Development Blog - Harrick's Menagerie of Monsters

Welcome to the first development blog for Harrick’s Menagerie of Monsters, A Weavlings in the Wilds expansion. It has been a long time since I’ve given an update, so I wanted to do a deep dive as to where we are at with the game.  

WHY THE DELAY?  

After working on Weavlings in the Wilds for an ungodly amount of time, I needed a break from the series and work on other projects. Even after the release, I’ve lived a Weavlings-centric life for the last few years – talking about Weavlings, teaching the game, selling the game, promoting the game, wearing Weavling-themed clothing, and being surrounded by the game in my office. I needed some time to explore a bit. Artistic expression was another reason. As much as I love Weavlings, I’ve painted an insane amount of them, and I wanted to paint other things. Part of this is also from my computer crash a couple of years ago where I’ve been having to repaint most of Fate Weaver Zadarra and Her Unfortunate Misfortune from asset loss. That game has a lot of Weavlings, so I’ve been Weavling’d out. 

WHAT CHANGED?  

Life is started to settle down a bit (more on that in the upcoming Automaton-A-Thon blog post), and it has given me some time back to work on games again. In addition, Weavlings has gotten more sales traction as of late and a couple glowing accolades from other game designers, which encouraged me to put a pin in the series and start work again on Harrick’s Menagerie of Monsters. Weavlings in the Wilds is a good game. Even with being biased as the creator, five years of playing that game for playtesting, development, conventions, selling events, etc. and I enjoy every sit down. I remember watching a keynote speech from the GDC (Game Developer’s Conference), and the developer said people need to start making games that they play themselves. Weavlings in the Wilds is my type of game, and that’s why I think it does what its supposed to do well. It would be a shame to move on to another project without leading the series where it needed to go.  

WHAT'S NEW IN HARRICK'S MENAGERIE OF MONSTERS?  

Quite a few things, but keep in mind this is a development blog, so game features may change over time. I wanted to explore new ways to mitigate the difficulty a bit because Weavlings in the Wilds can be very difficult at times. Fate Weaver Zadarra and Her Unfortunate Misfortune was intended to be released first and is far more accessible as a beat your own score type of solo game. Weavlings in the Wilds was its difficult cousin. This release schedule would ease players into the world of Immacus, but we’re past that now. Harrick’s Menagerie of Monsters needs to satisfy two seemingly conflicting goals: Offer a richer experience with additional difficulty baked in and be accessible for newcomers.  

NEW WIN STATE

Players will have to put Beasties in Cages in addition to luring Weavlings. The two goals for the win state will allow players some flexibility to focus on one goal or the other if the grid is not favorable to one particular win state like the base game.  

NEW PLAYABLE PLAYER: HARRICK

Harrick the Dragon Hunter will be a playable character in the Menagerie of Monsters alongside the Weavling Trapper. While the Trapper will be responsible for everything it was in the base game, Harrick will primarily be responsible for new mechanics that are exclusive to him. This also means you now have two characters to navigate with and achieve goals.    

A LARGER GRID

The grid will now be 5x3 instead of the current 4x3. This is primarily to give more space for the two player characters to move about and increase milling outside of the milling events (more on that). 

CAGES

Cages are a new card type that facilitates many of the Harrick-exclusive mechanisms. Cages can be broken or pushed/pulled by Harrick to capture Beasties. Some Cages will also have buffs associated with them. Capture a Beastie in a Cage and it will grant a Beastie-specific buff for the rest of the game such as silencing a Beastie’s ability.  

SOUVENIRS

Souvenirs are a new resource that is required to lure Weavlings in addition to Meat. Meat will be treated the same as it was in the base game, but souvenirs will need to be purchased to then lure Weavlings requiring them.   

NEW MITIGATION THROUGH VENDORS

On the outskirts of the Menagerie of Monsters, vendors are present to sell their wares and offer practical solutions to the dangers present. Since we are out of the Tender Wilds (officially), the Wilds Spirits won’t be the Wilds Deck, and I need a replacement. The vendor system will be a bespoke mitigation approach driven by the player.  

The Wilds Spirits served as your mitigation strategy with bonus actions, bonus meat, wound to meat conversions, and event cancellations. All these mitigation tools are now present through the vendors. This moves the randomness of mitigation to something that is player-directed. I don’t feel the Wilds Spirits as randomized mitigation were ever an issue (originally, the game never had Wilds Spirits – yes, the game was harder), but I think what this change does is makes the player feel like they can control their mitigation approach a little more.  

Who are the vendors? 

