Creating 'Burgle Bros': The Fantasy of the Heist

[Music] my name is Tim powers and I'm here for creating burgle Bros or brittle brothers still and undecided fantasy of the heist all right focus away to get focus to this thing there we go okay all right um so I'm an indie developer start about ten years ago and I made a couple indie games on my own and with some friends and one was called now boarding and we did that for a couple years and the kind of you know over time you know I wasn't always working out long term like well it's I headed over to the industry so I worked at Amazon game studios in Southern

California for three four years and then kind of during all these processes on the site I was kind of working on board games because I kind of fell in love with making video games and board games at the same time and I and I really see them as kind of two sides of the same coin so I made a game called paperback and a game called Burkle Brothers and both have done really really well and I've I've been trying to take that indie aesthetic that's the skills you learn being an indie and and doing these really kind of quality games and bring it over to do board games and it's proven to work out really really well and so I'm gonna talk about the differences between board games and video games because they're similar but the difference is that that board games are software that run on people so you're writing this code and people have to like ingest this all have this going in their brain and and you don't wanna break the compiler you don't have too many rules and and they're the ones that

they're experiencing these rules but it's all transparent because video games are held at is blackbox right you you're giving it inputs and you're getting certain outputs and you're trying to figure out what the are inside that box and you get kind of a sense of what's going on but you're you know it still surprises you in certain ways but the ways that boardgames surprise you are through you know all the rules like all the rules are in your head and they'll combined in new ways and you're like oh that's a combination I didn't think of using that card in that card together or or powers together or whatever and and and so it's this delight through emerges not through you know finding out a new new rule what's going on under the hood and the other thing about board games is it's very raw design you as a designer you've got a box of parts and instructions and it's got a sing it's got a it's got a you know entertain and and pull all these emotions out of people and you

know we talk about a lot of emotions in video games but there's a lot of emotion in board games and I want to talk about some of the you know some of the the range of emotions you can have here so you've got your werewolf mafia and that's about you know and secret Hitler it's it's about deceit like what's what's the the key moment in that game when you're like it's when everyone believes you and you've got them all fooled if you want to turn it up higher I don't know if many play we have played this but but diplomacy is literally you have to bag and step all your friends in the back to win one at a time gain their trust and then it's like Survivor you're voting them off at the last minute and it's tragic and do not play it it will end friendships because that's the level of emotion that board games can create and then there's you know Settlers is about reciprocity and trade and you have Ticket to Ride respect prioritizing you know building your network but in cooperative game is about altruism it's about sacrificing for each other

and collectively problem solving and and there's all these positive emotions around it and that's why I've been drawn drawn to it because in board games you test a lot and you test live and and I get driven by the energy that comes off of cooperative games so where do we derive our our emotions from and a lot of times is from from other media there we go other media so we watch these movies we TV shows books and they all have these moments right they that that we want to capture and and so often in video games we we think we think literally we're like okay well let's let's capture you know the scene or or the the visual or the sentiment the cinematography but I think that what we really want can get to it you know with videogames and with board games is the emotion at the core of it and because really when it comes down to is these scenarios you know am i doing a heist

and my you know ah surviving on an island am i learning kung fu you know that they get to the point of what would I do in that situation like that's that's when I talk about the fantasy the heist is like we really ask ourselves this when we're when we're looking at different meeting you're like yeah if I could fly I would do X or you know there's there's all these kind of scenarios we put ourselves through and so through developing burgle Bros I you know I've kind of got a system now that I use and and this wasn't all intentional but this is the method that I came came to was that you take a scene or a moment in a in you know in in what you're trying to do your source material whatever that material is and and you you peel it back and you peel back and you find at the nugget what is the at the best moment of that scene what is what are you actually feeling and then you try systems to recreate it you try choices and you try game systems game mechanics to reproduce it and it takes a

