BARRAGE

Published by [ Cranio Creations ]

Developed by [ Cranio Lab ]

Steam

About

Barrage is a deep strategic board game set in an alternate industrial era where players lead competing companies striving to control hydroelectric power. By placing engineers, managing resources, and constructing dams, tunnels, and power plants, players harness the flow of water to generate energy and score points. Careful planning is essential, as water and action spaces are shared and highly contested. Through clever engine-building and long-term strategy, the most efficient energy empire will dominate the Alpine region.

Designing a solid achievement system

Achievements are one of my favorite design tools. They simultaneously act as generators of extrinsic motivation, social comparison mechanisms, and can be used to guide player behavior like an invisible hand. For this reason, I always advocate for including achievements in the projects I work on, even when the target audience may initially seem uninterested.

A good achievement system blends a set of aspects — or axis — that simultaneously influence motivation and performance. This approach is brilliantly described in Lucas Blair’s taxonomy here.

Expected vs. Unexpected

The first axis consists of finding a balance between expected rewards (because they are tied to obvious, foundational game dynamics or loops) and unexpected rewards (because they are associated with unusual, mastery-focused, or secondary activities). In the case of Barrage, for example, all activities related to exploring the game’s conceptual space—such as familiarizing oneself with the factions, using the Tech Tiles, and mastering the energy generation loop—are considered expected.

I also love to sneak in the usual "Visit the credits" as an unexpected reward, to create a sense of commitment towards the game and foster bonding between the players and the team.

Boring tasks

The key at this end of the axis is to reward boring and repetitive activities that the player would have done anyway, in order to encourage them to “stick with it.” Winning 1, 10, or 100 games is a clear example of this behavior.

To make things more spicy and unpredictable, I try not to stick to the plainness of “play N consecutive games,” but instead choose a specific mechanic that unfolds during each game as a “metric” to track progression. So, in a game where water drops are generated each round and move across the map, “Play 100 games” becomes “Let 1,000 water drops flow in total across your games.”

Performance vs. Mastery

I try to limit achievements tied to performance (as described in Lucas Blair’s article) because the outcome of the gameplay experience is usually already a strong indicator of this metric—especially in score-based games like Barrage. More interesting, however, are achievements focused on Mastery, as they serve as a tool to show players the potential (sometimes not immediately evident) of the game’s tools and content at their disposal. Possibly, like in this case, with one achievement per content (XO).

Meta and completion

If you create a system in which multiple comparable elements have associated achievements—such as the XOs or factions in the game—a meta-achievement like “You have unlocked all X-type achievements” can serve as a satisfying reward for a not-insignificant effort.

The final version

The achievements implemented in the shipped version of the game went through several iterations and changes, so they don’t fully reflect the original design. Fortunately, the team responsible for implementing the achievements preserved much of the design work done up to that point :)