Senior game designer for Exploding Kittens Inc., Ian Clayman, dives deep into how to play Survivor: The Tribe Has Spoken, working with Survivor host Jeff Probst, and the gameplay philosophies behind it all.
Exploding Kittens Inc., the card game developers behind the game of the same name, have recently released a new game based on the reality TV series Survivor. Their latest card game titled, Survivor: The Tribe Has Spoken, emulates the experience of the TV show in the comfort of the players’ living room. I spoke with Ian Clayman, a senior game designer behind the project, about the details of the game.
GamingTrend:
So what is your role at Exploding Kittens?
Ian Clayman, Exploding Kittens Inc:
So I am a senior game designer on the team. I actually started off in 2019 as an intern, and then in March of 2020, joined the team as a full-time game designer, and over the course of the last four years now, I've sort of worked my way up the chain.
GamingTrend:
Awesome, awesome. So what's this game you're telling me about?
Ian:
Yeah, so the game is called Survivor: The Tribe Has Spoken. It is the first officially licensed Survivor card game, and it's actually a project that we co-designed with the host of the show, Jeff Probst. So, Jeff and our CEO, Elan Lee, have known each other for about 10 years, kind of around the time that Exploding Kittens started as a company, and they've always wanted to work together, but the opportunity had never kind of materialized until about two years ago when we saw a really great window to collaborate. The idea behind the game is that it is essentially bringing the Survivor experience to your living room. So all of the betrayals and alliances and hidden immunity idols that everyone knows from the show, in a mass market tabletop package.
So you're playing to be the sole survivor at the end of the game. You do that by collecting and playing cards going around the table until eventually someone draws a tribal council card, at which point we actually provide players with a script co-written by Jeff that walks them through how to run that tribal council experience from the show. Players will make arguments for who they think should be voted out. They get a chance to play vote cards using a specially designed component built into the box of the game, and eventually, at the end of that tribal council, one or more players get voted out.
Everybody is essentially playing as a tribe of two, former survivor contestants, people from the entire almost 25 year history of the show, old era contestants, new era contestants, young, old, heels, faces, kind of the whole gamut of the survivor history. So if you're a fan of the show, you will definitely recognize most, if not all, of those characters, essentially, you're playing as. So, everyone has essentially two lives. Once both of your characters have been voted out, you are out of the game. And what happens then is, once you're down to only two players left standing, we move into the final tribal council, where the last two players essentially have to make arguments to everyone else they eliminated along the way why they deserve to win.
GamingTrend:
Okay, awesome. It sounds like it really encapsulates the survivor experience from the show. How many cards are there in total?
Ian:
So there are up to six players in the game. So there's 12 of what we call the survivor character cards, two per player. I want to say between 60 and 72 but I'll get you that exact number after this.
Editor's note: It was later confirmed that “There are 12 Survivor Character Cards and 67 Action Cards in the game.”
GamingTrend:
Could you give me some examples of what these like, some special cards and how to play them?
Ian:
Yeah. So one of the cards that's a real favorite, it is ‘Sorry For You.’ So the idea is that there's a number of cards that allow you to actually steal a card out of another player's hand, and even as part of the basic turn order. The very first thing you have to do on your turn is steal a card from another player. We make a joke in the instructions that you're always going to make enemies playing Survivor. So, first thing you have to do on your turn is pick somebody else at the table and take a card from them. 'Sorry for you' essentially is similar to the nope card in Exploding Kittens, where if someone tries to take a card from you, you reveal a 'Sorry For You' card from your hand. Not only do they not get a card from you, they actually have to discard an extra card on top of that.
GamingTrend:
Oh, a spicy play.
Ian:
Yeah, it's a lot of fun. It really kind of immediately changes up the dynamics at the table when one of those comes out. Another set of cards that I really love are the reward challenge cards. This was our attempt to bring an element of the physical challenges from the show to the table. So, they're all about pitting either two players or three players or everyone at the table against each other. An example I can give is, we have one called ‘It's A Numbers Game,' and the idea is every player at the table is going to hold out between one and five fingers at the same time, the player who holds out the lowest unique number wins the challenge. So let's say you and I are playing, we count down from three, and we both hold out one finger each, but Elan held out two fingers. He would win the game because it's the lowest unique number. So it's kind of a really interesting mind game that we actually tell people in the instructions: you know, this is your opportunity to make deals, psych people out, find ways to mess with them before you have this big moment come together.
