Recently I had the pleasure of chatting to Richard Keene of Ninth Haven Games, designer of Deep Shelf and award-nominated DinoGenics. The latest DinoGenics expansion, New Arrivals, along with a reprint of the base game, is currently doing very well on Gamefound—I’ve written about this great game and its expansions elsewhere if you want to find out more about them.
Welcome, Richard.
Hello, L.N., thanks for the invitation.
DinoGenics was your first game release, is that right? I imagine it was inspired by a certain 1993 movie, but is there possibly a hint of Zoo Tycoon: Dinosaur Digs in there too? How did you get from initial inspiration, whether that was indeed Jurassic Park or something else, to a fully-fledged, intricate game?
Indeed! DinoGenics first launched onto Kickstarter back in 2017. It feels like just a couple years ago, I’m not sure how nearly ten years have passed!
The main inspiration is spot-on but I’ve actually never played Zoo Tycoon. I did spend most of the 90’s playing the numerous iterations of SimCity games though. People today mostly know of The Sims but back then there were SimGames for just about every subject you could imagine from building cities to managing farms and even ant colonies. I’ve always loved games that let you build intricate systems and watch them grow over time.
What were the trickiest things to get right, and how long did it take to be fully satisfied with what you’d produced? How large a team was involved?
Almost everyone has an idea for a game and putting ideas down on paper is easy. The hard part is taking those ideas and being committed enough to turn them into a finished product when you have limited resources.
Back when I got started, I hadn’t been out of college for that long and was inexperienced running a business. I had no budget, no team outside of a couple friends who were willing to lend a hand, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into. It took over 2 years to reach a place where I felt ready to go to Kickstarter.
At the time I was working full time as a graphic designer, so I did have a pretty good handle on how to do a lot of things behind the scenes, but it meant that I was doing most things myself. Art was commissioned only when absolutely needed because I really didn’t have the money to do it any other way. It was exhausting and stressful. I don’t recommend it! Hah!
Over time, Ninth Haven Games has grown a bit to where I am able to step back with more help from others, but I still shoulder the bulk of development duties, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
Based on posts in the BoardGameGeek forums, I get the impression that a perceived runaway leader problem exists with the base game, but also that this was addressed in the Controlled Chaos expansion. Was that a major driver for Controlled Chaos or just serendipity at work; and more generally, what were the decision processes around developing both that expansion and the current one?
Perceived is a good word here. DinoGenics is a game that actively encourages players to play counter to the idea of the happy dinosaur resort game. The theme of DinoGenics is a little bit grungy, dangerous and maybe letting a couple guests get eaten is not such a bad thing after all!
A big part of the game is the scandal system whereby players get “punished” for doing something bad. Except this is where new players often trip up because you are only really punished if you don’t make amends before the game ends. In that way, the scandal system is more like a loan that you take out to do something fun, powerful and helps you catch up to players that otherwise seems ahead.
Controlled Chaos did add a more traditional catch-up mechanic but there is a reason this is still a variant and not the main mode of the game. Once people become more comfortable with the game mechanics, most find that the game is self-balancing and the variant is no longer needed. In that way, it works best while learning the game or as an added crutch if players of varying experience and skill level are playing together.
Were there other ideas for the expansion that you rejected, and why? Perhaps what I’m really asking is: will further expansions be coming along?
There were two features that were almost added. The first was dinosaur variants. Many species of dinosaur have counterparts that are very similar to each other in real life. Think Triceratops vs Regaliceratops, for those in the know. [Note: similar in appearance, but totally distinct species—see here for more information.] Making a whole new species out of them would be hard but we floated the idea for a while of having them as alternate card sets that would share the same meeple and replace a set of cards in the DNA deck. The dinosaurs would be similar but have a different stat line or slightly different trait. Ultimately though this just added extra bloat to the game and it was decided the extra organization and setup time wasn’t worth the added cost.
The second feature is something I went back and forth on and that was adding unique asymmetrical player abilities. The problem here is that DinoGenics is very much a sandbox game. With so many different ways to play the game already, adding asymmetrical starting powers could introduce bubbles of imbalance and also railroad players into playing specific ways. Despite that, even now part of me thinks it could be fun… Maybe a future spinoff.
One of the things I like about the current Gamefound campaign is that you’re not just reprinting the base game, but are also giving it a bit of a polish, not to mention providing an extended gameboard incorporating the base game and Controlled Chaos. Given how popular the game is, those were probably not necessary—what persuaded you to put in the extra effort?
I think it is the responsibility of a designer to implement improvements when they see them. New Arrivals started out as a very small content expansion but the more I went back and looked at past features the more I saw ways to make the game more interesting. At this point, the scope of New Arrivals has grown a lot and is a culmination of over 4 years of feedback from fans as well as just my growth as a designer. Almost every system in the game has been polished and makes for a more compelling and competitive game. On top of that, the visual presentation and overall size of the game have been streamlined to make everything a little smoother and easier to table.
