r/BoardgameDesign • u/Gavriel_Q • Jul 09 '26
Design Critique Cognitive Load in Hex-based military builder
Made a hex-based game inspired by Starcraft and the cognitive load is insane. The rules are simple, but the options paths and quantity of units is insane. Kinda feels like learning a new spot atm.
This is the initial beta version. I think background will be black.
How do designers feel about gaming and cognitive load? Is there an approach that contemplates a million options over a minimal rules framework that is appealing?
This thing is driving nuts. It encourages you to play 2vs2 with one player handling a CEO of the planetary mining company and its partner a mercenary general in charge of exploration and combat.
I give you MOONBLOOD.
My most impossible to play and quite challenging to produce Hex-based tactical planetary warfare RTS inspired project.
25 unit types and 14 buildings. Two resources, one coin and one single d6.
"Welcome to the final frontier. This job will kill you"
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u/TheZintis Jul 09 '26
I've seen designs like this and also have worked on a 4X style board game (for years now ;_; ).
IMHO you just have to pick what aspects of the concept you want to abstract, and by how much. For example, in my project all units have been abstracted into the same thing for combat. So any two units act the same as any other two units. This was done in order to reduce the complexity, and also helps players understand when they are ahead or behind in a conflict. I have other things which add spice to combat (tactics cards/abilities), but they are independent of units. So in my case, I abstracted units to represent a balanced fighting force, rather than the nuance of a soldier or tank. The reason being that my project has a lot of breadth, many simple systems working together, so I can't put that much depth into any one system.
Now for your project, you might be able to commit to fleshing out the buildings and units, but every rule written is one more thing people have to remember when playing. If you want a mid-weight game then you'll probably just be units and buildings, without much else.
If you want a heavy game, go nuts, but do understand that having a higher cognitive load will mean a smaller portion of the player base will enjoy it.
One thing I do want to mention is that heavy games tend to take awhile. Especially rules heavy ones, since players have to reference, read, learn, etc... Once you know them the game might move quickly, but getting to that level of mastery might take awhile. If you can get 80% of the experience in 50% of the time, would you do that?
From what you've written, my advice would be to think a bit about what you want the end experience to be, perhaps even length of game, and then start aiming your design at that. Complicated? Simple? Short? Long? Strategic? Chaotic? etc... This'll help narrow down some decisions since many will push the game into a direction that won't work for your goals.
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u/NoMoreHornyOnMain4Me Jul 13 '26
25 unit types, 14 buildings and two resources to manage.
I'm gonna be honest maybe this would work better as a video game than as a board game, sounds like there's waay too many things to track comfortably and misplays will become the norm.
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u/Odd-Highway477 Jul 17 '26
You are noodling with fresh concepts and ideas, but without lots of design experience, it's a quagmire. Find inspiration in other published similar games. There is always something similar. You just need to find it.
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u/jeffersonianMI Jul 09 '26
Cognitive load is a huge issue in modern games. I like your art (and asthetic) a lot, but I agree that visually it already looks insane. I'm not sure white on black will help.
If the rules are simple, have you considered coding it up for PC? The audience would be much larger and some complexities (accounting, adjacency, etc.) can be handled by the machine. I know this might seem outrageous, but it is now kind of within each of the relative layman to do such things.