Nearly there (hopefully)!

Again, been doing some playtesting and finetuning of my game.

I playtested the game again, and came up with these rules:

1. Players starts with five cards each, soldiers and rations, each with a value between 1 and 4.

2. Players simultaneously play one soldier and one ration. Rations power up the soldiers, so if you have a solider of 2 and a ration of 1, you have 3 power. 

3. Players simultaneously roll their die, with their die’s value trying to beat the value of their opponent’s soldier and ration. So, in this instance, both die are higher than the opponent’s soldiers and rations, so both players win. 

4. If players win the die roll, they win a tile to be placed on the map number that corresponds with the tile number. Each player has their own pile of tiles, so that each player has their own colour.  If you draw a tile that has a number that has already been played, players roll their dice to determine who gets influence over that area. 

 

5. Play ends when the map has been filled, with the person with the most tiles on the map being the winner!

So, these were the rules that the playtest bred. We played around with different rules like each player having ten dice each and if they lose a die roll battle, they would lose a die. If a player lost all their die, the game would end. We found that this stopped people from wanting to roll their dice so the game did not progress. We also found that the dwindling resources made the game end too quickly. We also played around with the idea of building the map cooperatively but realised I would have to rethink the battle mechanic if I took that route, because battling other players makes no sense if you are cooperating to build the map,so the competitive nature of seeing who has the most tiles on the map stayed as is. We also found that we had to weaken the power of soldiers, because there were some in the deck that were power of 4, and teaming them up with a ration of 2 meant that they could not be beaten at all with a six sided die.

These mechanics worked and made sense but my playtester and I thought the game missing something that would bring the whole experience together and make it more fun. We looked at the game Fluxx, and looked at the types of cards that this game had. One type we liked the idea of was the Action Cards, that allow players to draw more cards, swap their hands with other players, etc). So, I thought that maybe in the next prototype, I would implement this, but we weren’t really sure if this would be enough to improve the game. This is the point where we were a little stuck with what that ‘something’ was that the game needed.

Fluxx’s action cards. These action cards assist the player in progressing as well as impeding the progress of other players. I would use similar cards in my game. Source

So, admitting defeat (kinda) I got Chris to playtest my game. The suggestions that were given were:

1. To have players maybe try to ‘block’ each other’s attacks, or weaken attacks somehow
2. To have players still working on building the map, but allowing players to place map tiles where ever they like on the map, with the game rewarding players for making certain shapes on the map (eg. if a player makes a T shape on the map, they would get 6 points). Individual tiles would still be worth one point.
3. He agreed with the idea of using some Action cards to make play more exciting.

The new map building mechanic, with players building shapes on the map is like the game Blokus, where players are given shaped tiles to place on a board to gain influence and mess up other peoples’ progress, so I liked this suggestion, because this is a game I have played before and enjoyed the strategic nature of.

Blokus. Source

 

I feel like the mechanics of the game are nearly there, but I will need to prototype and play test the game again with the Action Cards and new mechanics. At this point, it seems that this game would work best as a two player game.

It seems that the art and themes of the game have taken a ‘backseat’ because the mechanics of the game have taken much longer than I have anticipated because apparently designing games is very hard! Perhaps I would take a leave out of Fluxx or Cards Against Humanity’s books and have the design/style of the game be very simple and easy to understand. Maybe I would stray away from the dystopian theme and have just colours or textures instead. I guess it depends how much time I have left (not a lot!)

The Fluxx cards are simple, with simple illustrations and a colour scheme, so that each different card type has a different coloured stripe, so that you can instantly tell what type of cards you have. Source

 

That’s about it this week. I welcome any comments or suggestions to help get this game over the line! 🙂