Deep Regrets Interview

How long has it taken to develop Deep Regrets? Has development fitted comfortably into your daily life?

I’ve been working on Deep Regrets for almost exactly a year as of this interview. I started while Hideous Abomination was on Kickstarter because I was excited to move back into the creative phase after months and months of logistics and marketing.

I’ve been full time with board game design since that Kickstarter, so I’ve been able to devote 75% of my time at work to Deep Regrets and the rest of my board game business (I still do some freelance music and design on the side as well).

Which board games is Deep Regrets similar to? What kind of gamer would you recommend Deep Regrets to?

This question has stopped me in my tracks a few times. Deep Regrets has elements that are similar to other games and there are games I took heavy inspiration from but I really struggle to compare it to another game or even define its genre. Wingspan is my go-to for two reasons: it’s similar in weight/complexity and it has a massive variety of unique cards. I find Elizabeth Hargrave’s work so inspiring and that irresistible pull of seeing what other birds are in the deck in repeated games is the exact sort of thing I’m trying to replicate with Deep Regrets.

The easiest mechanic to point to is push-your-luck, which comes to life a few different ways in the game - both in where and what you decide to fish and in how many regrets you’re willing to carry and how you plan your end game.

I’d say this will appeal to anyone that loves games where discovery and surprise are big elements and players that love customising their strategy and then over-extending and seeing things blow up in their face in hilarious fashion, ala Quacks of Quedlinburg.

Have there been any major hiccups during development, and if so how were they overcome? How has playtesting helped in this area?

The biggest hiccup in development was figuring out how to make Madness and Regrets work. It’s a mechanic similar to Don’t Go In There or Haunted Mansion where you collect cards with hidden values and at the end of the game whoever has the most can’t win.

Initially, I had Regrets and Madness separate - most Regrets meant you could win and Madness affected fish values and available dice for fishing. Repeatedly in playtesting, players love the concept and flavour of the Regrets so much that they wanted to see them tied more into the game, and that’s where I had the epiphany of tying your madness level directly to the number of Regrets cards you had in hand. With this change, I gradually pared back the negative impact of having the most Regrets to just losing a single fish (instead of the game). The result meant losing a global madness score that affected everyone equally, but the resulting agency it gave to players and the fun of everyone being able to play different types of strategies made it a much more interesting and engaging game!

There’s fishing supplies to manage, a night/day cycle, the potential onset of madness to consider… Which is your favourite mechanic within the game?

I’m really proud of the deciding-where-to-fish mechanic. There are three sizes of shadows on the backs of the fish cards and those shadows related to a range of difficulties to catch, which increases the deeper you fish in the ocean. Instead of literally printing the potential difficulty range on the backs of the cards, I decided to use a player reference guide to tell you what fish values are - so if I see a Large shadow at Depth II, I glance at my “Angler’s Guide” reference chart and learn that fish will cost between 2-4 to catch. The result is a really satisfying bit of friction where you feel like you’re doing proper research and making informed decisions. Much more fun than just looking at the back of the card and seeing “Difficulty: 2-4”.

This is becoming a bit of a hot topic. What’s your thoughts on AI in game design? This doesn’t apply directly to your game as you have an artist with a distinct human style, but there are games out there which are heading to crowdfunding that seem to rely on it heavily. Is there room for AI in game design? Is there a limit to its acceptable use?

The whole AI art scene has given me such a strong aversion to the word “AI” that I have to stop myself from having a knee jerk reaction. Like there are excellent life-saving AI applications in the medical field but it still gives me the shivers hearing the word.

As an artist who spent months doing hundreds of unique artworks for my game, the whole AI art scene is a massive turn-off. Not just because it’s a cost-cutting shortcut that sidelines human artists, but more so because I find it so incredibly uninteresting. For me, the whole point of art is the human element, images made my AI have literally no meaning to me.

And that same sentiment would apply to any application of AI for creativity: for me, and I imagine for a lot of other humans, it becomes meaningless. So a board game concept, or a mechanic or a bit of copy made by AI would feel equally hollow to me as an illustration.

The plus side of AI art in games is it’s a bright, flashing neon sign for companies that like to cut corners and are likely to do it in other ways, as well.

Deep Regrets is a competitive game. Was this borne out of the apocalyptic theme, or was it always your intention to go competitive over cooperative?

This was most heavily borne out of classic literature, more than anything! Hemingway and Melville and all these romantic one-man-against-the-sea narratives are so evocative and that’s the exact feel I wanted. The Regrets cards all have bits of flavour text on them like “Left my love for the sea” or “Pissed in a blowhole” that allow you to paint a picture of a lonely life, poorly lived. I want to find the dark humour in the miserable lives of old salts.