Making a Bidding Board Game - May 2021

​Making a bidding game is something that I have never endeavoured to undertake before these past few weeks. I've played a couple of bidding games in the past and games with bidding mechanisms in them, but they never felt fleshed out enough to provoke some creative decision-making from the players. Bidiots is probably the best example of a game enveloped by bidding and is quite fun to play. However, Bidiots has the advantage of being a digital experience, whereas I want to create a tabletop game.

Over the past few weeks, I've been bouncing around an idea for a tile revealing bidding game called Bid for the Mine (a working title), in which players are investors looking to buy mines for their miners to go and work in. Seven hexes represent the mine in the middle of the table. A couple of mechanisms to note in this first iteration of the game are, 

• There is a money track that starts at one that every player uses to keep track of their money.
• If it is your turn to do so, you can use a fortune teller to reveal three hexes specifically to you. 
• If no one wants to start bidding on the mine straight away, one tile is flipped over. This process may continue to happen until two tiles are left unflipped, then bidding must start. 
• Combinations of hexes are valued based on the scoreboard at the top of the table. If the highest value combination appears three or more times in a mine, it goes to the bottom valuation, and each combination climbs up the board. This mechanism is to simulate supply and demand. ​​

To be clear, if you have not playtested a brand new idea before, or have not seen a playtesting session like this before, let me tell you that it is entirely normal for it to fall as flat as it did. I will also say that it's not just regular but anticipated with excitement from myself. Going into this playtesting session with Bid for the Mine, I knew what some of the issues would be. Here are the two main ones I expected, which also ended up happening. 

1. Players with more money would have too much of an advantage.
2. Players will end up with no money before the end of the game, essentially making them redundant for the rest of the time. 

You might be wondering, "if you knew going in that these problems would arise, why didn't you come up with a solution beforehand?". That's a good question, and it might just be down to my specific way of working. For myself, the best way to develop a solution is to see it play out with my own eyes and listen to the players with my ears. That way, not only is it easier to come up with a solution, but it's more likely to be a solution that would be more fun for the players. 
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So, you might be eager to know what solutions I came up with then. It took a day or two to rack my brain around the game's problems, but then I realised that I could solve both issues stated above by removing the limitation of having insufficient money. In both cases, players either have not enough money period, or not enough money to compete with other players. If I remove that restriction and instead allow players to go into debt, then that would open up the game more and keep people interested. However, this solution leads me to understand that it could introduce a new issue that amplifies another problem I had with the game. Remember how I said that there were two issues with the game that I anticipated? Well, there were two additional roadblocks that I didn't foresee.

1. Players never allow the mine to be revealed by more than one hex. 
2. Players don't think about how to use their fortune teller best. ​

Both of these issues, I believe, come from a lack of consequence. The idea behind the slowly revealing mine was to build tension. Player's might not want to bid straight away because they see a coloured hex that is a part of multiple nasty combos. Still, as the mine continues to be unveiled, players see that the pros outway the cons and then it comes down to who starts the bidding first and gets the upper hand. However, if you watched the playtest video, you can see that this did not happen at all, and the additional rule would only amplify this issue that the players could go into debt. 
So, I came up with two solutions, and one of which relates to the debt mechanism. 

1. Players in debt must role an increasing number of dice, all sides of which are blank apart from one with a skull on it. If the skull is rolled, they are killed by loan sharks and are out of the game. 
2. Add an additional negative combo slot. 

I feel like both of these solutions will add enough consequence to make players think for a moment before they bid on a mine, which should hopefully allow one of the core mechanisms (revealing tiles from the mine sequentially) more prominent.

​Tune in to another blog post for Bid for the Mine in the next couple of weeks if you want to see how these changes affect gameplay. If you're going to keep up-to-date, sign up to the mailing list (I sent out a blast about once every six weeks, so don't worry about getting spammed), you can click the mailing list page on the site. It will take you to the landing page, where you can find out more info about what will be included in the emails you will be sent. ​