Flock! Designer Diary

Flock! was born from an idea I’ve been carrying around for several years now, fluttering at the back of my mind waiting for the right opportunity to take flight. I grew up playing Rummy and its many variants, which I learned from the Klutz “Best Card Games in the Galaxy” book when I was very young. While I have more distinct memories from high school of playing Spades in AP Statistics and Magic: The Gathering at lunch, Rummy is like a constant companion that I, maybe, took for granted. At sleepovers with friends before video games were the obvious activity and family vacations with distantly related cousins, Rummy was a rejoinder to boredom. It meant a quick discussion of commonly accepted rules before starting, a comparison of how each of you played this classic game. Could I scoop the discard pile? Do Aces run over? What were the point values for each card? All critically important questions to answer before commencing play. You wouldn’t want to inquire what aces were worth after looking at your hand…

I think the most distinct memories I have regarding Rummy are from the summer in high school when I worked a high ropes course and the crew would play in the evenings when we didn’t have responsibilities. Less a snapshot of any specific game than a sense impression of the pleasure of building sets and runs in just the right balance, spotting the critical gap in your hand that you could almost definitely, probably, hopefully draw into. Since then, I’ve mostly suggested Rummy when finding compromises with family members not particularly interested in the heavier games I was getting into in college and grad school. Rummy was still plenty engaging, even if I could feel the part of my mind that had been honed on Blood Rage, Netrunner, and Pandemic, counting out patterns and probabilities and being frustrated by my inability to modify the outcome of the almighty RNG (random number generation). 

Conquian, a two-player rummy game originating from Mexico, was first recorded as early as the 1890s. Since then, the basic mechanisms of melding sets and runs from a randomly distributed set of cards and trying to get rid of your hand has undergone dozens of iterations and evolutions. Another iteration of rummy, Rummikub, won the 1980 Spiel des Jahres and has sold millions of copies. I learned it at a pool party in Texas from Jaimie, a coach at my first physical therapy job. She was ecstatic to teach me a game I hadn’t seen before, that she had played with her family for years and years. To this day, I can remember the way the noise of the revelry faded to the background as I fell into the unexpected delight of rearranging my melds to clear my rack. I have absolutely no idea how I did in those games, only that I enjoyed the experience so enormously that I can see the people at that table as though they’re sitting with me now. 

Flock! came about while working out the kinks in a totally different game. In November of last year, Isaac and I were talking about his plans for a set of four bird-themed games. I was trying to force fit another game into the bird theme and we just couldn’t get it to work (that game still has some kinks to be resolved, but, don’t worry, you’ll see it when it’s ready). I had picked up a Heckadeck that day and was letting my mind wander over birds and cards and the intersection thereof when I flashed on the rummy idea I had shelved at the back of my mind, influenced by that fondly remembered game of Rummikub. What if the cards in your melds flitted from place to place, like birds flying about? I went to my room and spread out the cards and started tinkering with the idea, just letting the sensation of the game emerge in real time. In about thirty minutes I had a basic concept of how I wanted it to feel. Isaac and I sat down and started moving cards around, exploring what it would look like if you could build from amongst your sets and steal cards from other players and it quickly began feeling like something both familiar and fresh. 

I went home and played it with my wife, easily the toughest sell on a game wherein you can steal from other people (she’s actually a dragon and takes it as a mortal insult when you loot her points). In spite of that, we played 5 games in a row and she never got ruffled. For whatever reason, this particular setting made stealing totally acceptable. She challenges me in ways I never anticipate, always keeping me guessing and pushing me to grow. This was no exception. She would test the bounds on the rules and make me explain why she could or couldn’t do something within the construct I was assembling and I’d have to face the honestly shoddy way I had built the rules. As I cut away superfluous rules to make things more consistent, each play saw the game coming into sharper focus. She kept asking about how she could interact with the discard, what happened when she stole from melds she had already plundered, what we did about cards in the middle of the table, and, again, could she pick up the discard? Those questions would echo throughout the refining process until I had satisfied her demands to make it all consistent and fun. 

