The gameplay involves managing your hand of cards as well as you can. Three cards are always in play: two determine the speed and direction of your sled; the third acts as a brake. And the modular track allows for a wide variety of course layouts and difficulties.
Soon, the Lamont Brothers' game publishing company Fragor Games will release a second race game. This one, Savannah Tails, finds ostrichs racing across the African savannah (an area of grassland with scattered trees).
Savannah Tails grew out of Snow Tails when the Lamonts' original idea for treating curves in the race course did not work out. The brothers liked the portion of the game they had to remove and have turned it into a complete, but somewhat simpler, race game.
Savannah Tails was released at the Essen Toy Fair in October 2009. Only 1,000 copies of the game were produced.
Fraser Lamont answered some questions about Snow Tails and Savannah Tails.
How did the idea for Snow Tails originally come about?
We were over for a family holiday in Lapland and were all keen to do some dog-sledding. It was a magnificent experience, hurtling through the snow in minus 40 and deep snow, with only one other sled in sight (and no others in sight when Gordon's dogs took a wrong turn).
As usual with any kind of quirky activity, we starting talking afterwards about the possibility of turning it into a game.
The movement system in Snow Tails is absolutely top-notch. Can you talk a bit about how that was developed?
The idea for having left and right dogs came about right after the dog-sledding, but it was some while after that before we started work on a prototype. The initial prototype had two right dogs and two left dogs, but no brake. After a few turns, we ditched the back dogs and put in the brake to produce the movement system that was used in the final game.
We knew we were onto a winner, because we preceded to play it all evening on a penciled out track with a couple of buttons as sleds!
Were there any parts of the game that were particularly difficult to design?
The corners were initially a different design. Initially, the stronger your drift the tighter you could take the corner. (The corners looked like any other race game.) This caused difficulty by producing a different movement system from the straights, and there was huge confusion when changing between a straight and a corner.
The breakthrough came when we kept the same movement for the corner, but changed the layout of the corners instead.
What do you enjoy most about playing Snow Tails?
There is always a point in Snow Tails when you can pull off a really clever, unexpected move -- this is due to the freedom involved in playing sets of cards and also taking dents when others expect you to play safe. If you don't finish with at least one dent, you weren't really trying.
For Savannah Tails, you moved about as far away from the Arctic Circle as possible, to the African savannah. How did this new game come about?
Remember those difficult corners that I mentioned? Well, they were colour-coded at the time. It gave us the idea of using colour cards to determine which lane you landed on. When we started developing it, we realised that it would still appeal to gamers, but would also be easier than Snow Tails for casual gamers to pick up. Gordon then came across footage of an ostrich race which made us laugh so hard we knew we had found the theme.
Can you describe the gameplay of Savannah Tails?
In a nutshell: you have a hand of four cards and play one on your turn . The number tells you how many spaces you move and the colour tells you which lane you have to finish on (there are four lanes on the course, each a different colour).
You can pick up bonuses throughout the course by passing through waterholes and there are a number of "helpful" animals to avoid. After that, it's a race to the finish line!
One of the playtesters described it as being the boardgame equivalent of Mario Kart, and I think that is not a bad comparison.
It sounds like there are a lot of clever obstacles in Savannah Tails -- what are some of your favorites?
I think our favourite animal would have to be the warthog. When you hit the warthog you have to discard your current hand of cards and redraw a new one. We like this because it can be used to help you if you plan properly, by getting rid of a hand with a poor spread of numbers.
Our favourite obstacle is the rope bridge, 'cause it looks so darn good!
Every now and then, an ostrich needs a drink -- what happens at the watering holes?
When passing through a waterhole, an ostrich can make one of his bonuses available for use. There are six bonuses and you play with three in each game.
The bonuses do a variety of things, such as "boinggg," which allows you to jump over any obstacles for one turn, or "bird brain," which increases your hand size by one.
Some of the waterholes are more difficult to reach, so you have to make decisions if it is worth your while going out of your way to go through them.
