I have had in mind to make a board game pretty much since I was a young boy where I would make simple games where you roll a die and go down a path. I have previously attempted several games including a table top rpg which was a dismal failure though an educational experience. An additional attempt was a logistics based business game which I ended due to way to much complexity. In addition, I work as a tutor for both math and english and incorporate various games often into my teaching repertoire. As such when I began to approach the stage of teaching money math to one of my students, I was on the look out for a game which could serve as a practical way of practicing money math however I failed to find a game that fit my requirements. Often games would take too long to play in the ten to fifteen minutes that I possessed to play such games. Another factor that would eliminate the game from consideration is the lack of use of coins as the hardest part of money math is the with the coins. Bills naturally fall into place which calculating change with coins is accomplished.
My goals when designing this game was to create an easy to learn game where the players would be forced to make change, where the game can be ended at any time with a clear winner, which would be easy to learn, and where randomness would be the primary mechanic protecting self esteem and ensuring the game can be played at your best with children while allowing them to still win sometimes.
With this in mind, I set out to design my own game on a whim. I constructed the first prototype of the game within three hours with it working like so. You had a customer deck which you would draw and it would either give you an event or a number of customers. Once the deck was empty the game was over. Likewise there was a store where you could purchase from one of three cards with purchasing a card causing the store to refresh. In this edition of the game each sold glass of lemonade gave fifteen cents a peice. With a protype in hand, I played a game with my brother over the phone utilizing hand counting of money.
While the game was fun, it has the issue that I had cards which protected from bad cards however as the deck was never refreshed the utility of the protection cards fell in value. In addition, I had prices for them far to high. I solved this issue by dropping their price partially in what would be a constant ritual as I had criminally over rated the protection cards and under rated the boosting cards. Cards that gave boosts were priced to cheaply and were at first bought up quickly however a lack of turnover meant the store slowed down though not before we ran out of the deck.
To solve these issues my brother and I systematically went through the cards and adjusted the prices, increasing some and decreasing others to better suite the balance so all cards would be purchased. The two structural changes that I made was first of all i ncreasing the amount of money gained from fifteen to twenty cents. This would increase the available cash meaning that more purchases would be made as the game is at its most fun when you are weighing if you should purchase an item or not rather then mindlessly collecting money to save up. The second change was that after every day, which is a round of play, the deck is reshuffled meaning that the negative event cards are recycled so the protection cards no longer see a drop in value as negative cards are drawn. I because the deck was continuously refreshed changed it so the game would end in seven rounds.
The next game test was played with my sister as she was in the car. To her credit she kept accurate accounts within her mind. The changes proved successful and we had an excellent time playing however the balance remained off. I adjusted the balance and played a second game with my brother. These two games saw only tweaking of balance and the addition of new cards in the costumer and store decks. I increased the time from seven to fourteen days. I played one more game using my prototype with my mother and brother. The game started a bit slow, but the middle was really fun as we strategized and purchased items. The card heatwave proved to be a stroke of genius as discarding a card could be bad or good as it could dispose of any card before its effects came into play excepting cards that ended your turn. However, near the end around day ten purchasing completely stopped and the game became slow and boring. As such I added a new card that ended the game when drawn. This card would be added after day seven to give a much less predictable end so purchasing will continue until the end resulting in a much mroe dynamic game.
After this I made a version of the game for table top simulator and played the game against with my brother and mother. Several other games where I just tweaked the prices in a continual dropping of prices of the protection cards and a raising of prices of cards that benefit the player. It seems that I had grossly over rated the value of the protection cards. The final major change that I would make regarding the rules would be that the store would be refreshed every day so that items which no one wants to purchase or are to expensive would not clog up the store preventing the early game items from appearing. I also duplicated one of the early game income boosters and added a rule to it and to the early game item which gave you more cards to draw a rule that you can only have one to encourage a more equitable distribution of the early game booster items.
A few more games later I would make my first physical printed out prototype. It would see some modification before being approoved for use by the anhallah where that leaves us. Perhaps I'll make another blog post where I discuss certain cards and my reasons for designing them. In my poor opinion, I have accomplished all the design goals that I set out to accomplish. Because the game is divided into rounds when we near the end of my tutoring time we can just say we end after this round. The awkward prices of the items means that all change has to be interacted with and change often made forcing the dimes and quarters often held onto to be broken up into nickles and pennies. The use of multiple costumers with each having their own price forces the students to engage in some simple multiplication with the most complicated problem I came across in my testing being 23 cents times 14 customers in one very lucky turn. The luck component reduces skill meaning that the student has a good chance of winning keeping their self esteem intact while preventing any need for the teacher to allow them to win so the game is fun for all parties. This does mean that the game lacks depth which I endevored to prevent a total shallowness by having some event cards ask for decisions on which penalty to take. Overall though the game is easily learned and easily mastered which suites its usecase perfectly. As such I have accomplished my goal and am now distributing the game to my fellow tutors.
If anyone is interested in the game you've either been sent this blog post as a link or see it on my twitter as such just message me and we can work something out. If you're a homeschooling parent just ask and I'll send over the pdfs right away.
Posted 3/31/2025