Primrows has two main play modes: quickplay and journal play. If you tried out our demo during Steam Next Fest, or met us in-person at GDEX, quickplay was the first thing you were introduced to, but it wasn’t the first thing we developed.
The first mode we made—the only mode that existed in the classic 2010 version—was journal play.
We love journal play, but it caused a lot of issues with onboarding. So for the remake, we set out to add a quickplay mode with three goals in mind:
Easier to learn
Journal play gives Primrows an extra layer of strategic depth, but those extra layers proved challenging for newcomers. Players barely had a chance to get used to the dynamics of pruning and watering before a scorecard would swoop in and ask them to consider a whole new facet of the strategy. We needed to build a ladder to help players climb over that wall.
By pulling the scorecard completely out of the equation, we gave the player space to get familiar with the garden first. Once we introduced quickplay to our onboarding, players who went on to discover journal mode often found the extra layer to be a helpful focus instead of an intimidating obstacle.
Quicker to play
Primrows takes a lot of inspiration from board games and dice games, and because of this, journal play has inherited much of the pacing of a board game. Although this is great for when you’ve got the time to kick back and relax and really get engrossed in the game, we also wanted something for players who wanted something more bite-sized.
A three-round format compared to the ten-round journal play struck a nice balance. It’s a snappy play style that fits neatly into a coffee break, but having three rounds instead of just one makes for an experience where a player’s skill gets to shine through more than the whims of a random number generator.
Stands on its own
“Introductory mode” doesn’t need to mean “easy mode.” It was important to us that quick play would be something that stood on its own alongside journal play instead of being something that players outgrew after a week.
Although quickplay is easier for a new player to pick up compared to journal play, many players find it harder to master. Where journal play lets the player get a good score by focusing on one thing at a time, getting the highest ranks in quickplay requires you to consider the entire garden at once.
While watching playtesters, we would see them get a better understanding of the game during journal mode, and then be able to take those new skills back to quickplay to try for higher scores. We hope you’ll find the two separate modes to act like a pair of walls you can bounce back and forth off of and propel yourself ever upwards.