There are currently four vendors. Each with their own unique utility.  

Brava: Brava is a Caelestialis mage who offers healing remedies for players. These include removing wound cards, moving lost populations of Weavlings back into the game, and silencing Beasties and their abilities.  

Chef Buu: Chef Buu is an Ethereal master chef who uses his culinary skills to keep you and your Weavlings invigorated during your journey through the Menagerie of Monsters. Chef Buu’s food will provide meat for Weavlings, give you extra movements, or can be used as tempting bait for Beasties.  

Boigawa: Boigawa is a shrewd collector of local treasures and she is your point of contact for all things souvenirs. In addition to souvenirs being the means of luring particular Weavlings, the souvenir’s powers can be tapped into to cancel events, bringing Banished Traps back into your hand, or manipulate cages. 

Wilds Spirit’s Exchange: It wouldn’t be a Weavlings in the Wilds game without the Wilds Spirits! Even though the Wilds Spirits won’t be in the Menagerie proper, the exchange will allow you to swap out Beastie Parts for Ephemeral Gold.  

BEASTIE PARTS

Beastie Parts are a new resource that is turned in for Ephemeral Gold that is then used to purchase from other vendors. Beastie Parts as a transitory resource encourages players to move about the grid to visit the different vendors.  

LASTING EVENTS AND EVENTS ADJUSTMENTS

Lasting Events are a new type of Event that is not resolved immediately. While the Event is on the grid, the ability is active. 

I also made some adjustments to the Events to minimize their milling effect. Despite the Events working as intended, and even offering the “Clear Skies Mode,” some players did not like that Events do what they needed to do, which is mill the deck to push the game to conclusion. Much like the movement of Wilds Spirits to vendors, the milling effects of the Events are simply being moved over to other mechanisms. One Event will stay a milling Event, while the other two will do other things. The heart of the game still needs to be present; otherwise, it’s a different game and not an expansion.  

GOLD

Gold coins are now littered about the Menagerie and can be picked up without an action cost to be used at the various vendors.  

GOLD CHAINING

Currently, Gold will have chains like Traps but will be Gold. Gold Chains allow for split chain pickup, which means a Gold Chain can allow for a branch point from the Trap chain combo. I would like to add this to future Traps, but currently, there are no new Traps in Menagerie of Monsters. Ultimately Gold Chains will be the proof of principle that branch chaining works and isn’t too disruptive to the game state.  

NEW CHOMP

“Ravage,” a new Chomp that’s more aggressive than Devour is in the expansion. It not only removes cards from the game that are victim to Ravage, but it also will discard cards from the deck with every successful Ravage. There’s that shifted milling I mentioned. What this does is move the milling from something that is random to something that feels less so to the player. As a player, if you see Ravage on the grid and do nothing to prevent it or didn’t plan for it, then that consequence is clearer. I think that it will feel better for players, while maintaining the milling necessary for the game to work.  

NEW BEASTIES

There are four new Beasties in the expansion, each with unique abilities and upgraded versions of Chomp.  

Xetze: A spider-like Beastie that has the ability “Miasmic.” It will reveal all cards around it both diagonally and orthogonally and will mill 1 card from the deck for each card revealed in this way. There’s that shifted milling again… 

Chowwakki: A dog/ram/monkey hybrid that has the ability “Trample.” It will run down a column to the final row and destroy any Weavlings in the way. It does not have any Chomp icons and instead causes deep wound damage.  

Arbonic Monstrosity: The Arbonic Monstrosity is a corrupted Arbormon, a tree-folk type race in Immacus. It has the ability “Deep Roots,” which keeps the Beastie from collapsing as normal. It can only be captured by being shifted on the grid. You must either push it with Harrick and a cage or use a utility moving Trap like The Ol’ Switcheroo/Column-shaker Potion.  

Quarraza: The Quarraza is a dragon-like Beastie with the ability “Evasive.” It cannot be targeted directly by Traps. Traps that do not directly target a Beastie like Rolling Logs/Poisoned Popper need to be used.  

The new Beasties and their abilities are solving potential game issues on the backend. The Xetze reveals more cards, which helps push the grid down faster as face-down cards do not move out of the grid during Travel Phase. Chowwakki helps push cards out of the way that would otherwise keep the grid from shifting downwards. The Arbonic Monstrosity encourages players to utilize more utility cards in their Trap repertoire and not just direct fire. It also creates a constant source of Ravage on the grid unless it is dealt with. The Quaraxara besides being a source of Ravage, is another tool to get players to think about how to use their Traps strategically. I see the Quarraza’s ability as a gateway to future mechanics.  