lot of iteration to find something that can get the emotion that you want because anytime you create a system there's going to be other things that unintended consequences so you've got to clean it up and you gotta have to mitigate certain parts of that system that you don't really want and then and then you tie it back into the theme you're like okay if we have the system what else would happen in that mechanic and and weave it back into your theme and this is the this is this is the method that I've kind of discovered with with Bruegel Bros so I started with a hybrid game I was working on an app that you interacted with a board game it was about a heist and I would went to Gen Con I'm like I'm demoing this game and I'm like I because you go and you get people to play test when you're a board game creator you're like okay come play my game you got to convince this guy that doesn't know who you are that this game is awesome and I'm like okay it's like it's like Ocean's eleven the board game and their eyes like lit up like well I want to play that game and they had come over there play it and the

game was horrible and I apologized to everybody that played it because it it didn't fulfill that but that put this this you know bug in my head I'm like this is something people want people want to live out a heist and they want to know what choices they would make in that sense at that situation so so I came up with with burgle Bros and burgle Bros was this I'm gonna talk about the process of how we got there but the high level is it's a cooperative heist and this is a fun tower that you can play it on but you normally play it flat it's you have these these three floors that you're exploring now if anybody gets caught it's over it's kind of to have the high stakes because you know if you get caught you're gonna get a rat on your friends and you know so you don't go to jail and so it's three floors and there's a safe on each one and there's a whole sequence of how you open the safe and find the combination to the safe and and then and then but on top of everything is all these tiles are alarms and traps with different rules about how you can get through them and whether they triggered an alarm and then on top of

that there's this guard patrolling on each floor and he's using a waypoint system and four and four and so you have these three stealth tokens and every one has three stealth and if you lose all three of your stealth you you're caught you know so so that's the stakes so so going back to the source material let's let's look at a heist right what these are the tropes of a heist and these aren't all of them but but these are because some some high points right so we're gonna assemble the team we're gonna get all the you know I'm gonna get out of jail or whatever we're going to assemble the the players right and then we're going to make a plan we're gonna pick our target make a plan and there's always a montage of all the different alarms and guards we have to get through and how impossible it is and then you know and then you start the plan and you're evading the guards and getting through all the alarms everything's going any plan need to get to the safe and you're cracking the safe or you're downloading the thing a little bars going and you're sweating bullets and then something goes wrong like there's always something like oh there's twists right and then you know you pull off a

miracle like you know or maybe you had a plan all along you had a back-up plan and it comes into effect and and then and then there's you know the grand exit you know it's like yeah we made it out and and high-fives and go spend our money right so let's break this out so some like a team you know the core emotion here is is I why don't my going to contribute to to this team so it's partially contribution but I think there's something underneath there when you're picking a character often like okay well what powers does he have like what can he do and often when you're designing these kind of roles you you want to think like how can everybody break one rule of the game because it makes you feel powerful and you and special in a group and and that in its and it's interesting but underneath there's a character to each one of these and so I had these different personas we developed and because you're really you're putting on a mask when you're playing a character and this is in a lot of games and and this is part of the whole what would I do in this situation and so now you're taking on a character of what I would do in that situation and

and experimenting and seeing what you what you would do how does this reflect on on Who I am so that's just assembling the team so putting on masks so then making a plan so early on in the design of burgle Bros it was it was about like okay what's going on where are the guards going to be let's plan the whole thing out because that's a big part of the fantasy but it really ended up conflicting with the ability to to make kind of tactical decisions in one night because if you think about it like if you had a plan the whole thing and then if you were wrong you kinda just have to play the game again like it wasn't it didn't make a interesting loop and and so there's some counterintuitive things that I had to move away from the trope and this is one of them it was because people are like so you're breaking into this building and you know there's a safe there but you literally know where none of the alarms are like you you guys are not well educated thieves going into this place but it was it was an important decision and and how this kind

