Daniel Solis

Just because I can't make it to Origins doesn't mean you can't get a great deal on my card games ! Until June 15, I've slashed prices on all my card games, up to 25% off ! If you've been holding out to pick up any of my games, now is the time! Come and get 'em!

Head's up, dealhunters! For 24 hours only Cyber Monday (10am EST Dec 2, 2013 – 10am EST Dec 3, 2013) both Koi Pond and Nine Lives are each 10% off! Koi Pond is a zen-like card game with subtle interactions and emergent tactics. It's great for players who like to get into a flow state while they play. It can also be surprisingly cut-throat, so don't get too complacent! Nine Lives is a much zippier, high-interaction, take-that set collection game. Players are each trying to rescue stray cats from a city alley and trying not to get scratched in the process. Collect majorities of breeds, collect rare breeds, and have the fewest scratches. This is a great game for the kids, too. Thanks very much for your support, everyone!

I'm very happy to announce that Nine Lives Card Game is now available on DriveThruCards . This is a very fun trading and bidding game for up to 5 players, aged 8 and up. Each player is trying to rescue as many cats as possible, especially those of a rare breed, all while also trying to be the least scratched player at the end of the game. Look for a video tutorial in coming days, but it's super easy to learn. Buy Nine Lives Card Game here! Download the rulebook!

The tricky thing about publishing through DriveThruCards lately is the absence of a printed rulebook. There are numerous other options, like the link to the rulebook in PDF format on DriveThruCards' site or making it available for download on BGG. This has the advantage of being a "live" set of rules, which can be updated as questions arise. The average buyer still expects rules with purchase, though. So that means formatting a set of rules that fit on several 2.5" x 3.5" cards, numbered so you can keep them in order while learning the rules. The downside is that once it's in print, it'll be rough PR move to change the deck and explain to previous buyers why their old cards are are faulty. So, just like in traditional publishing, you gotta look over your rules a lot! Here are the rules for Nine Lives, version 1.0, after extensive review from very industrious Twitter followers . Many thanks to all the people who helped out looking over the rules t...

Wahoo! This week's playtests of Nine Lives went very well. I was fortunate to play, tweak, play again, tweak, and play again in rapid succession with several groups of 2-5 players. I can tell when I'm close to done on a game when ties become a problem. It's much easier to adjust a game that is too tightly balanced. In this case, I removed a few scoring methods from the last iteration so it was just the following: If you have the most cards of a breed, score 1, 3, 5, 9, 15 points for one, two, three, four, or five cards, respectively. If you have the fewest scratches total, score 1 point per scratch in your possession.* Score 1 pt per rare breed in your possession. The exception was if two players tied for majority of breed or minority of scratches. In those exceptions, neither player would score. This resulted in tied first-place finishers. Allowing all players to score majority/minority, even if tied, made the victories much more decisive. Odd, but it seemed to...

Tonight I'm testing the first prototype of Nine Lives with significant changes to the deck structure. For background, check out my posts on wabi-sabi card game design vs. symmetrical mandala card game design . Nine Lives thus far has been a very symmetrical composition featuring nine different cats, each on nine different cards. The cards were sequentially numbered from 1-81, but because of the symmetry, I could organize each cat so it an equal chance of being the highest or lowest card in any random hand. Five out of every nine cards of each cat had 1 to 5 scratch marks on it, in ascending order, capping at the highest sequential number within that cat's sub-set of cards. In several rounds of playtesting, I made tweaks to the rules but I knew eventually I was going to need to fix some more fundamental problems. For one thing, the deck was unwieldy to shuffle. 81 cards is a feature in any retail game, but the POD market's price tolerance is slim so I gotta find a...

Happy to report that the this week's playtest of Nine Lives went very well. The new trading and set collection rules are working well, encouraging plenty of decision-making each turn. In the next update, I'm adding some special abilities and I'm stumbling on how to word some of the more complicated ones if they're going to fit neatly onto the cards. They don't necessarily need to fit on the cards, but it would certainly help early learning of the game. For background on the game's terms, cards in your hand are called your hand (naturally). Cards that are face-up in your possession are called your kennel . Cards in the middle of the table available for capture are called the alley . And the deck is called the deck . That in itself is a sticky wicket. I could come up with generic terms for kennels and alley, like tableau and pile, but I like integrating thematic terms where they will be the least confusing. I did the same thing with Koi Pond's Pond (...

Since the most recent post on Nine Lives , I've had a chance to playtest the game about five times with two different groups comprised of around ten players, aged 9 and up. Naturally, I've found some bugs. Scratches : Presently the penalty for scratches is that only the player with the fewest scratches from a specific cat can score for that cat. In other words, once you had a few cards with no scratches, there was no reason to ever risk getting another card if it even had one scratch. If you did, you would risk allowing another player to undercut you by getting just one no-scratch card. Trading : The trading mechanic itself was a little complicated. Eventually I streamlined it to something more simple: You may take one card for free from the alley, or you may take X by trading in X cards from your tableau. Bidding : It was cool that bidding a card added it to the alley. This made bidding a tense decision, knowing that a card might give you better position but also make...