GamingTrend:
So there are these team dynamics that can form, how would that work? How would teams, kind of like coagulate together?
Ian:
Yeah, so there are some cards that encourage team building as part of the rules as written. We have a card that basically says you pick another player and you each get to steal a card from someone who is not your temporary ally, but just by nature of the Survivor experience, it's all about team building. And, we really relied on Jeff to help guide us on what makes for a really engaging social dynamic. Obviously, with his experience, he really knows how people think and how to manipulate them in certain directions. So even something as simple as that rule, where you have to steal a card at the start of your turn, we see players where, start of the game, they'll pick somebody else to steal from, and they're immediately set against each other. We see some players who turn around and say, “Well, I'll let you steal a card from me on your turn, if I can then steal a card from you on my turn,” and now they've kind of formed a little unofficial Alliance. Short of anything that would break the game, we kind of let the players figure out how they want to handle those alliances and betrayals at the table.
GamingTrend:
Okay, so it's sort of like a social sandbox.
Ian:
Exactly. We have a big thing at Exploding Kittens, and it's kind of our mission statement, which is: we don't make games that are fun. We make games that make the people you're playing with fun. And that kind of sandbox mentality folds right into that mission we wanted to. And build a set of tools that players can use to kind of create their own moments with as few guard rails as possible.
GamingTrend:
Would you say that's the main philosophy y'all brought into this game?
Ian:
Yeah, I'd say so. My philosophy as a designer, personally, is: I don't want to just make an experience, because if you craft an experience, it's always going to be the same thing every time you play. What I like to do is essentially hand players a toolbox, and say, here's the tools, here's some kind of very vague guidelines as to the things that you can make. Go out and make some cool stuff.
GamingTrend:
I love that philosophy. I play a lot of Exploding Kittens with my friends, and one thing I really admire about that game is how every match is a little different. It doesn't fall into the pitfall of: it's like a bunch of different set categories, and then you're kind of cycling through those. It feels very fresh every game, and so I'm excited to try out this new game because it sounds like you really took that philosophy and really blew it up and made it the main focus.
Ian:
Yeah, well, it was really easy to do. I mean, the Survivor franchise lends itself really well to that idea. You know, in crafting the show every season, Jeff and also Elan, because he's actually built out a lot of content for the more recent Survivor seasons, the two of them really have designed the show and the property in a way that they are seeding ideas and resources for players to find and figure out how to use on their own. And you know, Jeff brought that exact same energy to this project where it was all about, how do we make this massive island-sized experience feel just as big at game night?
GamingTrend:
So to kind of change the subject or circle around back to Jeff, what role did he play in creating the game? Could you give me some examples of his direction throughout the process?
Ian:
Yeah, Jeff basically became an unofficial member of our dev team for the entire process, he was incredibly involved, not just from the high-level vision, but down to the day-to-day dev work. So obviously he came into this as kind of the historian and Guru when it comes to all things Survivor. So we would always look to him when we had questions about, well, what previous contestants do we include? Or is there a name that we can give this particular card that is a reference to maybe a quote from the show that the fans will recognize and know that we put in the extra effort on their behalf? But even just beyond the font of knowledge that he is, he's just a really savvy game designer. You know, Survivor as a show is basically one giant social engineering game, and he brought all of that really phenomenal design sensibility to our team as part of the collaboration.
GamingTrend:
Like you said before, he's bringing all of that, psychological knowledge and how to get players to really, kind of, get at each other's throats and team up and create interesting dynamics. So that's amazing.
GamingTrend:
Who did the art?
Ian:
We have a really great artist on our team named Paul Short. He was the lead artist on this one. We also worked with a phenomenal contractor named Ash Gonzalez, who has been helping us out on a few projects recently, and the two of them worked on everything from hard art to box design, they actually helped also build out the companion website that we are launching very soon. This is actually a guided tribal council experience where Jeff is actually hosting that part of the game for you. So we got him in the recording booth, and he gives you kind of a whole rundown of the process, from start to finish, chiming in and guiding players through. So they helped build out all of the assets for that website.
