Ian got a shipment of professionally printed stickers from Frontier Label this week for his game Taktika. They look really nice and save Ian a whole lot of time printing out and cutting his own. On Tuesday, Jon and I helped Ian apply stickers to the discs to make a few sets. It seemed to take 10-15 minutes per set to apply the stickers. Ian is gearing up to send a shipment of games to his distributer Brown Box who in turn is filling orders at Thought Hammer. Go pre-order yours today!
Dec 042008
Nov 262008
At BGG.CON, both Ian and I participated in the Proto Alley, where designers tested their prototypes. Here are some snippets about my games:
Venture Forth
I taught Venture Forth to Patrick, Ben, and Gil. I was still a bit rough on the explanation of this game, but before you knew it we were up and playing. The game lasted about an hour for four players.
Theme: Some feedback I received was about the theme. The game is a fantasy adventure game and that genre comes with a lot of baggage. Players expect experience points, killing monsters for gain, gearing up your characters, etc. My game has none of these. I am trying to break new ground, but it is difficult when the feedback I get is that the game is not like the tried and true dungeon crawls. I’m sticking with my vision, but I am open to tweaking it to get more acceptance.
Level Cards: The new system for level cards worked, but as Patrick pointed out, it could be simpler.
Tension: The other feedback was about tension. You just go through the motions of your turn with very few points of suspense. The punishments from the enemies that you encounter is not that severe, so traveling down a path with one isn’t so scary. I suppose I could crank up the consequences on some of the enemies. Other than that I will have to really think this one out.
Stellar Underworld
I played this one with Ian and Brad. I explained the rules fairly well, and there weren’t many questions to come up. The final score was 100 (Ian), 101 (Brad), and 102 (Dan). I was pleased that the scores were close because we all had different strategies. Brad took a lot of sectors, mostly the resource generators. Ian took a few sectors for their abilities, as did I.
After the game was over, Brad was a little quiet on the feedback. He did suggest a desire to be able to ship to any sector, not just your own. After thinking about it for awhile, and remembering other people giving the same feedback, I decided that I needed to address that. The current plan is to allow shipping to opponent’s sectors for twice the amount of assets. Thematically, it would make sense because you have to “outbid” them on their contract. I don’t think it is a viable startegy, but it does give the player an extra option.
Design Tip #1: Don’t tell the players they can’t do something. Tell them that they can do it, but it will cost ‘em!
Design Tip #2: Fine, tell the players they can’t do something. BUT, make a special power that allows them to do it
Nov 112008
I just wanted to let everyone know that I have just recently created a blog specifically for my company Sky Castle Games. I will be posting stuff that directly concerns print runs, expansions, and anything else I want there. I’m not going to stop posting here. In fact, I have decided to push myself to post much more often.
Oct 142008
I just received word that Monkey Lab will be delayed until Spring 2009. That is a real disappointment for me because I really was looking forward to having it be available for BGG.con and to a lesser extent Christmas. I’m not sure when “Spring 2009″ is, but in my experience anticipating boardgame releases it usually means “Early Summer 2009″. I suppose that all I can do is wait and work on my ideas for the expansion.
Sep 152008
I am excited to announce that my game Monkey Lab is going to be published by AEG. I have been waiting on letting the general public know, but I think enough information has been let out already and it is a few months away from being released, so I figured it was time.
So, let me tell you a little bit about Monkey Lab. You play as escaped research monkeys who return to the lab to free your monkey brethren. Since you don’t have access to the keys, you must use the items around the lab to break, pry, pick, and smash the cages open. You score points by releasing monkeys from the cages, or by standing around a newly opened cage and taking credit. You can work with other players to free a deluge of monkeys through clever card play, or you can work against them by invoking your monkey combat or by sending the guard thier way.
AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group) is publishing the game as they have just started their expansion from CCGs and RPGs to the boardgame publishing world. They have recently released Tomb which has already gotten great reviews. I’ve been privy to the work they’ve done on Monkey Lab so far and it looks great! I got to see the drawings of the monkey figures – Who doesn’t want a game with monkey pawns? Everything looks awesome and they did a great job bringing the game to life.
The release date is still cloudy, but my hope is that it will be available before BoardgameGeek.con so I can see people play and enjoy it. I will be posting some stories about the making of Monkey Lab in the coming weeks either here on on BGG, so stay tuned!
~ Dan Manfredini
Sep 112008
Argghhhh!!! Hurricane Ike is causing Texas A&M University to shut down this weekend! Protocon takes place on campus and is canceled! I’ve been preparing my games for months now for the design contest, and now they’ve got nowhere to be shown. The convention is not even going to be rescheduled!
