Excursions Development Diary #3: Advertise! Advertise!

One thing from Galactic Cruise that was totally absent from Ben Rosset’s original design of Excursions was any sort of Ad mechanism. I believe he was wary of having too many different supplies in the game (the same logic that led him to get rid of oxygen as a resource, which was a smart move), and so he did away with Ads for the initial design.

As we took over development, though, we found ourselves missing them. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Galactic Cruise, in that game, Ads are used to book guests on trips. They are also used during trips to score points at destinations, with guests matching the destination costing 1 Ad to score and non-matching guests costing 2 Ads to score. It’s a neat mechanism, and we wanted to somehow port it over to Excursions.

Ultimately, we made the call to introduce Ads into the game, and they serve three functions within a game of Excursions.

Ads can be used, when you are the active player, to reset as many of the faceup cards in the display as you would like. This gives even more agency into active players’ turns, as it not only allows players to choose from visible options, but also allows them to reveal new options. In a game where there is a fair amount of happenstance and tactics, any instance of meaningful choice and curation is paramount to us.

Ads also can be used to gain additional guests, even if no one is taking the action to get guests. For each Ad spent, players can draw a random guest from the bag. Thematically, this is sending an ad campaign into the world and seeing who shows up. It may not be the guest you were hoping for, but by golly it’s a butt in a seat!

Lastly, Ads can be used during Pilot advances to treat guests as “wilds.” Typically, an excursion card will only score if its criteria are matched exactly. Using Ads lets players bend the rules a bit, essentially convincing a guest who would usually not be interested in an excursion to give it a chance.

The addition of Ads into the game also gave us another supply to play with, to print onto cards as a discard ability, to integrate into bonuses, etc.

Unlike other darlings that had to be murdered (more on those another time), Ads are here to stay and the game is better for it!

(A somewhat shorter development diary this time, which I originally posted in the Excursions forums from the food court of the ATL airport before I departed for Essen!)