When Bad Things Happen to Good Castaways

In 2013 Ignacy Trzewiczek of Portal Games asked me to contribute an essay to his upcoming book Board Games that Tell Stories, and I was more than happy to agree. I think there are so many smart and clever design decisions in Robinson Crusoe and I wanted to highlight them. In particular, this game really informed my early thinking about loss aversion and how it can be used to elevate game design, ultimately resulting in my book Achievement Relocked. Here is that essay, and I hope you find the ideas here useful.

Ignacy is waving a card in my face.

“This,” he says gravely, “is the last good thing that is going to happen to you.”

It's Gencon 2013 and he is teaching me Robinson Crusoe. The card in question is 'Food Crates,' where much-needed provisions float off-shore. You just need to use some of your precious time to swim out and get them.

If you’re not familiar with the game, Crusoe is a series of scenarios that all have you and the other players washed ashore some terrible island, with something you need to accomplish to win. In the first scenario it seems fairly straightforward. You know a ship is going to be sailing by the island at a certain time. You need to build a big enough bonfire in order to attract their attention.

So all you need to do is collect enough wood. And not die in the meantime.

Unfortunately there are many ways to die. Starvation. Depression. Goat attack. Falling off the roof of your hut while trying to repair it.

Of course if you spend all of your time staying alive you won't get the wood for the fire. So you have to stay just alive enough in order to hang on until rescue.

Most games put the players in a heroic, larger than life role. Most games try to have epic scope, with the players cast in the leading roles. Save the kingdom. Liberate the galaxy. That kind of thing.

But not Robinson Crusoe. Its victories are small victories. Enough food in your belly. A patchwork roof to see you through the night. And you play a Cook or Carpenter, not a Wizard or Warrior.

So why is it popular? Why do people love it so? What's the attraction in sliding inexorably towards a mundane death?

How can a game be so thoroughly cruel to its players, but keep drawing them back for more?

First, while there is an unrelenting stream of bad things happening to your poor group of castaways, hope is right there in front of you. Hope in the form of simple inventions to make your life a little more bearable. Fire. Snares. A spear. A shovel.

You know what all the items are. There's no 'quad turbo RX32 ion blasters' to be built. There's a spear, or a hole in the ground to keep food. You know what these things are and what they can do. You know deep down why you want all these incredibly primitive but incredibly necessary inventions spread out across the table.

The game suspends you between despair and hope.

The whole array of what you could have and what would make things so much better is tantalizingly right there. They are not just in a deck of cards that you draw from hoping to get what might help. They are all just out there in front of you, both beckoning and taunting.

Taunting because you know that you'll probably hurt yourself trying to build them, as you have a dreaded 'adventure'. These adventures are not like You find a hidden cave and discover a temple built by an ancient civilization. These adventures are Accident. Through inattention you cut your leg with a tool. It may get worse.

So why is this fun? Isn't it much more interesting to find that ancient civilization than to get gangrene?

Why? Because it puts me right into the action. Me as in ME. Not me as Intergalactic Starship Captain, but me as Geoff Engelstein. Because although I know how to program a computer, if I was stranded on a desert island I am pretty sure I would give myself gangrene trying to make a shovel.

Which brings me to my second point. All the damage in Robinson Crusoe is self-inflicted. At least it is cleverly designed to seem self-inflicted.

If I want to build that shovel I have two choices. I can put both of my action markers on the build action and build it with no risk at all. Or I can try to do two things this turn, rushing both, and chancing a problem. So when I get gangrene it's not the game (or more properly, Ignacy) that's causing a problem. I've brought this on myself.

Certainly a situation I've caused in the real world.

And just in case you missed the fact that you chose to rush through shovel construction, the adventure card is there to remind you:

Accident. Through inattention you cut your leg with a tool. It may get worse.

This is all your fault, klutz!

So we turn on ourselves. We don't blame the game for hitting us with random horribleness. We blame ourselves. If only... If only I had spent more time on the shovel. If only I hadn't chosen to hunt. If only I had reinforced the roof.

The genius of Robinson Crusoe is that it gives you two terrible options and then gets you to blame yourself when the choice you pick turns out to be, well, terrible.

But there's one more element that elevates Robinson Crusoe from horrible to memorable. The design builds up tremendous tension.

As Alfred Hitchcock said of suspense: "There's two people having breakfast and there's a bomb under the table. If it explodes, that's a surprise. But if it doesn't..."

In too many games the bomb goes off right away. You turn over a card and something bad happens.

But not Robinson Crusoe Let's go back to that Accident card, where you cut your leg with a tool. Remember the end of flavor text?

It may get worse

Yup. When you draw that card is does nothing. The person that drew it just puts a marker on the leg of their character. There's no immediate effect on the game at all. Carry on as usual.

But you also shuffle the card into the event deck. And if it gets drawn again, then you do actually get gangrene. And bad things happen.

Of course you don't know if it will get drawn. It may never get drawn. You may win before then. Or die. And there's a way to mitigate it. You can use one of your precious actions to get the healing herbs. Instead of, you know, eating, or getting that wood you need to win.

So the bomb just sits under the table ticking away.

And of course when it explodes it'll be your fault. You didn't have to rush building the shovel. And once you cut yourself you could have gotten the medicine. But you didn't. Shame on you.

Cliffhangers have been tried in games before. Fortune and Glory puts your character in a tough spot and then ends your turn. So you have to wait until you get to go again before seeing if you survived driving your motorcycle off of the cliff or not. But you can't do anything about it in the meantime. And you know it will be on your next turn. So it's just a waiting game.

Compare that with not knowing how many turns you have until the gangrene hits, and trying to figure out if you want to get that medicine or not. That's a much more interesting situation, and one much more rife with tension and angst.

And so we keep coming back to play Robinson Crusoe again and again. To try not to make so many mistakes. To try to master our own impulsiveness.

I've only had the pleasure to meet Ignacy a few times. And he has always struck me as a very nice guy.

But for such a nice guy, he seems to revel in misfortune.

He is clear with designers that if he publishes your game you'd better not be too attached to it. He plans on ripping it to pieces and rebuilding it better than it was. His focus on testing and tweaking over and over again almost drove Michal Oracz to pick up Theseus and go home. And as a player if you aren't focused during one of his games, well, you won't be happy with the result.

I take that back. Ignacy doesn't revel in misfortune. He is hyper-focused on making games the best they can be, even at the expense of the feelings of both designers and players.

But it's worth it in the end. Because – let's face it – I need to learn how to make a shovel without getting gangrene.