Games that make you Feel Good with Eric Slauson

Eric Slauson is the designer of Tattoo Stories, MonsDRAWsity, Nerd Words: Science, and more!

Watch the live chat below:

Eric’s number one example as a game that makes you feel great is Happy Salmon, which is a fast paced game where you typically end up standing, high fiving other players, and generally getting a lot more excited than in a typical board game. Another example is Galaxy Trucker; in the game, everyone that gets to the end wins, some players just win more than others.

What are some good examples of games that make you feel great?

Here’s some basic ways that players can feel great:

• When they can perform some super epic combos.
• If they’re physically moving and that releases endorphins.
• Whenever they’re complemented or you’re encouraged to say nice things to each other.
• Any games where players get to use your creativity.
• Anytime players get to do things physically.

Overall, though, what makes players feel good is different for every person.

Some mechanics that are great for positive emotions:

• If there’s a judging aspect to the game, make sure to structure it in such a way so it’s not a zero sum or winner take all. Let everyone have their moment.
• Engine builders naturally make people feel good as they should be getting more productive as the game goes on.
• Deck building and bag building or any similar mechanisms that have incremental moments of feeling good.
• Again, anything with physicality. This could be as simple as rolling dice.
• The inspiration system in D&D, where players can get something extra for doing something really neat and surprising.

Here’s some great themes that make games happier: Dinosaurs, anything with bright and fun art, games featuring animals, like dogs, cats, llamas, etc., candy and sweets. Art direction can matter a lot for this.

Make sure to obscure the points, so there’s no reason for the players to feel like they’re losing. There’s a variety of ways to do this:

• Hidden objectives are great at obscuring points and have the added bonus of making you feel crafty or sneaky, which adds to the positivity.
• Games that are very close in points are almost a way of obscuring who is winning, as the position each player is in can change at any point.
• There should be a slow and fast way to win, so that a player can shoot for the moon and potentially come up from behind. This is can also be a great way to surprise players and give them a story to tell about the game afterwards. This should be something that’s really hard to do, but is an autowin if the other players allow you to do it.

You can get away with a lot more the shorter a game is. For instance, it’s ok to have player elimination if the players are only eliminated for a short period of time.

Here’s some positive emotions you can try to bring out in your games, though it is subjective and based on the players: being able to outsmart the game or other players, joy, cleverness, anything that makes you laugh, and surprise. The feeling of cooperation, validation, and appreciation are also very positive. Tension can also be really positive, as well as being nervous or scared, if you find the right balance as too much of any of these is no longer positive.

Some examples of surprise can be the reveal of the creativity of the other players. For instance, in Tattoo Stories, there’s a point in the game where every player reveals the tattoo and the story behind the tattoo and this can evoke a lot of emotions.

There’s some mechanics or game aspects that you can try to avoid as they’re hard to turn into positives:

• Take That is a difficult mechanism to include unless you put a really silly take on it.
• Losing a turn. You have to have a really good reason to do this as it takes away agency.
• Anything that causes a lot of AP (analysis paralysis, or something that makes players take a long time to choose). This elongates the game, which increases the weight, and makes winning and losing matter more.

Any other things to try to incorporate to help players to feel more?

• Fast rounds with incremental progress.
• Tension added by being timed; for instance, if a player gets to have only 20 seconds to look at a card and make a decision, then they have the tension while everyone else is in suspense and they’re waiting to see what the player will do.

Downtime can be good and positive, it leaves room for emotions and not getting exhausted.

You can find out more about Eric here:

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/slausondesigns
• MonsDRAWsity preorder:
  https://oxeyemedia.com/collections/pre-orders/products/monsdrawsity-preorder
• Nerd Words: Science and Tattoo Stories are on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/shop/weirdgiraffes?listId=1VQLNK0DIE4V9

The game Flatter Me was mentioned during the live chat and can be found here: https://pinktigergames.com/

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