Reeling in "The Big Haul"

Still on the beach

In early 2025, my wife and I were travelling on the auto train from Sanford, FL to Lorton, VA on the way home from a family vacation. The train ride was set to last 14 hours, so I set a goal for myself that I would design a game while we travelled. 

“Hey Jess, give me a theme.”

“The ocean.”

I had just received Air, Land, and Sea for Christmas and loved the idea of a small deck of cards that can all have different abilities. I had also just read the rulebook for Seaside and loved the final scoring. Whoever has the most tiles in their stack wins. So simple. What often happens when I learn new games is I think about how I would make a game using the mechanics I just read about. I often do this before even playing the game! With these two inspirations in mind, it was time to make a game about the ocean.

I decided right from the beginning that this game was going to be about scoring cards, and whoever had the most cards at the end wins. Thank you, Seaside. A lot of feedback I got from players while play-testing were questions along the lines of “wait, everything is worth the same amount?” That is right, each card when scored is worth 1 point. 

Ok, the ocean is not really a theme, but a starting point. I don’t know much about the ocean, but I do know there are fish in there. I took out my phone and wrote down the first idea for a card, called the “Medium fish” (can you tell my background is in mathematics?). I also envisioned different play areas. The boat would be a collection of your own cards. The ocean would be the center of the table and affect all players. 

This led to the decision to make each card have 2 effects. The first is an action you can take using that card if it is in your boat. The second being a persistent rule change while that card is in the ocean. This small ruleset already created a very dynamic game. You really did care what other people were doing since they could muck up the ocean. 

Over the next 90 minutes I had 11 unique cards designed in the notes app on my phone, with a rudimentary ruleset attached. The choice for 36 cards was that 36 divided by 2, 3, and 4, ensuring a somewhat equal number of turns for each player. 

Just off the coast (the early stages)

The timing of this design was somewhat of a perfect storm. Up to this point I had toyed around with game design because I thought it was fun. I never really imagined it would go anywhere. My friend Isaac Stell always saw my games differently. After playing one of my very first designs back in 2023, I remember his enthusiasm in saying the game was very fun and that we need to publish. Well, in January 2025, Isaac became a coworker of mine. I scribbled some sharpie onto some playing cards, jotted down the boat abilities and ocean effects on some index cards and brought them to work to play with Isaac at lunch.

A flowchart used for teaching

version 2 of the game

We were floored. The game was incredibly messy, we spent way too much time trying to reference the index cards whenever anything would happen. However, something strange happened. We had fun! The Big Haul had this tendency to create funny moments. It lets you do the impossible. Every fisherman I’ve met wishes they could catch Sturgeon as easily as you can in The Big Haul. 

The boat abilities came in two flavours; when played and when activated. Some cards would trigger as soon as they were placed in your boat and some you would choose to trigger on your turn. There were only a few ways to get cards out of your boat. The game very much depended on building a solid boat, then scoring cards until the game ended.

However, this was not as streamlined as I wanted it to be. The first major change that came to the game was making all boat abilities “when activated”. Coupled with this, cards now entered the ocean after you used them. You may have a strong card, but as soon as you use it, it becomes available for your opponents to grab!

This is when the game really started to sing. Turns consisted of either adding a card to your boat, or using a card in your boat. A delightfully simple loop made interesting by the constantly changing ocean effects. 

Into the depths (trim, balance, repeat)

Our lunch meetings became regular and each time I brought a slightly modified version of the game with me. What was great was that as we continued to playtest, our game time dropped to just under 10 minutes. We could get 2 or 3 games in and analyze all in one lunch break. 

After 3 months of play-testing with the two of us, we began showing the game to our families and friends. Introducing the game to new people showed me that the card effects need to be on the cards themselves. Index reference sheets would not do. This also revealed one of the game’s biggest weaknesses. You need to play it at least twice. There are 11 unique cards. When a player plays for the first time, they have to spend a significant amount of brain power reading each new card as it presents itself.  Isaac and I had so much fun with the puzzle of the game since we knew all of the card abilities that existed. This is a conviction I feel about most games. You start playing the game when you move from “what can I do?” to “how should I do this?”.

These play-tests contributed some very obvious corrections we could make (like renaming the small, medium, and large fish to be tuna, salmon, and sturgeon). I was also reminded of the need to “design intuitively”. One of the phases of your turn involved “casting”, which was just a rebranded version of drawing cards. Everyone knows what it means to draw cards, do not make them learn a new word for no reason!

Remember your heading (what are we making, anyways?)

All of this playtesting left me with a spreadsheet of card abilities that had been cut or altered. I put some work into two separate mini expansions, hopefully being able to expand the game to 6 players and add in more cool interactions. Only one of these expansions got playtested, and I believe only 3 times. Isaac and I enjoyed a 2 player game with the new cards. The problem was, the game took us around 45 minutes. Was a game this simple with more tactical than strategic elements worthy of such a long playtime?

I decided that was not the case and scrapped the idea of making the deck larger than 36 cards. We were now trying to lean into the game being a “quick 20 minute game after dinner”. We want it to be snappy. Fast. This is why I love the set up of the game. Shuffle the cards. That is it. There is no hindrance in place to stop you from starting a game of The Big Haul.

Time to get pretty (art and publishing)

We developed a semi professional run of 6 copies using art from Canva. The goal now was to get more people to play the game and test out the rulebook. I handed the game and the rules to some coworkers. The feedback I received from them was generally helpful (mainly that they managed to play a game from the rulebook alone). The greatest feedback I received was when they told me that they got the game out, on a different occasion, to play it again. This is when I knew I had something special. This was a game that people wanted to come back to after experiencing it. 

Version 1, 4, and 5 of the Tuna.

The last few months we worked with Jenna Noordstra to get final art done for the game, giving it a very professional feel. 

Isaac and I decided to self-publish to see the full process of taking an idea all the way to a final product. We have learned a lot and found some things we could improve upon next time. Overall, I am very pleased with how the final game looks and plays. 

A treasure I did not expect to find

I believe the game succeeds as a “quick game after dinner”. I also believe that the game begins to reveal its intricacies the more that you play it. I have been blown away by the amount of support my friends and family have given this project. The people in my life really do make me think I can accomplish anything. We ordered 250 copies for the first order, and we were ready to go.