of works is the motion that was more important to me was the perfect prediction and this is the moment where the guards walking by and I'm perfectly stepping behind every you know statue and I'm doing I'm doing everything in sync and I'm totally predicting everything the guard is going to do and and I feel awesome because there's no way he's gonna find me and and and that led to a couple different systems one is these these these tiles so you're exploring and you have to take certain risks these tiles apart start face down and you can decide to run into a tile and see what it is and hope that it's not bad or you can peek but that takes it's slower so you have to decide how quick you want to do this and that gives an information horizon you're like okay I know I've already seen some of these tiles I don't know what that could be but I'm gonna take a risk and then on top of it is the the Waypoint system for the guard the guard he moves towards the next Waypoint but then after that he's gonna draw card and he's you don't know if he's gonna go left or right you know he's you you've got to take you

got to take a guess and so this creates these smaller moments these small dynamic puzzles between the static puzzle of the the tiles and the walls you have to move around and the dynamic puzzle where the guard is at the time too you have to you have to take a guess and by making the players to take a risk if it pays off then like oh I knew it I knew he'd go that way and you feel like you feel like that prediction right you feel like I pulled it off correctly and if he doesn't we had to create the other end because a big part of stealth is that it's high-stakes I mean that's about thing about stealth games often in stealth games you get caught you're shot or you're go to jail or whatever and so I was I wasn't sure how to do this I wanted to have high stakes and and this is where you don't really design a loan I mean people in board games probably designed more alone than they do in video games but I went to my friend and I'm like hey I don't know what to do that I want people to lose I want to have high stakes but use this like we'll just just give them like hip points they can get you know and so we came with

these stealth tokens I mean like you disappear and like you know you get three chances to hide from the guard and then and then you don't have anymore and next time he catches you and it would it introduces a soft loss because you don't get the stealth back but you have this this there's definite progress towards losing any time you're in the same tile as one of the guards all right so perfect prediction is is the fantasy so cracking the safe so cracking a safe is you're trying to do it quickly as you can but it's it's this unknown you're like I can't do anything that it's only going to crack so fast you know or I don't I got a guess numbers you know and you feel this pressure because you don't know when the guards gonna come so that's that the emotion here is is you're gonna get caught right and and so what differently wanted some randomness and an a you know you really got to watch the randomness though because when we first did it we're like oh if you roll the right numbers you get in and it was just kind of like quick like sometimes it was really quick and sometimes it was you know too long and it was it was frustrating and again I you know went to it went to a friend and

and I'm just like well how do i how do you mitigate this this luck problem because I want it to be random because because then when you roll the six there's there's this cheer but you know so you know came up with a system and it was like you can invest in more dice so you can make a safer you know you can roll more dice when you do roll dice and it makes the whole thing safer or you can be riskier yeah we can do it with like one die or to die we're lucky and then you know but it might take you twice as long and then that certainly happens and then the other part of like I'm working on the safe and I don't know how long that's been taken then there's the guard the guard is coming and when we first played it there was this moment where the ever after every player's turn the guard on that floor moves and so somebody's like so if I go upstairs only that guard will move in I'm like well yeah it's kind of like the movie where it's the action was only where the camera is so like if the camera is up here you assume that nothing's happening on this other floor so would it what it allowed is it as a side effect so he's like so if I go upstairs you won't get caught he's like mom like I I guess not so so so now the whole part of the the

game is manipulating the guard through which floor are you going to activate so where are you going to end your turn and it it it some people even didn't like that they're like that's unrealistic there why are other guards moving and I'm like it works as a as a tool to give the players to to solve their problems and and it also gives us other thing a little little side note is about vulnerability the TED talk about vulnerability and how is how we form relationships as humans its core to cooperative experiences and if you think about left 4 dead right left 4 dead you know you get pinned right and and zombies on you and and you literally can do nothing and then one of your friends comes over kicks the zombie off and shoots him and he reaches down and he pulls you up and he's accepted you as as a friend but also as you're important to this mission you're important to this team and sacrificing for each other and giving these moments where I can save someone else is is is is is how relationships