GamingTrend:
Do we have a general release window on that?
Ian:
It should be coming out sometime in the next two weeks, is my hope.
GamingTrend:
Okay, we'll keep an eye out for it. Just wanted to bring up the art, because it really oozes the atmosphere of Survivor. They did a terrific job.
Ian:
Yeah, that was a combination of, obviously their talent, Jeff's input as our expert on the the tone, and also our partners at CBS, who were sort of guiding us through development as well, and giving us feedback along the way as to what they felt the super fans would expect from the look and feel.
GamingTrend:
How long did this game take to make?
Ian:
So we were working on it for about a year and a half in total.
GamingTrend:
What's next for the Exploding Kittens team?
Ian:
Yeah, we have a really exciting project coming out this year. I don't know if you're aware, but it's actually Exploding Kittens, 10 year anniversary. So, I technically can't say exactly what the project is, but I can let you know that we have a very exciting game coming out this year to celebrate that ten years of Exploding Kittens.
GamingTrend:
Oh, I'm excited! I'm not going to press you, but I assume it's sort of related.
Ian:
I think it would be safe to assume that it's related.
GamingTrend:
Speaking of upcoming possible content, is there a possibility of getting extension packs for the The Tribe Has Spoken game?
Ian:
So it's something we've talked about. One thing we noticed in particular is from the day we announced the project, and people got their eyes on the 12 previous contestants we were including in the box. One of the biggest reactions we've seen are people basically putting together their top twelves. The Survivor fandom is really passionate about, like, who are contestants who really play well off of each other? Or who would be rivals? Even if they didn't necessarily appear on the same season together. So we haven't really started to explore the expansion space yet. We kind of wanted to give the game a little bit of breathing room and see where it lands, but we have some ideas about where to take it next.
GamingTrend:
How long does a game of The Tribe Has Spoken usually take?
Ian:
So depending on the player count and how much table talk is happening, we recommend on the box that it's usually somewhere between 30 and 60 minutes.
GamingTrend:
Okay, so, not too time consuming compared to other big card and box games.
Ian:
Yeah, this is still a mass market card game. It is the closest Exploding Kittens has really come to ever dipping a toe in the hobby game space where longer play times are kind of the norm. But, we still wanted to make sure that it's the type of experience that our audience would expect.
GamingTrend:
Is there interest in continuing into that direction?
Ian:
I think that we're always looking for how best to serve our fans and the type of experience that they are looking for. If this game does well, and we kind of get that feedback from our audience that they are excited about more experiences like this. It's certainly a direction that we would look at.
GamingTrend:
What moment stood out to you in your play?
Ian:
Yeah so this would be early in the process, basically, once we had built out the first solid prototype of the game, that we really felt like, you know, it's obviously still a long way to go, but we feel good about where this is at. Now, let's start to try breaking it. We got together and it was me, three other employees from Exploding Kittens, and Jeff all playtesting the game. And, early into this particular game, two of the Exploding Kittens employees had kind of formed a very loose alliance, and it was pretty obvious that they weren't going to go after each other when tribal council came up. Jeff ended up being the one to draw the tribal council card, which basically meant he was in charge of reading the script and leading the conversation, and within two minutes of starting this conversation, he had completely turned the two of them against each other. As you can imagine, he knows what he's doing, and he knows how to pick at the things that will kind of unravel those strands, and the two of them start arguing about, “Oh, well, you said that you were going to give Ian a card, but you actually gave someone else a card instead,” “Oh, that's not true. Like, I plan on still giving him a card.” Like, they just started going at it, and I glance over it Jeff, and he has the biggest smile on his face. Obviously, I knew from the moment I met him that he was just a really smart, really engaged designer. But that moment in particular, I remembered thinking: oh, this is going to be something magical.
GamingTrend:
Emergent gameplay in the form of psychological warfare. That is very neat. I love that.
Ian:
That could almost be the motto for Survivor as an entity.
GamingTrend:
True, true. That was the last of my questions. Thank you so much for just being here and doing this interview.
Huge thanks to Ian for the interview, and another thanks to Rowan from PR for helping out! Stay tuned to GamingTrend for the review of Survivor: The Tribe Has Spoken! If you're interested, check out the game on the Exploding Kittens website!