CHA-CHA-CHA-CHANGES

Now that I am writing about it, that’s quite a bit of changes! The changes are just enough to keep the game fresh without verging into bloat or creating a new game entirely. There are some new things, old things, and old things shifted into new things. The first two micro expansions were there to offer some variety, but ultimately, get them comfortable with what was coming with Harrick’s Menagerie of Monsters. Now that you know what’s new with the expansion, here’s how playtesting is going.  

Initial Playtesting  

I expected playtesting to be rougher than it’s been going. Weavlings in the Wilds provided a good foundation to build the expansion on. The initial playtesting for Harrick’s Menagerie of Monsters showed me a game in need of tweaks and not one of overhaul. That’s good news for the timeline. The quicker the playtesting goes the quicker I can move to art, public playtesting, and whatever development follows. That being said, let’s dive into what I saw for opportunities for improvement in my journey through the Menagerie of Monsters as well as what is working great.  

OPPORTUNITIES

Footprint  

The game has a growing footprint. I was able to play the game moderately comfortably on a 30” table, but it’s something I have my eye on. The extra footprint is coming from vendors on the outer edges of the larger grid and Cages above the game state. Weavlings in the Wilds had a nice-sized footprint, and though I am hesitant to blow it up to massive scale, it does make sense an expansion with new elements would increase that footprint. Nevertheless, there were a couple of changes regarding footprint: 

• Vendors and their inventory are collapsed during gameplay and only expanded when the vendor is visited.  

• Cages Buffs are no longer lined at the top of the grid as a visible objective to meet.  

• Cages and Cage Buff cards are now combined to a single card, reducing the physical card footprint in the play area. 

• As in the base game, Wounds and Lost Population can be collapsed with the correct orientation and counted as needed for reference.  

Cages and Cage Buffs  

Cages were generic cards that sat on top of the Cage Buff card along with the corresponding Beastie that was captured. This was three cards per capture on the play area, and by combining the Cage/Cage Buff card it reduced that to two cards per capture. That also reduces costs, dropping the Cage/Cage Buff card count from the initial 12 cards to 6 cards.  

Developing the Time Game Arc 

Every game should have a game arc. What I mean by this is every game should feel as if there is a beginning, middle, and end. Weavlings in the Wilds achieved this by the shrinking deck and the more dangerous the deck became over time. This is still present in Menagerie of Monsters, but because the deck is bigger with added cards, the sense of urgency does get a little lost. This felt like the most glaring issue to me as I played. As someone who has been playing this game for five years, I needed something very visible and physically injectable to show the game is getting scarier over time.  

The solution to this is now 4 out of the 6 Cages are located outside the grid on the bottom. Beneath the Cage are X number of Beasties (I haven’t solidified a number quite yet), which creates a “Loaded Cage.” If a Beastie makes it past the final row, they will break the corresponding column’s Cage, releasing the Beasties and Cage into the deck. Now the deck is more dangerous, and it also has the Cage that is required to satisfy the game’s winning objective. I like this idea of an insane amount of Beasties being released into the game in addition to the Wounds. Also, Harrick, if he so chooses can break the cage himself. Since the new Beasties don’t have Meat as a collectable resource, the best way to inject more Meat into the game is to put it there yourself. I’m very excited about this adjustment to gameplay as it feels like a pivotal shift in the game state. With each new broken Cage, the deck becomes exponentially more dangerous.  

Meat Lover’s  

Meat is far too accessible. Initially, base game Beasties were shuffled into the deck with the new Beasties. These Beasties provided another source of Meat in addition to Chef Buu’s offerings. Ultimately, I spent a lot of time collecting Gold and buying gobs of Meat from Chef Buu, while ignoring the Souvenir Weavlings as much as possible. The new Loaded Cage tweak keeps the Beasties out of the initial draws until players are ready for them or fail to stop a Beastie from breaking the Loaded Cage. That should delay the Meat fest a little bit.  

In addition to pulling out the Meat resource Beasties, I am going to tweak how much Meat you actually get from Chef Buu. It’s either tweak the Gold you find in the Menagerie or tweak the Meat. It’s all resource tweaking at this point, but more on that later. I think removing the Beasties will solve the immediate runaway Meat issue.  

Expensive Taste  

Souvenir Weavlings are very expensive to collect and maintain in their current form. They are so expensive, players will try to avoid them and opt for the easier to collect Meat-inclined Weavlings. I know they will because that’s what I did. To adjust this, Souvenir Wealings will have a straight 1:1 population to Souvenir ratio unlike the Meat Weavlings at the higher population levels. They will also stay happier one more round than their Meat counterparts. That should make the Souvenir Weavlings more appealing to players and give Boigawa more frequent customers.  

