The Unheist of Hearthburn House: Mansion Decorating Madness

Throughout our game design process, we introduce many different mechanics that ultimately don't make it into the final version of the game. Here are some of our favorite mechanics that had to be cut for one reason or another.

Throwing Stuff between Players
At one point, there was a mechanic were players could throw Stuff between their two kobolds to help them get items to the best spot faster. This came at a risk of rolling a die and players had to roll a higher number the further their partner was away to be successful.

This mechanic was cut mainly because the punishment for failing the roll became complicated. Does the item become grubby? And if the item is already grubby, does that mean there is no risk for a failed throw? And where does the item land on a failed throw? We decided the rules and caveats made the interaction too wonky to include.

The Rondel
One of our personal favorites, there was a Rondel in the earlier versions of the game. This is what was used to determine how the dragon would attack the Kobolds! There was a pawn on the outside of the rings, and when a player pulled from the dragon bag they could move the pawn around the rondel to force the dragon to perform a certain action.



We ultimately cut this for a number of reasons. The first being that the rondel was difficult for players to learn without experiencing the rest of the game. Most new players were just haphazardly making their decisions until they got a feel for the game.

The second reason we cut the rondel was more thematic. In the current setup, players inadvertently were controlling the dragon. If you get to choose where the pawn goes, you determine where the dragon breathes fire. While a cool mechanic, it didn't fit into the theme of dodging dragon fire when you determined where it went.

Direct Kobold Interaction
We came up with multiple versions of ways for Kobolds to directly impede each other. We discussed the following ideas:

We cut these mechanics to streamline the actions a player can do, as well as to keep the game a bit friendlier. Most actions you complete in The Unheist are to further your own team rather than sabotaging someone else's. We think the current Junk and Goodie mechanics are enough backstabbing to make the game interesting, but not enough to make it only about taking down your friends.



It's always fun for the team to reminisce about the previous versions of our games and what changes we made along the way. If any of these mechanics sound interesting to you, feel free to make some house rules when you play! 

But for now, try your hand at the trivia question below.

It's time to kick-off Behind The Scenes Week! For the next 5 days, we will be posting about the creation process for The Unheist of Hearthburn House. You'll get to see how we create our games and how the game could have been produced in an alternate timeline.

For the first day, we wanted to share the original idea for The Unheist and how we ultimately landed on the game in it's current format. But to understand how the game got chosen, you'll need to know our company dynamic and how we choose our next game.

Since we work as a team, we have to be democratic in making decisions. When we are ready to start a new game, each team member submits a "pitch" for the game that they want to make. This allows each of us to get our creative juices flowing and ensure the best idea is the one the team works on.

In this instance, Kyle gets the credit for the winning idea! His pitch was to create a cyber punk themed heist game where people have a roster of characters to help tackle different obstacles. 

You may notice, this is very far from The Unheist in its current form. As with all good ideas, they get formed and molded into a better version of themselves as we work together to flesh out the game. Our company has knack for making games that have a unique spin on normal game themes. Any fans of The Sheep will know this about Zero Strategy Games.

Through multiple iterations, we thought it would be more interesting to have a game where you put things back instead of stealing them. Then this lead to the theme of returning goods from a sleeping dragon, and who better than Kobolds to be responsible for the theft.



And that's how we landed on the theme for The Unheist of Hearthburn House! It feels weird condensing multiple months of game development and discussion into a few short paragraphs, but this summarizes our creative process pretty well. We have some standard operations to help us be consistent, but sometimes you have to be flexible to make the game as good as it can be.

Join us tomorrow as we discuss some of the cut mechanics from the game. And don't forget to do today's trivia question!

We have exciting updates planned for next week! Each weekday, we are going to post about the creation of The Unheist of Hearthburn House. The topics include:

It takes a lot of time and effort to put together a board game, and we though it'd be fun to give you all a peak at what it looks like. If you have any specific questions you'd love for us to talk about, comment it below!

And don't forget today's trivia question!

It's crazy that we are almost halfway through the campaign already! It's been a pleasure for our team to see your engagement with the project. Thank you for your continued support of The Unheist of Hearthburn House.

The trivia challenge continues! Good luck with today's trivia question below.

Join us tonight for our second livestream of The Unheist of Hearthburn House! Even if you watched the first one, there will be a couple different shifts (like the player count and optional rule we are adding) to spice up the experience.

There is a correction from the previous update. The livestream will be starting slightly later at 6pm EST. We hope to see you there!

And as promised, the second trivia question is listed below.