Sep 032008
I was feeling a little concerned about my game prototype Stellar Underworld. This feeling came from some of the feedback from the guys from Oklahoma, and from a botched playtest with some “improved” rules based on that feedback. All of that, and I feel pressure to get this game ready for the Protocon design contest.Well, last night I decided to try out some simple changes and see how that fared. We played and I am happy to report that it played really nicely!
Here are some of the things I addressed:
Your ship is your ship – In the previous versions, your ship could be stolen if a player sent enough henchmen to do it, though you could also defend it if you wanted to. The system worked out ok, but the feedback I was getting was that it didn’t feel like you owned your ship. The “comandeering” rules for stealing are no longer in effect. You can only use your ship and the two neutral ships. Suprisingly, this worked out pretty nicely. And it was one less thing that players had to worry about (keeping enough henchmen around to defend a ship).
A nice side effect of this is that when you used your ship, you could leave cargo aboard without fear of thievery. No need for the warehouse. However, when you use the neutral ships, you almost always have to use the warehouse. The usage of the neutral ships are amplified now that other players ships are off limits to commandeering.
This is a perfect case of the development philosophy “How much can I remove from the game, and have it still be the same game?”
Henchmen are worth less – In the previous version, a recruiting strategy seemed to be a main path to victory. Henchmen were worth the same as completed contracts, and they provided many other benefits. Now, they are worth half as much as contracts. Players still benefit from having a lot of them, but now they aren’t “double dipping”.
There were other feedback points that I may or may not address, but for now I think the game has improved. I just to make a new bigger board, and a few other cosmetic changes, and I think I’m ready to go!
Aug 132008
SPINNERS AND SPACESHIPS
John, Dan, and I met last night for play testing. John brought some very cool spinners and tops made from sculpty clay. The tops are kind of a cone shaped hat that sits on top of a base that is placed in the center of a circle. The circle is then divided up into sections and each section is given a number. The spinner tops represent crew members that can be assigned to Spaceship systems (such as thrusters, weapons, shields, etc…). Some of the tops have one dot to indicate a result, and some have an arc on them increase the chance of landing on two results that are then added together. There will also be tops that have multiple dots on them. One of the very cool things about this is that when a ship is damaged a damage marker is placed on the system that blocks out a particular result. Dan voiced a concern that the spinner tops, and systems when all boiled down still act like dice. My initial concern was just that I did not really like the idea of just looking a spinner with a bunch of numbers on them, but would rather have the sections have icons that represented different results or actions. This is still very early in its development, but I really look forward to seeing the game that John builds up around these mechanics.
VENTURE FORTH
Next we played Dan’s game Venture Fourth in which players are attempting to fulfill their characters personal goals. All of the many different Characters in the game want to do something different. And when they get to do what the want, they go up a level which earns you victory points. The game is a very nice take on the adventure genre. You don’t just score points for killing things, only if that is one of the goals of a character in your party.
The game took about an hour to play, which was about 15 minutes longer than Dan would have liked. I agreed with Dan that there was a point near the very end of the game that it could have ended a little earlier. I was getting a little frustrated that all of the spots to play cards to get a coin were getting filled up before I could to get to them. I know there is already a solution for these issues percolating in Dan’s head.
This is one of the first games that Dan showed me when we first started having game design meetings over 2 years ago. The game has radically changed in mechanics but I think Dan has kept the spirit of the game that he wanted to create intact. All of the hard work that Dan has put into the game really shows.
ASCENDING EMPIRES
The last game of the night was my game Ascending Empires. I got to playtest it last Friday night at Great Hall Games with Jen, Jake, and Jeff. From that test I made quite a few changes that really seemed to pay off in our test last night. In the earlier versions of the game the Landing and Launching of Starships was a separate action. I switched over to a movement points system in which now you can spend a point to land, launch, or flick a starship. This I think improved the flow of movement a little. However, having a higher movement rate now seems a little more powerful than before. I also took out the restriction of only being able to recruit one troop to planet. That is just one less rule to remember, and this did not seem to change the overall game play much at all.
In previous playtests we have seen a tendency for players to just stay on their planets and build stuff, and only put Starships in space when they need more planets to build stuff on. Dan and I had done some brainstorming last week and come up with all sorts of mechanics that would encourage players to have more ships in space. One mechanic we talked about was a token that player could claim when they were the only player with ships in space. At the beginning of that players turn he gains a victory point if he had this token. I think that might have worked but it felt very forced. Yesterday it hit me that one little rule might fix the problem. The rule is: A planet may not recruit, build, or develop technology while enemy ships are in orbit of the planet. This is called blockading. We played with this rule last night and suddenly we all had ships out in space. Blockades were used several times during the game, but just the threat of being blockaded was enough to always keep some ships ready for combat.