I brought the game with me to PAX Unplugged in December, which has become my yearly opportunity to catch up with my best friend Nicole from my physical therapy program. Nicole lives in Baltimore, so Philly is a much easier transit than Nashville (where I live). Thing is, Nicole doesn’t really care much about playing board games. She mostly just likes to hang and chat while I play games. She enjoys watching the games unfold, but is perfectly content to observe. I convinced her to give Flock! a try and, much to the surprise of the four designers at the table, kicked our teeth in. I mean, really, she thrashed us. I had a moment of self-doubt where I was convinced I had built a faulty game with a totally luck based outcome. But I reminded myself that Nicole is one of the smartest people I know and dealt a new hand, sitting out this time. I circled back around to see how things were proceeding and Nicole, if anything, was winning by a bigger margin. I finally queried if she was maybe a rummy shark and I’ll never forget her response: “We weren’t allowed to watch television growing up but there were four of us and we had cards, so we played a LOT of rummy.” I could feel the relief as four professional game designers were able to breathe a sigh of relief that they hadn’t just gotten trounced by a rank novice. The next words out of Nicole’s mouth sealed the deal for me, though: “I really, really like this game. I would play this any time.” If Nicole loved it, I really didn’t care what it would take to make it work, I was going to see this one through to realization. 

The consistent complaint at that time was the lack of mitigation and control available. Players had no way to make a bad hand into a good one. The Monday after PAX Unplugged, the Rose Gauntlet team always takes some time to review what went well and what to work on going forward. I was tinkering with ideas and hit upon giving players tokens that could modify the suit of their cards, to make it easier to find solutions for a bad hand. They were meant to be eggs at first but almost immediately, I decided it would make more sense if birds left feathers behind when they flew away. Isaac, Lindsey, and Josh all agreed that the tokens immediately resolved the vast majority of their concerns. From that point, it really became a question of tightening up the mechanisms until everything flowed as smoothly as possible. 

I went home and started tuning in earnest, taking the game with me to local meetups and down to Memphis for intensive review. By the time of the Rose Gauntlet summit in early 2024, the game was singing along. The team signed off on it before finishing their first hand. There were still some sharp edges but it was obvious this thing was a blast. I kept refining after that, trying to cut away anything that caused confusion and give the players simple but enjoyable options. Things really fell into place when I answered my wife’s request to pull from the discard by doing away with that concept entirely. Instead, I incorporated a Texas Hold ‘Em style central card set into the game. Now you could play as though any cards in the middle were part of your hand and that shifted the design into high gear. Turns were a little unwieldy and could get wildly explosive until my Memphis crew asked about limits on how many sets you could play in a turn. After putting some constraints in place and giving players options to push for more, the creativity really started to shine. Nearly as important to me, the scores stayed incredibly tight. Players more familiar with rummy or more creative in finding solves for their hands definitely had an edge and came out slightly ahead but the timing of when to Roost or Flock, when to use feathers for more actions, when to get a new set of cards in the middle…those all became much more exciting without being more complex. 

Once again, Lyss Menold brought this game to life with her incredible art. Isaac and I had discussed setting the game in the Caribbean Islands and drawing on the art style and avian life of the area. What we got back was some of the most thrilling and lively art I could have hoped for. When I finally got to see the full card layout, our graphic designer, Stephanie Gustafson, had pulled the art through the frame of the cards, further enhancing how vibrant and mobile the whole composition felt. I couldn’t stop looking at them. I felt like Tommy Haverford staring at a painting of shapes. My friend Austin printed up some iridescent feather tokens to use in place of the wooden discs I had pulled out of my bits box and suddenly the game felt like a complete concept. 

One of the most important steps, as we got close to a finalized rulebook and player aid, was the terminology for the game. Isaac did an amazing job of holding my feet to the fire on this and making me break these terms down to their most fundamental characteristics in order to make the game as easy as possible to learn. As much as I might know what I mean by some of these words and how I want the game to flow, it's not much good if I’m not there to teach it. Going through the rules with a fine-tooth comb and teasing apart when I’m using a word as a verb to identify an action as well as a noun to describe a physical manifestation of that action meant that the final rule book was much better clarified than if I had counted on the audience deducing what I might have meant. 

I brought the game with me to BGG Spring and got in a few plays, though we were a little preoccupied with finalizing rules for Turnip at that point. Nonetheless, it was valuable exposure because a designer I respect enormously asked me who I intended this game for. My reflex was to talk about which part of the gaming audience I was designing for, where in the market it fit, but he pressed me and made me really think about why I was designing and who I was designing for. I realized then that I was designing this game for me. I wanted that golden, glorious sensation of a perfectly played game of Rummy. I wanted options and flexibility and the opportunity for clever play to win the day. I wanted to distill my experience playing games for the last decade into a love letter to a classic. I was designing for Nicole and her delight at finding a “modern” game that felt familiar and safe and welcoming but also challenged her to stretch outside her comfort zone. I was designing for Jaime and her family that always plays a rummy game when they get together. I was designing for every person that told me along the way that their grandmother or parents or non-gamer friends would be comfortable learning this but that they were still excited about all of the modern touches it had. I was designing this game for the folks who want a classic that everyone can enjoy while still managing to challenge them every time they play. Hopefully, I was designing this game for you.