I recently bought a board game called Careers for a themed party. It looks a lot of fun, I am just reading the rules but cannot work out something.
On exiting a career path you are allowed to take a number of experience cards up to 3, based on the number of times you have been through the career that bit is quite clear. What it doesn’t explain is that the same square you return to the main board is usually an opportunity square, which would allow you take a card that would move to another career almost immediately. Is that right?
Everdell has been a huge presence in the hobby since its release in 2018. With more than half a dozen expansions and multiple editions of the game, it’s tough to know where to jump into this award winning worker placement game. Thankfully, Everdell Duo is a less intimidating 2-player game that seems to be a prefect ramp into this universe.
Woodland Communities
Everdell Duo is a 2-player focused experience where players are building their forest focused communities over the series of four seasons. One player takes the role of the tortoise while the other player plays as the hare. In the competitive play mode, players work to build out their woodland village with structures and inhabitants. You’ll have three workers to place and a variety of resources that can be earned and spent.
Cards are available from a draw deck or from the central board. These cards each have a cost that has to be paid before they are added to your tableau. Cards offer end game scoring, new worker placement spots, resources, or coins (which are your victory points). Like it’s older board game sibling, Everdell Duo is an incredibly cute game. With artwork from Andrew Bosley and Enggar Adirasa, this game draws you into its nature themed world.
The Sun and the Moon
Each round of Everdell Duo is tracked using a sun and moon token that moves through the center of the board. When players place a worker, the moon token moves along the track. When a player plays a card, the sun token moves along the track. Picking up a card from the deck or meadow (board) allows the player to advance either token, their choice. These sun and moon tokens keep the game moving and have strategic value as you try to lock out your opponent from using their final worker.
There are standard worker placement spots on the board along with two river spaces that get swapped out each round. Players are primarily collecting resources from these spots. Berries, twigs, pebble, and resin resources are used throughout the game to pay for cards and add them to your tableau. I’m a big fan of how tactile these resources are.
Cards are either categorized as creature or construction. These cards offer new worker placement locations, production bonuses, additional resources, coins (victory points), and end gaming scoring. Finding synergies across these cards is a big part of the game.
Seasons Come and Go
Across the top of the meadow is a set of locations where players can claim events that are randomly chosen at the start of the game. Players can claim these events if they meet the requirements of the tile, resulting in additional victory points. Since these are first come, first serve, players want to commit to chasing specific tiles as they build out their tableau.
At the end of the fourth season, players count their victory points, coins, bonuses, awarded events, and any end game scoring from cards.
Everdell Duo is a really straight-forward 2-player experience with great components (for the most part). While I love the high quality resources in the game, it feels like the sun and moon tokens could have been a little better. These are just cardboard trackers and pale in comparison with the resource components.
The sun and moon tracker is being moved each and every turn and is an important part of the game. It’s also the item that is forgotten about the most often. I’ve played Everdell Duo against four different people and moving these trackers are forgotten about a few times each game. It’s an upkeep step that is often tough to remember.
Cooperative Gameplay
In the cooperative game mode, both players are working together to build a single city that is flourishing with life. Players work their way through a book that has over a dozen chapters which guide the players through a story. You’ll have goals to achieve, and the setup will be slightly different each time.
Players will deal with skunk tokens that block out different locations during the course of the game. The skunks get in your way and keep you from getting exactly what you need. You can choose to take on a single chapter or work through a campaign where you name your city and track your progress over time.
This co-op experience is a great option for players who are looking for a new way to play. It works really well and is perfect for players who don’t mind working together with another person. This is also a great option for anyone who wants to play the game with a younger gamer. Some chapters allow you to share resources or cards, while other chapters are more restrictive.
Final Thoughts
Everdell Duo has quickly become part of our weekend gaming rhythm. Erin and I really enjoy playing this game over breakfast during a chill weekend. The game has enough cards that it’s impossible to see all the cards during a single game. There is a lot of replayability because event cards and the river location tiles are randomized each game.
