Design process

Seeking the best of both worlds

Existing approaches to new Terraforming Mars maps are typically at one of two extremes:

• A fully defined new map which adds another option to the original three (often including new types of placement bonuses), but that itself can become stale after multiple plays.

• Randomization by arranging unit hex tiles, possibly with the help of an app. This is full flexibility, but very fiddly – you’ll need to either set up 61 individual tiles or print out a new map for each game.

We wanted the best of both worlds (pun intended) – variety and randomization, but with easy setup. That means not only a suitable arrangement of oceans and placement bonuses, but also appropriate handling of other special areas like Noctis City and the volcanic regions (Tharsis Tholus, Pavonis Mons, etc.). We also sought to add new placement bonuses that add additional variety and enjoyment to each game.

New placement bonuses

At various points we got very creative with new placement bonuses and even placement restrictions. But after a point, this added too much complexity without making the maps more fun.

Where we landed was a good mix of new elements: new resource bonuses, production bonuses, and some fun elements of random chance. See some that didn’t make the cut at the end of this post.

A perfect arrangement

The crux of the challenge: what tessellation of the map gives the easiest setup with the right amount of randomization?

The Terraforming Mars map is a large hexagon measuring 5 “unit” hexagons per side, comprising 61 unit hexagons total. Spoiler alert: “61” is a prime number, which means that we won’t be able to have only one map tile shape (unless we revert to unit hexagon tiles).

There are several ways to tessellate the map, but here are a few highlights:

• Unit hexagons. As mentioned previously, this arrangement gives maximum flexibility but also maximum fiddliness. This is what we want to avoid!

• Large triangles. This arrangement provides good variety since each triangle can be rotated. But when fabricating components at The Game Crafter, only two triangles can fit on their largest punch out sheet. That means large variety comes with a large manufacturing cost.

• Trapezoids (winner!). With this arrangement we can create a map with seven large pieces. Furthermore, four tiles can fit to a punch out sheet, providing twice as much variety per dollar than the triangle arrangement. This pattern was the clear winner!

And with the optional addition of unit hexagons, we can achieve even more variety. Check out just some of the innumerable map tessellations with this design:

Reaching solid ground

While designing this system, we went through several iterations of prototypes.

Paper. Good for rapid iteration and prototyping, but not satisfying to play with because the tiles move around during setup or when placing tiles on the map.

Acrylic. Solid and satisfying to set up and use, but a major pain to assemble! Each tile was created by printing out an adhesive label, carefully placing it on one side of a laser cut acrylic cutout, exacto-ing around the edge to trim it to size, and then repeating on the other side.

Laser cut punch outs, take 1. These feel solid and stay put like the acrylic prototypes, and with way less assembly effort! But the first batch from The Game Crafter suffered from poor manufacturing tolerances: offsets on the back side of the tiles that created ugly borders. This sort of offset is unavoidable to an extent (although, The Game Crafter, if you’re reading this: please tighten those tolerances!) but can be mitigated through better design.

Laser cut punch outs, take 2. For the final prototypes from The Game Crafter, we redesigned the edges to better accommodate the offset without being noticeable during gameplay. (We replaced the thick white border between hexes with a thin black border, and didn't include this at all on the tile edges.) In the end, the offset is there if you know to look for it, but doesn’t affect our enjoyment while playing.

Ensuring valid maps

There are a few key elements to creating a well-balanced map:

• At most one area reserved for Noctis City

• When present, exactly four volcanic regions

• Exactly twelve areas reserved for oceans

To prevent multiple areas reserved for Noctis city, the two map variants with a reserved area appear on opposite sides of the same map tile. We took a similar approach for volcanic regions: opposite sides of a single tile each have a full set of four. This design provides variety without needing to worry about an invalid map.

Because of the above choices, for oceans, the solution is simple: simply choose tiles with exactly twelve total areas reserved for oceans! This is easily achieved by flipping tiles over or swapping tiles out.

The complete system

The final system consists of:

• 24 double-sided laser cut cardboard punch outs from The Game Crafter. The solid map tiles are much more satisfying than the paper prototypes during setup and gameplay!

• A unique trapezoidal tessellation that makes setup easy with just seven tiles. Or mix in some unit hexes for even more map variety!

• New placement bonuses, including new resources, production, theft, and elements of chance, all carefully balanced to match the original maps.

• Over 1 Trillion possible maps!

See below for photos of the final results. If you’d like to order your own set of our “final prototypes”, check out The Game Crafter for Custom Maps or Custom Everything (includes milestones & awards and bonus tracks).

What didn't make the cut

Not every idea survived our play testing. Here are some of the many that got left out: