On-Board Memory

Unpacking the design of a board game and its manual.

It’s the weekend. You’re hanging with your buds. You want to mix things up a bit, take a break from your usual antics. But how? Suddenly, you remember you got a board game last Christmas but never opened it. Perfect! You drag that bad boy out, unpack the pieces, flip open the instruction manual and… oh god. Oh God. Why is this so complicated?

You sit there for 15 minutes reading the rules, another 5 minutes setting up the board, and then you’re finally ready to play. Who goes first? Well, it was supposed to be the tallest player, but that’s definitely not you. You begin pouting, "It’s my game, so I should get to play first 😠"

Your friends’ brains are still slightly mushy after hearing you recite instructions for 15 minutes. They have no energy to oppose your whining. You go first.

You grab your pieces and… wait, how do you start your turn again? What’s this card for? Am I allowed to do this? Every couple minutes you’re flipping back through the instruction manual, trying to get the rules straight for the dozenth time.

In this dark moment, simple games like Connect Four have never looked sexier. [Photo Credit: Marco Verch on Flickr via Compfight cc]

If you’ve got any experience with complicated board games, you’ve probably been here before. If you can just clamber past this dense, confusing instruction manual, you know there’s an exciting experience waiting on the other side.

But damn are these instructions boring.

Most of us technical writers are blessed – nobody cares if a car manual or defibrillator instructions are fun. In fact, if I went to use a defibrillator and found the directions started with a knock knock joke, I’d probably be a bit perturbed.

Knock knock. Who’s there? What’s that? I can’t hear you over the sound of someone having cardiac arrest! [Photo Credit: Tim Ellis on Flickr via Compfight cc]

Some nights my friends and I sit there, struggling to listen as one us dictates the tenth page of instructions, and you can feel all our eyes drooping. When you’re expecting a fun time, the utter boredom of reading an instruction manual becomes all too apparent.

Sadly, there’s not much these writers can do. They could try to spice up the directions with an interesting narrative or some well-timed jokes. However, any additional content they add might just distract from the rules. Thus, this strategy is typically only effective if the rules are short to begin with. If the rules alone are already 15 pages long, adding 5 pages of jokes or narrative might just push the length overboard.

Like most technical documents, it seems their best bet is being as clear and concise as possible so the players can get on to the actual fun.

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As you might’ve surmised, this little commentary on board games didn’t sprout from nowhere. The other day, my girlfriend and I once again found ourselves confronted by a treacherous game manual. It was our first time playing Cytosis, a board game about cell biology.

I’d hoped the game would be less painful than my Cell Biology class.

15 pages of instructions. That’s the hurdle we had to overcome before my girlfriend could crush me at my own damn board ga- I mean, uh, before my girlfriend and I could enjoy a fun evening together.

It started… as expected. Somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes reading every goddamn rule aloud and struggling to somehow arrange all the pieces on her tiny dorm bed.

But then, something incredibly curious happened. After pages and pages of reading, we began playing and… we almost never looked back at the instructions.

How had we managed to retain so many rules? Typically with a new game, I find myself flipping back through the instructions every few minutes. What’s different about this one?

I have a hypothesis, but it’ll be easier to follow after I briefly summarize the rules.

The game board looks like this:

As you can see, there’s a bunch of spots with lil rectangles. Each round, players take turns placing their flasks in these spots for different benefits. Once all flasks are placed, they’re removed for the next round.

Out-of-context, I’d totally believe these flasks were science-themed candies.

Placing your flasks on certain spots grants you additional resources.

Collect mRNA, proteins, lipids, carbohydrates, and ATP.

Other spots let you spend your resources to complete Cell Component cards.

Different cards require different combinations of resources and different steps to complete.

Completing these cards gives you health, and the person with the most health wins.

See, it’s not that complicated if I massively oversimplify the rules for the sake of a concise blog post

Pictured: Random bullshit I completely glossed over.

Now that you have a completely thorough and flawless understanding of how this game works, back to my hypothesis. Half of the instruction manual is dedicated to the spots on the game board. Each spot has its own section explaining its function. The reason we retained all this information so accurately is because every spot contains helpful reminders of its function.

Consider the Nucleus spots:

Place your flask on one of these two spots, and you gain 3 or 2 black cubes (mRNA). Thanks to the icons on the game board, you probably could’ve figured that out just by looking at this picture.

Next, check out the Glucose Transporter:

Placing your flask here allows you to swap 2 or 1 ATP for 2 or 1 carbohydrates. Again, the accompanying text and icon clarify this spot’s function.

Admittedly, some spots’ functions won’t be as obvious to someone who hasn’t read the rules. But for us, reading the rules just once and looking at the board was typically enough to remember what each spot did. The design of the game board greatly alleviates the stress of trying to remember each spot’s function.

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That being said, I did notice a few issues with this board. There are a couple instances where the indicators on the board just aren’t clear enough, and I found myself flipping back through the manual.

First, notice these dotted lines leading between the ER, Golgi, and Plasma Membrane.

To complete certain Cell Component cards, you have to place your flasks in a specific order: First, place a flask at the Smooth or Rough ER. Then, place one at the Golgi Apparatus. Finally, at the Plasma Membrane. At each spot you pay some of the resources associated with that card, until you finally complete the card at the Plasma Membrane.

The red, blue, and purple dotted lines remind the player that these steps must be completed in order. However, unidirectional arrows would be a much better fit here. Using arrows, you emphasize that the process begins with the ER and with the Plasma Membrane. With just the dotted lines, it’s more difficult to intuit the chronology of this process.

Here, it’s clear what the first and last steps are.

Another issue is the Laureates in Biology space.

When you place your flask on this square, you steal the First Player Marker, and then you either place 1 Goal Marker or gain 1 ATP. You kinda get all this information from the current design, but it’s not very clear in my opinion. I would modify the space as follows:

Because this is a quick mock-up, font and color changes are not intentional design choices.

I’ve made several changes here. First, I reformatted the “First Player” subheading. The original style of subheading is used in other spots on the board, typically to indicate a spot’s function in an actual cell (“mRNA Translation,” “Lipid Synthesis,” etc.). “First Player” is not a cellular function – it is a function of the board game. Thus, it should not be written in the same style.

I modified “First Player” to “Steal First Player Marker” and included an image of this marker to further clarify the function of this space. I likewise changed “Goal Marker” to “Place 1 Goal Marker.”

The backslash was changed to “or” – backslashes have several possible meanings, and its interpretation was ambiguous in this case. Also, I added “and” to clarify that you gain two benefits for placing a flask here.

Finally, I swapped the position of the ATP image and the goal marker text. Generally, it’s much better to place a goal marker than to gain 1 ATP, so it makes sense for the goal marker to be listed first. You typically only choose the 1 ATP after you’ve placed all your available goal markers.

These changes help clarify the function of this spot without taking up too much space.

Criticisms aside, I’m very impressed by the design of this game board. Very rarely do you play a complicated board game for the first time and not have to constantly consult the rulebook. By using visual elements in the game space to remind players of the rules, these designers succeeded in delivering a far smoother and more enjoyable gaming experience.

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Takeaway: This success provides a lesson not only for board games, but for any project involving an instruction manual and a separate device or interface. Your users may not perfectly memorize each step of the manual, and it may be inconvenient for them to constantly refer back to it. Including brief reminders of important steps or rules on the device or interface is a great way to help both new and returning users use it properly.

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