Hair of the Dog is slated to be the next Cherry Picked Game. Our genre-hopping studio is looking forward to a fast-paced, high-player-count game, after living in Far Away’s 2-player story worlds for so long. We have a bunch of ideas and goals for the new game. We’re iterating over everything and finding the fun in petting these dogs, but we have an appreciable lack of playtesters. It’s a bit harder to test a game when you can’t post up at the local brewery or game shop. There’s a free prototype everyone can grab and try today. To help set the tone of the game and level-set where our progress is, we wanted to chat about the current design. Hopefully, we can all get on the same wavelength and grow Hair of the Dog from a cute little puppy to an even cuter adult dog that deserves your love.
Hair of the Dog is all about petting a variety of dogs in a dog-friendly pub. Each dog has some conditions that must be met to pet them. It’s a competition and a fundamental part of that competition is staying in good terms with the bar staff. As you move about the board to collect the right treats and toys, the waitstaff circle looking to see if you’re a paying customer. If you’re caught without a beverage in your hand, you’ll be looked at with an eye roll and take a shame token.
Within that premise, we’re looking for something relatively lightweight. It should be playable at the dog bar with your friends that have had a drink. We’re looking to minimize points that might be confusing to explain to those friends, you please keep that mind as you read the rules.
Of course, it’s a Cherry Picked Game and we’re really searching for how to bring player interaction to the center. Right now, much of that comes from the conditions: your best strategy is to observe what others do to pet dogs in order to save yourself actions. You also have some control over the waitstaff’s movements, so there’s a bit of cat-and-mouse action. Finally, every turn concludes with the current player toasting those around them, giving them an opportunity to drain their opponents’ glasses at the risk of running dry themselves.
The prototype is still rough around the edges (even if you have sharp scissors). We usually don’t release PNP prototypes quite this early in the design phase, but we’re hoping some eager playtesters in the community can help us speed up the testing (our quarantine pod can only help so much). There are a couple potential near-term design decisions we’re mulling over. Hopefully, your input can help us out.
First, the pacing has been challenging. The current (as of 1/7) design has moving single bar tile cost an action. It takes a while to learn about and pet the first dog. We tried the game with players being able to move anywhere with one action: things flew by, but there wasn’t much risk from the waitstaff. Getting the right balance between intentional positioning and long gameplay is proving tricky.
Second, games have been ending with ties or tight scores. This might not prove to be a problem as the game evolves, but it indicates there needs to be something to make getting points less predictable. Whether this takes the form of randomness (like personal victory conditions) or new mechanics (dog toys and treats with powers) remains uncertain.
Third, we’re always looking for more player interaction. We’re debating if the dog-pet conditions need to be distributed amongst the players; perhaps combined with some sort of trading mechanism. This may not fit thematically, but it would force players into temporary alliances on the pub floor.
Hair of the Dog is still taking shape. We’re excited about making this game and love the design challenges. If this sort of early-game analysis excites you, please download the PNP and check it out. We’ll also donate $5 to The Humane Society when you fill out the survey in the PNP. If you won’t playtest for us, do it for the puppies.
--Alex