing and have a great time. However, we believe these players still enjoy tinkering with their characters, they just do not want to sit down to theorize a character build before the campaign begins. Therefore, we moved almost all customization to within episodes. Only a singular choice must be taken before the first game: Which of my two Character Tools am I using?

(There are advanced rules to construct a deck for those players who love to theorize character builds. But it is not required even for the harder difficulties.)

To summarize, we had two core requirements for our progression system:

• Progression must feel significant.
• Progression must allow you to choose which aspects your character should grow.

Level Ups and Resources

How is this realized? After each episode each character…

• levels up 2 Action cards
• earns 2 additional starting Resources

The “A Better Humanity” campaign consists of 5 episodes, meaning in the final episode each character will have earned 8 level-ups, and 8 starting Resources.

Each character comes with 8 Action cards and each Action card has a LVL 1, LVL 2, and LVL 3 version. Meaning in the last episode your deck could consist of eight LVL 2 cards, or four LVL 3 and four LVL 1 cards, or everything in between. It turned out to be a great number – high enough to make you feel a lot stronger than at the beginning, yet leaving enough room to focus on certain aspects of your character.

Resources are spent to purchase Tools, at the beginning or during the course of an episode. Each character has 8 Tools in their Tool kit. With 8 starting Resources you could buy 2-3 Tools right at the beginning of the final episode and purchase 2-3 more while playing. That again proved to be a good balance between fulfilling a power fantasy and providing customization needs. 

Action Card Level Up Versions

Let us look at some level up paths for Felina’s Action cards.

(The current illustrations are placeholder art, but we will show sketches for Felina’s cards soon in an upcoming Dev Diary from my co-founder Torben.)

I want to show you Anonymous Tip’s progression path first. Because it is simple yet effective: You get an additional +2 attribute boost for your first level up, and an additional Impact for your second level up. As a cherry on the top, you get extra flexibility on the LVL 3 version. This serves as a benchmark on what kind of increase in power level you can expect from leveling up an Action card.

Of course, the power of a card can come in different flavors:

Let’s consider Fieldwork: looking at the jump from the LVL 1 to the LVL 2 version, here the raw numbers do not change at all. Instead, the effect is improved. The LVL 1 version of Fieldwork is already very powerful, allowing you to investigate with 3 total impact, but comes with a hefty drawback: you need to draw an encounter card. The LVL 2 version softens the drawback a lot by giving you the choice between 2 cards and can turn it even into an advantage by allowing you discard the nastier encounter card. The LVL 3 version builds on this and offers even more additional Impact. 

As my final example, I want to tell you how Stay Undercover was developed. Here, we actually came up with the LVL 3 version first: A card that allows Felina to approach Enemies differently. As the character with the lowest Courage and only one other Fight card, we wanted Felina to have at least one card which handles Enemies. Stay Undercover lets you shuffle an Enemy back into the encounter deck if you have double their retreat value. That works very well with Felina, as she has a variety of ways to discard cards from the encounter deck. A smart player can try to discard the Enemy before it appears again.

However, the complexity of this effect was a bit too much for a LVL 1 card. (And maybe even too powerful as well?) Therefore, we came up with simpler LVL 1 and LVL 2 versions of the card, and restricted the shuffle-back-effect to the LVL 3 version. This has the added benefit that it feels even more rewarding to invest into leveling up the card to gain this powerful effect, compared to if we had given it to you right from the start.

Extra Tools

With the additional starting Resources earned throughout the campaign you can buy extra Tools right from the start of an episode.

To get an impression of what you can expect from a Tool, let us consider two Insider-Tools:

Insatiable Curiosity gives you one additional Investigate action on each of your turns. It is what we call a Value Tool. The extra action is good regardless of which of Felina’s strengths you decided to focus on. It might not be the best buy in all game situations, but it is always solid.

Reliable Source on the other hand has an effect that is only triggered when you discard a card from the encounter deck, usually by effects that let you analyze the encounter deck. We call that a Synergy Tool. These Tools have effects that synergize with your Character Tool or with some of your Action cards.

By offering you both kinds of Tools you have the choice to heavily specialize in an aspect of your character or stay flexible by leaning more into Value Tools. The cool thing is: Your choice can change from episode to episode! You get more starting Resources after each episode, but you do not have to use them to buy the same Tools you bought before. Experimenting with your build or adapting to the requirements of the episode are both encouraged.

What the Progression System is not

One thing we avoid in NEON HOPE’s progression system are dictated choices.

Characters come with 2 different Character Tools. This usually means they have 2 gameplay styles they can specialize in. In Felina’s case they are:

• Get many Attribute Markers and use them for powerful effects.
• Analyze the encounter deck and discard the biggest threats.

The level up versions of your Action cards should work well with both Character Tools. If the LVL 2 or LVL 3 card would only go along with one Character Tool, your choice of leveling up cards would be dictated by the choice of your Character Tool. Fieldwork for example let’s you analyze the encounter deck, which works great with the Cybernetic Retina, but also goes great with the extra Atribute Markers from Insider Source: because you are performing a task with up to 4 potential Impact you want to boost your chance of success with as many Attribute Markers as you can.

As a small reward for everyone who made it this far, I want to show you all of Felina’s Action cards and Tools. Here you go:

And this is it for the progression system! We are excited to see how you engage with this system, what campaign builds will be developed for each character, and how you enjoy it. We believe the flexibility of this system will provide a lot of opportunities for you to experiment in meaningful ways. Enabling you to progress through the campaign in a way that you enjoy.

Please let us know in the comments, what topics you would like us to discuss for the next Dev Diary! Or which Character Tool of Felina you think has the most potential for an interesting build.

Until then, may you never run out of Hope or Resources!
Yours,
Francesco