About Big Top:

Big Top, designed by Taiki Shinzawa and published by Allplay, is an auction game where you'll bid on show-stopping acts to draw crowds to your circus, but beware - each winning bid will make your competition that much richer.

But that's not all! Even the attractions you've already won will affect bids in future auctions. Each attraction card lists a number - bid that amount in any auction to place a coin on that card and gain the points! That means you don't need to win an auction - or even WANT to win it - to benefit from bidding!

In this competitive world of circuses, you'll have to keep a close eye not just on your winnings, but on all of your opponents' bids.

Project Overview:

Development on Big Top focused on updating the game and its contents for a US audience and balancing the card content and starting conditons.

We did a small amount of content design for new starting cards, and ran updated theming and game numbers through our playtesting process.

Services Provided:


Development Diary

First, let's flash back to March of 2022. We're sitting at a table with Joe Wiggins from Allplay at the GAMA convention. "I know we were going to leave [the convention] to get dinner," he says, "but I think we should play this game first. I'll even buy you appetizers."

Needless to say, game developers will do nearly anything for free appetizers. We ordered a "Pastrami Egg Roll" (yes, we willingly admit this was a mistake) and got to work playing a pasted up version of Souroboros, the original name of Big Top. Every so often we would pause to look up the effect of a Japanese card, or to say "I have no idea if this is going to be a good decision or not, but..."

30 minutes later, the pastrami was nearly untouched (shocking, we know) and Joe was asking "So do you think you could do some balancing work on this game?"

"We're going to need to play this a lot more first. Not sure we can really wrap our heads around it yet." And that's sort of how we knew that Big Top was a winner. The economy was so odd, so interconnected that we weren't even sure how to begin modeling it with any of our conventional balancing tools.

A Balancing Act

The first step in our prototyping for Big Top was to create a new version of the game with all the numbers chopped by 10. The base game had points from 10-200, and we liked keeping the numbers as low as they could be.

With our newly chopped prototype in hand, we took the game to some local groups in the Bay Area to get feedback from fresh eyes. Reactions were extremely positive — the odd incentives to bid specific numbers and the semi-closed economy make Big Top unlike other auction games on the market.

But part of what makes Big Top great is its variability. The cards are tough to value, because winning a card doesn't mean you'll immediately score it. Instead, winning a card gives you the opportunity to then score it by making further specific bids. As you do complete cards, their powers and your amount of time left in the game will further shift the values of remaining cards, and even the flat point cards with no abilities range in points from 4 to 20.

The Ringmaster

The original Souroboros rules dealt 3 cards from the deck to each player, 2 of which started in play, and 1 of which started in their hand. Starting with cards in play gives players differing bid incentives right from the start of the game, but can lead to huge point differentials between players: a player could start with a lead of almost 30 points.

We tried a version of the game with no starting cards, but players felt the game took too long to become interesting. In the end, we decided to create a new set of balanced starting cards for each player.

So fairly late into the process, we asked Joe if we could get four new Ringmaster cards added to the card list. We thought this was an appropriate starting card for each player. What do you have in your circus before you acquire all the acts? Your master of ceremonies.

So fairly late into the process, we asked Joe if we could get four new Ringmaster cards added to the card list. We thought this was an appropriate starting card for each player. What do you have in your circus before you acquire all the acts? Your master of ceremonies.

We did some math to ensure a balance of different bids appeared on each ringmaster card so that players had different, but fair bidding incentives to begin play. And of course, The Mico knocked it out of the park with the art.

Closing Ceremonies

Last in our process was a thorough review of all the powers and the reference material for the game screens, which also serve as player aides. We still have a few final checks to go, but can't wait to get Big Top out to everyone.

A creative director once told me that delight is when you expect to be surprised and still are. That is a huge part of what we love about every one of Shinzawa-san's games. Even after reading the rules, knowing the twists that are put into each design ahead of time, you're still constantly surprised when you play them.

Brieger Creative Team