Player Elimination and Folding

Poker has player elimination, meaning that if you go down to $0, you’re eliminated from the game. That makes sense for a gambling game and Pandante does have a mode that lets you play that way, but it’s a really undesirable quality when it comes to fun factor. It’s a more social and fun experience if everyone is involved in the game.

Folding is when you give up on the current hand and sit the rest of it out, but you’re still in the game for the next hand. It makes sense for this option to exist, but if it’s smart play to fold a huge percentage of the time, like way over 50% of the time, then it’s problematic for the same reason as player elimination: there’s too much time over the course of a game where you’re not involved.

Removing player elimination and greatly reducing folding are good design goals in and of themselves. For Pandante, these design goals were much more important than usual though. Remember, the core concept is that you can claim things to be true and they become true unless someone calls you out. That concept doesn’t actually work if too many other players have already folded this hand or if too many players were eliminated from the game. We want everyone involved and still playing so that everyone can participate in calling out your lies, or in choosing to let you get away with them. That’s the fun!

Pandante doesn’t have player elimination unless you play the seriousface gambling mode. In the regular mode though, the game ends when any player ends a gambit (that’s what each round of play is called) with more than X gold. X depends on how many players are in the game. No matter how little gold you have, you always still have a chance of winning. If you win several gambits in a row, you’re denying the leading player from getting any more gold and you can always make a comeback. In words, Pandante has no lame duck situation: a situation where you're so far behind that you can't win the game, yet you're still stuck playing it. That's an important thing to avoid in game design.