Ridgehead Games Blog

As part of a series of posts diving deeper into the mechanics of Fruit, I'm going to take a closer look at the fundamental tiles that players lay down.

​In this post we'll be looking at the Root tile. 

Having introduced Marlies Draaisma as the illustrator who is working on the art for Fruit, I thought it would be fun to take a look at how the designs for the tiles have evolved.

The very first iterations of the tiles started out as pencil and crayon sketches on hexagons of coloured paper, some of which were drawn by my daughter; these were fine for my early play tests in which I played against myself to set the first versions of the rules, but they were clearly very crude.

I'm really excited to share the first artworks for Fruit.

The artist that I'm working with has sketched out some concept drawings for the starter tile, the root tile and the two stalk tiles - and I think she's done a fantastic job.

I recently made Fruit available to play online on Tabletop Simulator, and while many board game enthusiasts will be familiar with Tabletop Simulator (or TTS, as it's usually abbreviated) a lot won't, so this will give you a quick introduction to what it is and how you can use it to play Fruit and a lot of other games online.

One thing I've always enjoyed about board gaming is looking at the state of the board after a game is finished. From the territories that have changed hands at the end of a game of Axis & Allies to the design of a stained glass window in Sagrada, there's something satisfying about finishing a game and looking down at what you and your fellow players have created.

This was a large part of the design objective for Fruit - my intent was not only to have a game that was fun (obviously), but also a game that would result in a satisfying end state. Now, even in the most relaxed game people want to win (without some kind of incentive there's no reason even to play), so the objectives that people are trying to achieve, and the routes by which they are able to achieve them, will shape the way that the end state looks. For a game about growing fruiting plants, that meant I had to develop a win condition and set of rules that would encourage players to create a plant that would look aesthetically pleasing at game end.