HOW WE MADEHOW WE MADEHOW WE MADE SPACE CADETS
38 April 2019
INTO THE VOID
Geo and Brian began thinking of ways to
translate the idea of a Star Trek-inspired
online game into a physical product, and this
time they worked alongside Geo ’s daughter,
Sydney. eir design saw players piloting a
spacecraft through a succession of missions,
with each person at the table responsible for a
di erent aspect of the ship’s operations. Every
job came with its own mini-game, which
players aimed to complete simultaneously in a
series of frenzied 30-second rounds.
“I designed Space Cadets with my kids, and
they were about 15 and 13 at that time,” Geo
says. “One of the things we really wanted to
do was have the mini-games be re ective of
the roles they were supposed to represent. So
in the initial incarnations of the game it was
really more of a starship simulator. e control
panels were quite complicated, and tried to be
more like what you would expect to see if you
were really ying a spaceship. e weapons
had di erent arcs they could re in, and there
were di erent types of phasers and torpedoes
and things that had to work in certain ways.
“But when we actually set up the game and
tested it, we found that people had the mostfun when they were really just roleplaying
being on the bridge in Star Trek. e mini-
games didn’t need to be super detailed,
they just needed to be suggestive of the jobs
people were doing on the ship, and the more
complicated those control panels were, the
less people liked it.”
e family went back to the drawing board,
creating a collection of mini-game elements
that weren’t just mechanically easy to grasp,
but which sought to evoke the feeling of
particular tasks through their physical design.
“For the weapons ocer, for the torpedo
tubes, you’re taking pieces that look a bit like
Tetris blocks and assembling them into certain
shapes,” Geo says. “ e more of these little
puzzles you can complete in 30 seconds the
more torpedoes you have, and to re them you
just ick a disc down a little track. ere are no
arcs of where your weapons can shoot, there
are no fancy charts and tables and modi ers –
you’re just icking a disc.
“For sensors, which is one of the ones we
really liked, you have a bag with di erently-
shaped pieces in it, and you’re reaching
in and trying to identify them though only
your sense of touch in order to get a lock on
the enemy. So it’s very simple to explain to
someone: here’s this bag, you’re reaching
into it, but it’s very suggestive of the role
you’re trying to perform.”
With such a variety of mechanical moving
parts, the process of tweaking and developingthe game proved tricky. Geo says the
approach also provided answers to some
particularly thorny design problems.
“On each round you only have 30 seconds
to do your little mini-game,” he says. “Part
of the reason for that was to avoid having an
‘über player’ telling everybody else what to do.
If everyone’s doing everything in the same 30
seconds, you literally cannot do that.
“But at the same time, we wanted to have
links between the di erent stations in some
fashion in order to make it work. So, for2 1 6
LEECH
Leech must be first Enemy ship
activated. If it hits players, shield hit
drops to zero after damage is applied.4
1
STEAL
Two sensor points r
four for Super3
LEECH
(^0012)
HADES
If player speed <3 will not attempt to
lock on. Still locks on automatically as
normal if damaged.
7
2
VENGEANCE
Add damage
to damage caused on pla
4