Alright, I’m the perfect amount of drunk to be playtesting a new game that literally came to me in a dream, and then write up an article about how it went. Last night, my wife slept in my room with the dogs and I slept in the guest room so I could sleep through the night for the first time in a few days. As I was drifting off to sleep, I was thinking about card games that are cheap to produce but can result in some pretty varied game experiences. In my sleep, I came up with a roller coaster building game that used some elements from a handful of games like Rollercoaster Tycoon, Planet Coaster, Sim Coaster, etc, which have challenging and sometimes frustrating 3D custom coaster construction tools that, if tweaked and massaged properly, could yield a pretty fun card game. Each card could be a piece of track, and the elements of the coaster, like loops and corkscrews, could yield stat points for a handful of categories.

Here are the notes I wrote verbatim as soon as I woke up:

• Game where you make a roller coaster by laying out track cards with stats on themm intensity, momentum, thrill, etc. Lay track and finish the loop without busting. Rides can bee too intense for example. Some cards could have built in crossovers
• Could have challenge cards that give points for including certain elements and determine stat ranges to stay within
• Bonus for compactness? Empty space in the middle could count against you or could play on grid with limited space maybe.
• Multiple coaster types
• Test final coaster by moving cart through tracks, keep momentum value in the green. Non powered track sections subtract, boosters and drops increase

These notes tumbled around in my head while I drew a handful of shapes for track cards:

Then I looked up a list of rollercoaster enthusiast terms for stuff. I found a delightful website from 1999, https://www.ultimaterollercoaster.com/coasters/glossary/ which gave me all the terms I needed. I generated a set of elements, while simultaneously determining that you could totally make different decks for metal, wooden, suspended, and indoor coaster types. When organized to show what stats these elements might have, that creates a table, something like this:

I then created cards with lines, entrances, and exits for each element and uploaded them all to tabletop sim. I randomly decided that each track piece should have 4 copies in the deck, boost should have 5, and the rest of the elements get 3 copies except for dive and double inversion which have 2 copies. This makes the best cards harder to come by.

Before determining what a ‘successful’ build looks like, AKA writing a construction order card, I wanted to perform a playtest to see if I could even build a coaster with these cards without running out of momentum. I decided on a 5-size hand where you draw after you play each card. I realized I had no starting point so I took one card and flipped it upside down to serve as the starting point, like the start and finish location. I built from the front and the back and wasn’t drawing any momentum cards right away so I decided that, since metal coasters shoot you out really fast at the beginning anyway, we should start with 4 momentum. OK, no problem, I got a boomerang after like 5 plays, so it kept me alive.

Even though I ended up not needing it, I thought game would benefit from a mechanic where you can fail but keep playing. How about if you have shit draw, you just keep building and later you can delete a built piece of track by discarding an extra card from your hand? That builds suspense, your hand gets smaller to save your ass and there’s strategy to laying down the track in such a way that you can patch it together later if you have to.

Talk about momentum, I have to write the rest of this article before I’m too drunk or too sleepy to continue. The coaster was coming together, I was adding a rule or two based on my gut feelings of how the playtest was going or could go if my draw was better or worse. I realized about 15 minutes in that I was going to successfully complete my first coaster without running out of momentum! Let’s go!! I named it “Alpha Coaster Fun Point OHH!” Naming stuff that you built is fun.

First playtest rules look like this:

Alpha Coaster’s stats ended up here:

Ending Momentum: 1

Thrill: 6

Anticipation: 8

Nausea: 5

Build Size: 17, 6 elements

I give it a B-. If someone told me a coaster had higher anticipation than thrill but had 6 elements, I’d ride it especially if it wasn’t very nauseating. Plus if you really look, the ending is a nice long ride burning off momentum until you hit the brakes at the end, already pretty slowed down. I’m gonna be honest, I’m proud of this thing.

Here’s a picture of Alpha Coaster Fun Point OHH!

For me, the game development process goes really fast. I woke up this morning with an idea and I had my first digital playtest after dinner, with notes and stuff interspersed through a fairly busy day of calls, emails, dogs, and a long pre-dinner nap. I wish all days were like this. Also if any of you take my idea and get it to market before me, I will find you, and I will pee. Everywhere.

Peace out friends, I’m ending this day happy as a clam that designs board games.