With two different ways to play, Everdell Duo is a great option for players looking to change things up after a couple of games. While jumping into Everdell feels a little intimidating, Everdell Duo is a fantastic way to experience this world as a newcomer.
If you already own Everdell (along with some of the expansions), I’m not entirely sure Everdell Duo is a must buy. This new game does a great job of removing some of the “fluff” of the original and streamlines the game in plenty of ways. The setup and speed of play is the biggest selling point when compared to the original. If these aspects are important to you, you should check out this release.
For gamers who play games at the 2-player count often, Everdell Duo is an excellent purchase. The setup is quick, the mechanics are clean, and the game is one that we’re going to enjoy for a long time.
A task becoming more prescriptive doesn’t mean that it’s less creative. Even though I now have more frameworks around sourcing illustration or graphic design – they are still creative processes. It’s just that I now know how to approach those tasks.
By the same token, a lot of tasks are iterative. But having a framework for how to approach tasks helps us iterate more efficiently and come up with better products.
I like this way of thinking about and framing the business. It makes it easier to approach less-well-defined problems, knowing that working through them will help me learn and level up my games publishing craft.
The next time they crop up they won’t be nearly as scary.
Passing it On
My hope is that Pine Island Games will grow as a company, and that some day we’ll have in house partners who benefit from the experience I’m building now.
It’s also why I write this blog.
I want to help other indie publishers learn processes and methods that help them on their journeys. It’s my way of giving back to this community, which I owe so much to.
A lot of articles are like this, a little more philosophical and less full of specific device, but I also try and provide some real concrete advice.
Our Nuts & Bolts series is for instance bite sized prescriptive advice on tackling specific publishing problems. I recommend checking them out:
I wanted to re-share it here along with some linked resources in the model.
The basic idea is that you can input your development costs (to market costs), along with unit economics (manufacture cost per game, freight, shipping, etc), and see how many games you need to sell to break even, along with your P&L for any given number of games sold.
This tool is inspired by Crowdfunding Nerd’s e-mail list tool “Kickstarter Success Calculator”, but it has some material differences. It also goes farther with a section to calculate your return on ad spend (ROAS) not just for a paid advertising campaign, but also for a review & preview campaign.
I have been playing some Pyramido: Forgotten Treasures (BGA | BGG) recently and while my personal best is at 122 points, I feel like there’s not a lot of room for improvement in a "real" match. On the other hand, I also feel like, in theory, it could likely get to around 140, if not more…
What’s the highest possible score one could get on a multiplayer game? What about the highest score for a round?
They will be able to provide shipping rates by geography – like this shipping estimate for Sigil from Fulfillrite. Most will break down their picking fees, the cost of packaging, and postage costs.
Key Considerations
Price isn’t the most important consideration when finding your fulfillment partner.
Reputation: Reputation and surety that they will get the job done smoothly, and without undue product damage, is far more important than a dollar or two savings on picking and packing. I recommend asking around in game design and publishing forums for peoples’ experiences with your with your most competitive.
Ease of Communication: You’ll need a good relationship with your sales rep to smooth the freight delivery process, and address any hiccups that come up during fulfillment. Make sure your sales rep is responsive and can help you workshop your fulfillment options.
Technology: My favorite thing about Fulfillrite is their tech platform. They have a dashboard where I can manage inventory, upload shipping details, and best of all, it automatically ties into our Shopify storefront.
A couple of months ago I wrote up a pretty comprehensive guide on How to Structure a Kickstarter page. We’re still deep in the weeds putting together our Kickstarter for Sigil (launching 05/16!!), and I wanted to share some more tips and tricks that for taking your page to the next level.
Dead Space & Boarders
Kickstarter automatically inserts line spacing between images (the cannot abut against eachother). This means that when create assets for the page you need to take into account that there will be dead white space between them. There are a few ways to deal with this.