There are other similarly complex dinosaur games, such as Dinosaur Island (which, if memory serves, was doing a crowdfunding round about the same time as New Arrivals’ campaign launched) and Cretaceous Rails. How would you say DinoGenics compares to those, and how different do you think their audiences are?
To be honest, I don’t have enough experience with either title to make a strong statement. I had the opportunity to play Dinosaur Island once many years ago. I remember it being a well put together game, but I don’t remember much about the playthrough. Cretaceous Rails is one I have personally backed on Gamefound. I hope it’s good!
Perhaps bizarrely, I think the game closest to DinoGenics is Agricola, a farming simulator: the game mechanics and resource management feel so similar that if you squint, you can almost picture those sheep and cattle as stegosaurs and raptors. Do you think that’s a reasonable comparison?
I’ve actually never played Agricola. Caverna, on the other hand, I have fond memories of from my early gaming days. The penning of animals was no doubt an inspiration from that, but I like to think DinoGenics leans a lot harder into theming and overall atmosphere. I am a thematic gamer at heart, and I value gameplay experiences that make you feel like you are doing the thing the game is about.
Getting back to DinoGenics, instead of talking about other games, I appreciate all the effort you’ve put into solo modes with the new expansion. How important would you say solo play is these days? Could it be something that the pandemic lockdowns made more significant?
Solo gaming in general has exploded over the last few years, which puts me in a weird place because I am not a solo gamer at all! This has been something of a point of contention as the original release of DinoGenics did not have a traditional solo mode. Instead, it had a series of “challenge scenarios” that were more like uniquely themed puzzles. The funny thing here is that I received a lot of positive feedback from non-solo-gamers who loved playing these scenarios while traditional solo players were left scratching their heads. For New Arrivals I invited a secondary designer on board to design a more traditional solo mode, so hopefully, the game now offers the best of both worlds!
You spend a lot of time into engaging with fans, answering questions on the Ninth Haven Discord Server and BoardGameGeek, as well as addressing feedback about the BoardGameArena Dinogenics implementation. How helpful has this been to you and how has it affected your plans for DinoGenics?
BoardGameArena has been a very new experience but has been hugely beneficial for more reasons than one. Ninth Haven Games is not a large company and while we do have play testers all over the world, it has never been in the numbers of more prominent game companies. With the BGA release the number of people leaving feedback jumped from dozens of people to multiple hundreds. Suddenly changes were receiving nearly instantaneous feedback that could be iterated upon and improved. It definitely made for a better overall game for everyone. Beyond that, just the added reach of the digital platform meant that more people were exposed to the game than we ever could have done on our own.
Moving away from the game a little, I see you’ve used crowdfunding for all your releases. Is this the future of boardgaming—in fact, has it already been the way forward for some time? Kickstarter, Gamefound and BackerKit are where I tend to look for innovative games (though I might still wait for them to hit retail before purchasing), but what can you say about that route for publishing games?
I really don’t see traditional publishing as a viable platform for most small designers (crowdfunding itself isn’t really viable for most either but that is a different problem). The margins on retail are poor and unless you are a major well-known designer who will ship tens of thousands of copies you will not make a living as a game designer.
Crowdfunding has its own problems of course. The market is saturated with high profile projects that have budgets that I could only dream of, and yet small projects are held to, and judged, on the same standards. This puts small designers in an awkward position because it’s not enough to make a good game. You have to make a good game that also looks amazing and stands out against all the other good games that also look amazing. At the same time, you must somehow price the game competitively when you are probably printing half (or less!) as many copies, which makes your manufacturing price per unit much higher.
I don’t envy anyone who is just trying to break into the industry now. As it is, I feel like I only barely got my foot in the door when I did and I hope I can finish sneaking in before it finishes shutting. A lot of companies didn’t survive the pandemic and as the market has changed, I think things are only going to get harder as costs and expectations continue to soar.
And finally, what’s coming next for you and Ninth Haven?
The next game from Ninth Haven Games is already well in the works. This one is a little bit of a departure as it is the first time I am acting as a co-designer. This time with Steven Brown, who you might know for Lunar Rush.
It’s called Kaiju: Raising Havoc and puts the player into the oversized shoes of various city stomping monsters. The game is a lot more lighthearted in tone than the existing Ninth Haven games, but I think people are really going to have fun with this one. We are not quite ready to divulge all the details but I think I can share the box cover to give people a tease of what is to come. In the meantime, you can also sign up to learn more about the game here.
Thank you, Richard. It’s been an illuminating conversation, and I wish you the best of luck with Kaiju.