are formed and and I just think it's really important to sorry beside no so something always goes wrong right so so this is the the best laid plans and it's tricky in a board game like I didn't know how to have the twist where something goes wrong and and how do I get that paste in the game and how does that even fit in and it actually came from kind of the most benign part of the game there was this moment where one of my friends was playing and he's like on the bottom floor and he's like so there's a guard outside so I'm literally gonna do nothing on my turn and I'm like well yeah and we came up with this thing where when you don't use a certain number of actions you you roll a dice and that can that can be something good or something bad but it's an unknown and then eventually became like a deck of cards and and it actually if you think about it like the moment that you're hiding in the closet and the guard is coming by is exactly when something is going to crash and something you know or a cat's gonna spook something or

something good or bad is gonna happen and so we call it the event deck and it ended up being this great way to both mitigate kind of the boring moments of the game but also it only happens a couple times per game and so it was a nice way to parse out these these moments that could be plot twists and sometimes it'll save you - it's it's a it's a variable so all these things are happening right the the we're you know the guards are speeding up over time we crack open a safe and now when you craft when you get a safe open you get two things you get a loot this is what you came to steal and it could be like a chihuahua that randomly barks and sets off alarms or something there's silly things that that you you came here to steal and then you get tools it's a one-shot ability so these tools are like an EMP or a crowbar and they give you one chance like to do something really cool and and so all these things are moving towards kind of the climax is like okay the guards are moving super fast we're all low on stealth how are we gonna do and how are we gonna get out of this and

this is where the this is the tension is the core emotion here and this forced players into a into a corner of sorts like anna is more of an emotional corner than a physical corner but sometimes it's physical corner but it was that they they're stuck they're like okay we're gonna lose and I'm like no no just you know you can figure out something and they would surprise me and they're like I got it if I do if I go here and trigger this alarm or I use my gadget and use my tool or I use my player power and they started really thinking laterally and coming up with really creative solutions of how to get out of these problems and it surprised me I was just creating a system and turning up the heat and and people are like pulling off these crazy moves and I'm like okay that's that's a really good solution to that and and it doesn't always pan out either sometimes they fail right and and and looking at failure is part of it as well and and how people help people see failure like after a game you really

don't want people being like that was arbitrary you want people saying like I could have done X I could have done another thing that would have lit would let me win and so having that couch having that that you know that emotional scapegoat really helps people want to re-engage and want to retry a game and often cooperative games people want a challenge they often don't want to win on their first game so they can feel like they're like okay I know what's going on now we're gonna win this one and they'll get back into it so then there's the grand exit right so we got past the hardest problem in the game and and we got the Gotha loot and we're headed out and and in this emotion is that is the relief so we had all the tension and the problem solving and the relief is that we made it out and this is this is where you really want the the dramatic exit this is like drop the mic you know smash the guitar you know do a victory lap you it's like you want to feel awesome and and you want to leave a mess you just like you're like you know what and and

so we have this dramatic exit where you're leaving on a helicopter on the roof and there was a another side effect of the the whole guard rules was oh if I go to the roof there's no guards up there so this no guard moves on my turn and so there's this moment where like oh yeah we're out of here and like everyone gets to leave and the guard doesn't get a move and and you feel like it takes the pressure off when all sudden the either you haven't even easy out and then there's also other moments where people surprise me like they're like they're like so I had this tool that can make a staircase anywhere I say we leave here in like the roof comes out and grappling hooks go up and they're like we're just gonna leave right here and exit to our helicopter and it was it has surprised me and it was a great moment so so the overall emotion right so how do these all add up you know you're creating all these individual moments but how do they how do they sum together into the takeaway like when I talk about these there's other board games and it kind of took me a while to realize what it was and for Bruegel Bros it was it