Vendor Relations 

Particular vendors got more love than others. I’m looking at you, Chef Buu. In Fate Weaver Zadarra, some Relics get picked up more frequently. To fix that, I made their usage more in line with difficulty. Relics that may not seem useful in the lower difficulties become invaluable at the higher difficulties. I plan to implement this as well for the vendors. Brava didn’t get much face time during my runs primarily because I handled Wounds effectively. At the higher difficulty levels, I plan to implement tweaks that require Brava to be more involved in your success. 

Too Many Actions 

In addition to Chef Buu providing plenty of Meat to hungry Weavlings, his food can also be used for additional actions. I like flexibility, but it allows too much flexibility. There were very few rounds where I could not clean the grid. There needs to be a few more restrictions. The initial reaction is to limit some of the bonus actions to movement actions. Ultimately, vendor adjustments need to be made and that’s the whole fine-tuning process.  

Economic Boom  

Currently, the economy feels very generous. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but the economy in my view should give you hard choices to make. The economy needs to be scaled down a bit and fine-tuned to give the game the nail-biting nature of the base game. A few of these issues will be sorted out at the higher level of difficulties.  

There are no Flesh Wounds 

I had minimal Wounds due in part to the vast number of actions I had. I was comfortably able to deal with threats with only 2 Wounds at the end of game with only 2 Beasties making it through. Something I do always need to take account of is how familiar I am with the game. Perhaps it’s better the standard difficulty plays like this with the more nail-biting moments saved for higher difficulties.  

WORKING GREAT

The Bones 

Weavlings in the Wilds provided great bones to build Menagerie of Monsters from. Because of that, there were no game-breaking events, and we were able to move into development and fine-tuning. Thanks Weavlings!   

Caging the Beast 

Harrick’s Cage pushing/pulling process works great. It feels very natural. The only hiccup you can run into as a player is the Cage getting into a corner, which will require you to take an additional turn to pull it out and use it.  

Dream Team 

The Trapper and Harrick teaming up works very well. Almost too well, but the tweaking from the previous sections should increase the difficulty. My concern was that tracking two characters and their actions would be tricky for player bandwidth, but the current restriction forces players to use one character at a time. This makes it easy to parse, especially when each character has their own mechanistic restrictions.  

Milling  

Milling is working as intended – almost too well. I got to the final rotation, which hasn’t happened in a long time. All the milling mechanics triggered the rotations exponentially, but axing one of the milling Events should bring the rotations back in line.  

Beastie Mode Abilities  

The Beastie Abilities are working great and all of them feel interesting. The abilities are thematic for the type of Beastie and opens the door as to what is possible for future abilities. It’s important from a gameplay perspective that the threat each ability poses is clear as well as the strategy to deal with the Beastie. When I did public playtesting for Weavlings in the Wilds, players appreciated that the Beasties had Chomps/abilities consistent with a Beastie type. I plan on carrying that forward in Menagerie of Monsters to lower the mental burden on players.  

During the marketing process for Weavlings in the Wilds, there was one reviewer who complained that each Beastie wasn’t unique and didn’t have different art. This decision was intentional as I want players to quickly scan the grid, recognize a threat, and plan around it without expending a ton of mental bandwidth on nuance. It sounds like a gameplay nightmare to have a gaggle of Beasties and gaggle of abilities to react to with how much is already going on during each new round. 

Also, this is a little bit of a sidebar, but art is expensive. If art isn’t expensive in cost because I’m making it, it’s expensive in time. Every new piece of art will kick the release timeline. For example, Weavlings in the Wilds took so long to release because of the massive amounts of art and assets that were required for the Kickstarter. Maybe this is for another blog post, but Weavlings in the Wilds had more unique art than most games of similar size. As I build a game, I’m always thinking about what amount of art will capture the feel of the universe. If the game doesn’t meet that threshold, I put more art in.  

What’s Next? Expect a blog post in the near future that will highlight cards in greater detail as well as their mechanics. We’ll have some art reveals as well. Despite taking a little break, I did get some Beastie art done. On the backend, playtesting will remain with our internal play testers before opening playtesting to convention playtesting or public. There are a couple of Protospiels coming up in October and November, but I’m uncertain I can get the art where it needs to be before then (I like to have nearly all the art done before public playtesting so players focus on the gameplay). Other than that, stay tuned!  

-Jonathan