Basketball Tactics Design Blog
I wanted to trace out some of the process I’ve gone through so far working on this turn-based basketball game. I started playing with this idea in 2020. The initial idea was to systematize the importance of positioning and movement in basketball. Take a half court, set up the players on each team, and offense has five rounds to score before the sides switch. The main component of the game is working with, and around, zones of control created by nearby players on the same team, which prevent opponents from moving closer to the basket. This version of the game did not even have a ball represented; when a player on offense began their turn with no defenders adjacent to them, or they reached the squares under the basket, they scored. I playtested this with a few friends and worked to figure out what would keep it interesting. The main problem to figure out was simply that if both teams could move the same amount, then defense would always be able to match offensive movements 1:1, so offense would never win. Therefore, I limited defense to only being able to move 4 players on their turn. After all, defense in basketball is fairly reactive to what the offense is doing, so maybe there is some “lag” as they try to process the offensive plan and reposition.
This set of movement rules felt robust and useful to me as a foundation to build more mechanics that I could eventually start to digitize (As of writing this, I’ve been able to script the movement rules and a basic turn system into Unity). I’ve started by adding dice rolls to shots, block chances, and passing the ball, which now actually exists. There are two goals I want to accomplish as I add to this game. First, I want to make players distinct. Professional basketball is defined by star players and the wild, sometimes impossible moves they make. One avenue I want to explore is playing with stats like Blaseball did - using seeming nonsense like Thwackability to influence a player’s abilities. I am still exploring what the best path will be here, but for now I have taken a basic step in just giving players bonuses on rolls they are good at. The second goal, which is really tied up in the first, is to have options for making interesting plays and for a player/team to have something up their sleeve to use. Will this be abilities on a turn cooldown that players have? Will there be team-wide abilities? Both?
For now I’m experimenting with a card system. Hey, why not follow a trend a little, as a treat? There are offense, defense, and general cards, arranged into an offense and defense deck. When the player starts on offense, they draw three cards from their offense deck. This will be their hand for that possession. When the possession is over, they may keep one card in their hand if they have any remaining, and can then draw three defense cards to be played while they are on defense. When that possession has ended, they may again keep any one card they have not played.
The first playtest with cards was extremely valuable. First it helped in figuring out how many cards was reasonable to have in one’s hand - initially I had four drawn and no discarding happening between possessions, allowing players to draw to a max of eight (four per deck). It also showed me some mistakes I made in creating a few cards. For example, I created cards that would give the offense a guaranteed shot. I figured if it was rare enough, that would be fine! But that was not the case. First off, it is not particularly interesting even for the player on offense to just move a player inside the 3-point line and play a card. Second, current playtests involve setting up the offense and defense teams on a board; doing that for 30-45 seconds and then having to do it again within 15-20 seconds, or less, is tedious (this also made me consider creating default setups in a digital version of this game). So axe that! The game uses rolls to determine shot success now, why not just have a nice bonus instead?
Another problem this playtest showed me had to do with passing. I have been unsure what to do about passing for a while, which is what motivated the original version of the game to not even have a ball. I had decided to give the offense one free pass per possession, meaning it would automatically succeed with no roll required. I had also added a card that would give the offense another free pass, and the defense a free steal which would not work on a “free” pass. Unfortunately, passing was not happening enough to prompt the use of the free pass card. This also meant that the defense had no reason to use the free steal, because most passes ended up being free! To this end, I eliminated the free pass every possession, making the card granting one more valuable. Hopefully, this will make the steal card useful in turn, but that requires new playtests to find out.
A final note. As I’ve envisioned versions of this game, I’ve imagined a sci-fi flavored basketball game where the players on a team might have Inspector Gadget legs, or invisibility, or a hologram projector (or also are just, robots and cyborgs alongside humans). I’ve created a couple cards that I hope will reflect some of that aesthetic even as the playtests are on a colored but otherwise featureless board with checkers or pawns. Here are a few examples:
Offense - Choose one of your players adjacent to an opponent and that has not moved this turn. Your player can Jump over the adjacent opponent and land on the square opposite to where they started. This counts as their entire normal move.
Defense - Choose one of your defenders. A hard-light copy of them manifests up to two spaces away. The copy can move and act like a normal player. At the start of your next turn, remove the copy.
Any - Immediately swap two of your players’ positions.