1. Combine Assets into Large Images
This is a trick we are doing for our Sigil Kickstarter. Instead of having a headline image, quote, and then what’s in the box image each separately, we are combining them into one master image. We have more control over the flow of the page, and can seamlessly have assets flow into each other without dead space.
You do need to break images (and have dead space) when you want to insert a link, a button or a video. So, eventually you’ll need to plan for the image to end, and how it will transition to dead space or your next graphic.
2. Fade Images into the Negative Space
A good example of this approach is the Elden Ring board game campaign. The IP includes a lot of mist effects which the creators incorporated to allow their images to blead into the negative space that Kickstarter forces between images.
Welcome to Ludology, an analytical discussion of the hows and whys of the world of board games. Rather than news and reviews, Ludology explores a variety of topics about games from a wider lens, as well as discuss game history, game design and game players.
We post a new Ludology episode every other week. In these episodes, hosts Erica Bouyouris and Sen-Foong Lim deep-dive into a single topic within game design, often with a well-regarded guest from the game industry. We generally focus on tabletop game design (mainly board games and RPGs), but we often pull in experts from all forms of games, from video games to escape rooms to slot machines.
On weeks where there is no flagship Ludology episode, we will alternate between two smaller mini-sodes. Erica and Sen are happy to announce that Sarah Shipp of Shippboard Games and Stephanie Campbell of TTRPGKids will be joining us for the next year, providing additional content between our longer episodes.
Sarah’s segment, Thinking Beyond Mechanisms, is a monthly feature that dives deeper into the other aspects of games beyond the dice and cards we’re all familiar with.
Stephanie’s segment, TTRPGKids, explores how parents and teachers can use role playing games with children in the home and in the classroom.
We hope you enjoy the additional content!
Our History
We aim for most Ludology episodes to be timeless, so you are welcome to explore our entire catalog. Most of it should age quite well. The podcast was started in 2011 by Geoff Engelstein and Ryan Sturm, with Mike Fitzgerald taking over for Ryan in 2015. Gil and Scott joined the show in 2017 when Mike stepped aside, and Emma joined in 2019 when Geoff ended his tenure as host. Emma left in 2021, and Erica and Sen joined us. Since then, Scott stepped down in 2022 and Gil will be hanging up his mic in 2023, leaving Erica and Sen to carry on this amazing legacy.
Erica and Sen are working to bring new voices to Ludology and have some great things to announce as gaming expands to include even more people!
Contact Us
Have your own thoughts about our topics? We encourage you to visit us at our guild on Boardgamegeek to get involved in a continuing discussion.
If you have questions that you’d like answered on Ludology, let us know by filling out this Google Form; you can also leave an audio question that we can use on the show, if you wish!
You can also make a one-time or monthly donation here. The link will take you to Erica’s account. People who donate in this way will not have access to the Patreon page – sorry!
It’s important to note the difference between paid and unpaid content. Most review content and round ups is unpaid, while a lot of preview content is paid. Whether content is paid or unpaid will also depend on the individual creator, and the size of the channel’s audience.
For instance, a smaller channel will likely create preview content for free (to help build its audience and have novel content), while larger established channels will charge a fee for content.
Not all paid content is created equal, and it’s important to partner with creators whose tastes and audiences align with your design. Even when content is paid, you can tell how enthusiastic content creators are about the game they are covering.
Getting Coverage
There are two main kinds of coverage – coverage before your game is released or crowdfunded, and coverage after your game is published.
It’s worth noting that the process of reaching out to content creators is relatively similar in each case. However, once your game is published you will get a higher proportion of inquiries for coverage, as well as unprompted coverage.
Once a game is published, unless you are paying for specific content (like a how to play video), the vast majority of coverage will be unpaid (although you may send a review copy of your game).
Where to Find Content Creators
Most readers will have their own favorite board game content creators. Those are a great place to start when looking for reviewers and previewers for your game. But, it’s always worth expanding your playlists. Here are a few places to look for content creators for your game:
Who are your favorite under the radar board game content creators?
