This is Chris’ game that we playtested on Tuesday.
Overview
We only tested the basic functionality of the game so a full review of it cannot be made. What we did test was the basic acquisition, moral influence, and movement of the characters. The game consists of a board with buildings and streets. In each building, there are characters that have three moral traits. These traits are one of seven which are either in the good or evil state. The object of the game is to change the characters so that more of them are matching your hidden alignment.
Critique
We were given two actions each turn. These actions could be used to move one space, recruit a character, or turn a character. That is fairly simple, but the real problem for me was the board evaluation. With those actions, you must first see what is possible for you to do. You have to look at the traits on your characters, the traits on the buildings, the traits of those who you want to turn, the good/evil alignment for those traits, and to see if anybody else owns those characters. There is a lot of looking around. Once you enumerate all of those possibilities, you must come up with some heuristic to determine your move. Right now, the game has these mini-goals: don’t leave your people in the street, turn people to your alignment, and recruit. If you can do those things on your turn, then you’re in good shape.
Right now, there is not a lot of bang for the buck. Either lower the buck (complexity), or increase the bang (interesting choices). That is just my initial impression of it based on the incomplete game.
I do have some ideas to reduce complexity without totally stripping the game down to nothing. Mark Kreitler (who may be rejoining us in a few months) once told me that you shouldn’t force complex realistic mechanics in your game if you can get away with just the essence of it. Right now, your game has a very literal translation of moral converting. Characters have multiple vices and virtues, just like real life. Characters with a bad trait can convert another one, just like real life. Like-traited characters can be recruited (made friends with), just like real life. My idea is that the game retains the good/evil conversions, but maybe not with the movement, “owned” character, or tons of traits. An example of this idea can be found in games like Othello where you convert based on location to opposite pieces. That is a very basic example, but the point it that the goals you want to achieve with this theme can be approached in a different manner.
As it stands right now, you have a lot of challenges ahead, and I’m glad you decided to proceed in steps to test out the viability of different aspects of your game. It’s good to have a strong framework to build the rest of your game on.