Welcome to How to Build a Board Game, a new series from Some Untitled Collective. We’ll be sharing behind-the-scenes designer diaries discussing our debut game, Rescue, regular updates on our own upcoming Kickstarter, as well as a curated list of indie games live on Kickstarter that we’re excited to see come to life. As this project grows, we’ll be featuring other game designers, artists, and friends of the hobby.

I learned early on in designing Rescue that it would be nearly impossible to create a game that is 100% original mechanically. In fact, not only would it be nigh impossible, I don’t think it would have been the best choice to create the experience I envisioned.  The challenge became, how do I incorporate elements/mechanics from known games in a way that creates a new experience without being a copycat?

The benefit of playing lots of games is identifying the mechanics and experiences that resonate with me. Early on, I had a rough idea of how the game would play. Players would place cards representing dogs into an area in front of them. The cards interact with one another to create ability and scoring combos that would change game to game. In Board Game Geek terms, this is referred to as tableau building.

Tableau builders have players place cards in their play area, expanding the actions they can take, the points they can score, or the resources they can generate. It felt like the perfect skeleton for Rescue; it shares enough DNA with classic games that you can introduce it to newcomers to the hobby, but provides enough flexibility to adapt it to new ideas. Wingspan and Forest Shuffle are two of my favorite games that utilize this mechanic. 

Both are primarily card games that rely on a central deck of cards. Players are unlikely to be able to use the exact same strategy from game to game due to the deck's randomness, which creates a high level of replayability.  Let me break down exactly why I love the tableau building in both of these and why they felt like a great fit for Rescue.

Wingspan drew me in because of its gorgeous art and lovely production, but the breadth of decisions and branching strategies has kept me coming back for years. It drives players to create meaningful choices through habitat placement and resource management. The game makes you feel like you're building something cohesive and interconnected, where each decision influences your subsequent turns. 

Each time you play Wingspan, you’re going to be performing the same actions, but the birds you play into your habitats(tableau) modify how you score points or what resources you gain.  I wanted to emulate this feeling that Wingspan accomplishes beautifully, each game begins with a feeling of curiosity, and ends with players reflecting on what they did right or wrong.  With every card in the game being unique, you’re almost guaranteed to never have the same set of birds each time you play.

Forest Shuffle, on the other hand, excels at creating layered card interactions within your forest(tableau). The way cards can modify and enhance each other creates satisfying moments of discovery. Unlike Wingspan, there are multiple copies of each card, so players can create sets to increase scoring combos, but the luck of the draw requires players to stay flexible in order to stay competitive.

The flexibility and familiarity that comes with tableau builders made it feel like a natural mechanic to rely on for Rescue.  I was familiar enough with successful examples of this that I could use them as boundaries for the fundamental pieces of the game.  Rescue builds off of the skeleton of both Wingspan and Forest Shuffle in ways that make it immediately familiar to fans, but with enough twists that it doesn’t feel like a straight reskin.

When folks finally get the opportunity to play Rescue, if they’re reminded of these games, I’ll know that it was a job well done.