was cleverness that that I feel I feel you know shrewd and clever and and I outwitted them and in a non non competitive way and and and this is where you want to decide where you're gonna spend your money and so this is where you evaluate you're like okay I'm looking back in my game and what what Moe moments and emotional beats from the source material did I reflect in my game and which ones didn't because they're not gonna all make it in but you have to look at which ones are pushing towards the the you know the emotion that you're the overall emotion you're shooting for and remember that there's short term emotions so there's like a crisis like I have to make a decision I roll in rolling a die I'm drying a card and there's a moment right but there's also longer emotions there's dramatic there's there's the might is my character transforming am I getting stronger is are there little waters rising is the pressure getting higher is there a climactic battle you know that

are they are these moving towards an overall mall traumatic arc and that's satisfying it from a storytelling perspective so coming back to games as as a personality test so this is I think at the core of what games are so you've had this mask on and now you take the mask off and you're like what how did it feel to you know to be that character did that did that is that Who I am you know is that is that is that me do I want to do I want to be more of that person and you know and then you see all these other masks you know like I want to try that one next time and and and I think it's there's a lot of self-discovery you know going on because because in the end you're answering the question of what did I do what would I do in that situation you know what if I was on an island you know yes I would you know I'd figure out fire and I make a hut or whatever in and each of these is games or systems that let us answer these questions and and the bigger thing is when I talk about all these unintended consequences that came

out of things it's like I was shooting for four emotions and it was through these systems but then the real output of these was actually stories so when people tell me about burgle Bros they're like okay there's one time and then they and then they go through the whole story of the sequence events that happened and what they did and what the guards did and everything and it's their story it's the game reflected back on them and they were able to tell a story about who they were in that situation and and so the bigger thing about what would I do in situation is is when you have an answer you now have something that you're gonna tell and more often the failure is the better story like like the the spectacular failure is the one that people tell and so story so games as story generators I think is the is what we're getting at to when we're saying emotion because it's not just that that you want them to you know like a movie is gonna make you feel a particular way and a game can make you feel a lot of different ways because it's it's it's through the lens of yourself and that's it thank for your

time so are we on time okay we're good let's do some questions if you guys got some questions and happy to talk to anybody after as well a big fan of burgle brothers but one thing I was wondering about we talked about the emotion and controlling that is there's so much randomness between the setup and the cars if players get how much effort did you spend in the design to not let things get too easy or too hard I had to because it's is basically a roguelike board game right there's all these variables very early on I locked in the guard system and a lot of the tiles and I just played it a lot it was almost a brute force I mean sometimes you can Monte Carlo there's always you can simulate board games but I had to literally get a sense of of how much and

even right after the Kickstarter I was like okay it's a little too easy and I just changed the just a couple card distributions and and ended up pretty good but it was it was a lot of work just to get a sense of it but it was it was I guess work I can't say that there's a there's a specific thing but I mean I try to make each individual obstacle not unsurmountable so like every event that comes up or every tile that comes up you know there is a way around it or or multiple ways around it but but not just like you're hosed because anything that feels super arbitrary and you get stuck at that point can throw off both your distribution but also just trough the experience so thanks hello so this might be a little bit of a negative space question but you mentioned that you had given up on planning like the planning aspect yeah and I worked on a stealth game in the past and we ran into similar issues like planning is really hard but

it really feels like that is a core part of most heists things yeah be able as well so I was wondering what were the iterations that you tried if you tried more and if was there anything that remotely worked and if something did did wide it was mostly like conceptual so this is why I mean to repeat the question and why not have the planning phase in the stealth it was just that we started to break out like okay what information could you have would that information be useful you know how much of a plan could you make and we started you know so I had a friend that we were kind of brainstorming this idea with and and he's like I had this idea for for for a planning game and I had my my horrible you know hybrid game and and we started brainstorming and then I started getting on this thread where I'm like oh and then it--and once I figured out how the guards moved and whatnot and then I did 15 pages before he came back he's like I think you're just running with this idea

and it and in it is bore fruit right it's just like sometimes in design like there is kind of the the you know the the what the thing the system that seems to be clicking and working and and there certainly is another game I'd love to make a pretty cool that it's like it sets up a game of burgle and but it and and there's other games to be made so thank you all right thanks guys yeah I'm happy to talk individually