With the year coming to a close, I really want to wrap up some card games that I started this year, including 9 Lives. I'm actually considering calling renaming it something a little more branded like " Hooray Kitties !" so I can extend the line to other cute animals, like " Hooray Puppies !" and " Hooray Hedgehogs! " But for now, let's focus on the mechanics. Here's a much more streamlined rules set for 9 Lives. To review, the game is about rescuing nine cats and trying not to get scratched in the process. You get most points if you're the individual rescuer for a cat. If you must rescue at cat with someone else, only the least scratched rescuer gets the points. Setup Deal a hand of 7 cards to each player in a 3-player game. (Reduce hand size by 1 for each additional player.) Deal out an initial pile of 5 cat cards in the "alley" between all players. Bidding Phase Each player takes one card from her hand and bid...

While everyone is away at Gen Con, here's a little treat for those of you like me who are staying home to catch up on work. These are the card designs in-progress for 9 Lives. You can see a few tweaks to the rules reflected in this design. Gone are the stars you're trying to earn, in their place are cat-scratches you're trying to evade. I've also given each cat a proper suit, so you can distinguish them at a glance while fanning your cards. I took that a step further, making the suit a color-coded background pattern reminiscent of anime and manga. I thought Kristina Stipetic's art lent itself well to this cartoony style.

Hey! Remember those cute cats I was trying to herd in the game 9 Lives? I released Prototype B for public blind playtesting a while back to some mixed results. The response was mostly mild and quiet, which said to me that it could be put behind some other games in development that were drawing much more interest. That's mostly how I decide what to develop first, whatever strikes my interest at the moment or what seems to excite the public... hopefully both at once! But then came this excellent, long feedback from Tournevis where he and his group dived deep into some structural problems and emergent bugs. Further feedback came from Kristina Stipetic, Scott Messer's family, Caroline-Isabel Caron . There is limited engagement between players beyond the bidding phase, which itself isn't a problem except... Too many cards are available once you've won the bid, meaning that there's a lot of analysis paralysis and gaps between moments of multiplayer engagement...

Here's a new family card game I've been tinkering with over the past few months. You may recall some previous posts on the subject here and here . Well, with a bit of streamlining for the rules and a few tweaks here and there, I've managed design what I hope is a fun, fast, light strategy game that plays well with two to nine players. Yep, nine . The premise of the game is that nine house cats have escaped. It's your job to bring them back home. The challenge is bringing them home while also making sure they're happy as possible with they return. Sometimes it's hard to do both! You know how cats are. Players bid for cards, each featuring one of the nine cats. You're trying to claim the majority of the cards featuring a specific cat, thus allowing you to score points from that cat. However, not all cards are worth points, so simply winning a majority of those cards won't guarantee the best score. This plus a little Baccarat-style mid-game scoring...

You've heard me talk about my card game 9 Lives a bit already . Well, I've been fortunate enough with Koi Pond's success on DriveThruCards to have enough in my budget to order art from an actual professional rather than doing it myself. Above you can see the nine cats drawn by Kristina Stipetic , each with its own personality. Now I just need to decide, how will they be ranked? The game's cat theme is fairly loose to begin with, so the numbers 1 through 9 don't really mean much mechanically. Though I suppose you could look at the math and say that 1s will be least likely to come into play while 9s are most likely. Note that it is not a measure of actual rarity in the deck, just how useful they are in play. All things being equal, I figured I'd open it up to the public. So, now taking your recommendations for how to rank the cats above from 1 through 9. Feel free to use whatever logic you wish. Age? Mood? Energy level? Take your pick!

Last week I posted a simple casino-style game called 9 Lives . I noticed some peculiar math behind the mechanics. I bet this is one of those things mathfolk already know intuitively, but coming at it in long-hand on my notebook over a cup of coffee is still worthwhile. To review, the game involves playing pairs of cards, each showing a digit, either 0 through 9. Added together, the highest pair is the winner for that turn. The winner earns points equal to the 'ones' digit of their play. So if you played a 12 and won, you'd win 2 points. (Tied players both score.) So I wrote out the different pairs of digits that would make each sum, from 0 through 18. I also compared that to the value of each sum. This produced the following chart. (Click to enlarge.) There is only one way to make 0, 1, 17, or 18. Two ways to make a 2, 3, 15, or 16. Three ways to make a 4, 5, 13, or 14. Four ways to make a 6, 7, 11, or 12. Five ways to make  8, 9, or 10. This makes scoring str...