Hi everyone! I’m Andrea Francisco, lead developer on Kart. Just wanted to introduce myself and share a little history of the development and development process of Kart’s maps!
Very early on, the game started off with traditional hexes on a path that wound through the streets and backyards of a neighborhood. As a deckbuilder, each of the cards in your deck were tied to a terrain type on the map and you could only move to those spaces if you could play the matching symbol. There was definitely something to the game but did not quite hit for me at the time.
Nick Brachmann saw a lot of similarities with this version of the map with The Quest for El Dorado and brought in his copy. El Dorado's map makes terrain feel incredibly rich through maps and cards combining to create a tangible sense of difficulty. After a few more playtests of Kart and some games of El Dorado, we realized that the map did not make as big of an impact on a game of Kart as we had wanted. What El Dorado brought to the table was a rich terrain system that helped to clarify terrain’s role in Kart. Alita’s next iteration included the huge change to a more linear format for the race.
While working through the early iterations of the linear track, the first thing we needed to decide on was the terrain types. Some of these already existed with the previous iteration (mud, water, pavement), but the new linear format changed the incentives for steering through (or avoiding!) different types of terrain. In the hex map iteration, cards in hand were tied to terrain and pushed players to take that risk of saving or spending their limited cards. In a linear downhill race, terrain now confronted players with immediate and challenging interruptions to their plans, versus methodic combos based on a player’s hand. This allowed us to move away from the terrain-based deckbuilding, and led to the set of eight terrain types as listed in the image above.
As we continued to test the game, a terrain type we really loved ended up on the cutting room floor: Special terrain. Special terrain originally started off being reactionary terrain. By moving over these spaces, players were able to transform the landscape. They could trigger the sprinklers and cover what was once pavement into a huge puddle of water or destroy your neighbor’s beloved statues.
Unfortunately, a few issues quickly became apparent. Mechanically, this led to some pretty negative play experiences. If terrain changed from a positive or neutral effect to a negative one, the player in first was overly incentivized to use these Special terrain to snowball their lead. Inversely, if it changed terrain from a negative effect to a positive one, the leader had no incentive to use it as it would only benefit those behind them. We had to find a different incentive for players to stray from the most efficient route.
This would briefly be turned into arches, pieces which would be placed on alternating sides of the map to create a slalom effect, but it was difficult to balance the rewards. We tried points, upgrades, and all sorts of bonuses, but they just weren’t working. Tying them to map layouts helped, but didn’t bring them into alignment with the rest of the race. Thankfully we reached a nice middle ground and split this concept into two. There was now bonus control on the map to reward players for taking the more difficult route. Points later turned into crowd cards which encouraged riskier play.
Pavement caused a few issues as well. With the amount of hexes that had chunks of pavement placed together, all players were speeding up at a pace that was way too fast for the game. Thinking through what could be another incentive for those to land on the pavement spaces, keeping control felt important especially in the mid-late game. By changing the ability to keep control at the end of your turn, players would be able to afford more of their abilities to adapt to the race and maybe even have some left over to buy another market card.
Once the terrain types were set, I went to work on the yards. What was once a 6x6 tile slowly turned into our now 5x5 tile. While the spacious map looked great, it was a little too roomy. The size allowed for players to avoid each other and the consequences of poor navigation.
Once we understood the dimensions, I went looking for inspiration. Some maps are more mechanically inspired such as the Community Garden, where players are forced to choose a path as they exit the tile, taking damage or slowing down. Others were inspired by an archetype of backyard we wanted represented. VB is inspired by my childhood backyard and Raccoon Paradise popped into my mind while watching an episode of Bob’s Burgers. Once we had a set of twenty-four, we ran one big race through all 24 maps, evaluating the routes and choices presented one by one. Then we tossed them into playtesting. A few essential rules were soon brought to the surface:
1. No obstacles should exist in the first row of a yard.
There would be instances where karts would get trapped between obstacles from the prior yard and the yard they were trying to move into. This setup meant that all combinations of maps were guaranteed to work and dead ends no longer existed.
2. There should be no obvious straightaways for the players to move into.
A race just wasn’t fun if players felt their choices were obvious. Terrain needed to be diverse and dense so the players had many pathways to engage with. It also helped with preventing a player from being so far ahead and no way for others to catch up.
3. Pavement and ramps are really good. Use them wisely.
Good spaces needed to be rationed out on each map. Pavement letting players keep their unspent control was way too helpful that we had to make sure to limit them. And if there were ramps everywhere, players would jump all the way to the end without playing the game!
I feel like there’s so much more I could ramble on about but then this would be the length of the book. Thank you so much for taking the time to read through this! I’m so excited to show everyone what else is in store for Kart.
Kart launches on Kickstarter September 15! Follow the campaign here.
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