At the end of the game it looked as if John was running away with the victory but we were all surprised to find out that the scores were John-25, Me-24, and Dan-23. I felt very satisfied with the game. I still need to tweak the tech trees just a little but I’m very happy that the changes I made did not break the game.
Jul 302008
There are two main states of game development:
Exhilaration – You have a list of some issues in your game that need to be addressed. You’ve come up with a solution to one of the problems on paper. You think it is so elegant and will solve all of your problems. You, sir, are a genius! You live in the land of happiness and can’t wait to try out your idea.
Despair – Your elegant solution failed completely. It made the game unbalanced. It made the game broken. It made babies cry. Now you must head back to the drawing board to face that annoying issue you were trying to resolve in the first place.
So, this process continues over and over. New issues replace old issues. New fixes break old fixes. You become an expert on your game, and you have tinkered with every aspect of the design. One day everything everything falls into place and you have a game. Sometimes this takes you by surprise. In the end, all the highs and lows were worth it.
Jul 142008
Today I received some feedback from Mike and the guys at the Royal Steamwork Society about Stellar Underworld. Here are some of the main points I pulled from it:
Rules Clarifications
Can contraband assets be delivered in multiples?
Yes. This will have to be explicitly stated in the rulebook. Contraband assets are different from other assets in that they don’t require any contracts to score them (because contraband is always in demand). This leads to some extra rules in dealing with them, and I guess this area had some confusion.
When can a sector ability be used and how often?
For the most part they are used during the docking bay ability phase. I will need to clarify this a bit more. I also plan on adding a glossary for each sector to answer any specific questions.
Strategy
Is acquiring henchmen too powerful of a strategy?
There are two methods of scoring points in the game: recruiting henchmen and completing contracts. It has been suggested that taking a strategy of heavy recruitment is the best way to go. I know that henchmen are important because they not only score points, but also provide the manpower to activate abilities. I don’t believe you can win by ignoring them, or by solely focusing on them, but I need to test this out.Test: Play a test game where one person only scores via henchmen.
Test: Play a test game where one person does not recruit any more henchmen.Are warehouses necessary?
An interesting occurrence happened during the blind playtest: In their second game, the players completely ignored one feature of the game because they deemed it too weak for its cost. The feature is the warehouse. The warehouse allows you to move assets around more effectively, keep them safe from commandeering, and set up more efficient scoring. The cost for loading an asset into the warehouse is one henchmen. You also have to pay the cost for unloading too. In all of the other playtests, everybody used their warehouses. I am always on the lookout for dominant strategies, but I failed to look for utterly weak ones. Maybe the warehouse is too weak. I haven’t really thought about it, but I will need to investigate more.
Test: Play a test game with one player does not use his warehouse.
Theme
Players don’t feel like they own their ship
In the game, each player has one ship and there are two neutral ships. Owning a ship means that if someone tries to commandeer (steal) it, you can defend it and try to stop them. Other than that, owning your ship means nothing. In real life, owning an object really means nothing either except that you feel like you would need to defend it (by force, lawsuit, etc.) if someone tried to steal it. That was my reasoning, but it doesn’t seem to come across to well in the setting of a game. Especially in a game setting where stealing is an everyday occurrence.
Possible Solution: I think that stripping out the idea of owning a ship is the way to go. I have an idea on how this would work, but would like to experiment with it first.
Components
The board is too small for some components
The board is a map of a space station with a space in the center for the “bank” of henchmen and contracts. I underestimated how many of these things there would be and it does look cluttered.
Solution: This one’s easy! I think I can just reduce the number of pieces or make the board bigger where it needs to be.
Frustration Points
Replenishing no assets or no Contracts at a sector
Frustration: The production system in this game uses a random method that could result in the sector gaining no contracts or no assets. Having no contracts at a sector means that you can’t score points there, and having no assets at a sector means that when you arrive there you’ll have nothing to ship back on the return trip. Statistically, it shouldn’t happen that often, but when it does, it is really frustrating. I have yet to determine if this actually hinders the player or if it is a psychological issue.Possible Solution: I need to add more flexibility to this system, but I’m not sure how to do this just yet.
Having limited end game options
Frustration: The game uses a system where each player has an identical set of cards. Each turn you play one card a turn until no players have cards. This system inherently causes the end game to have limited options.
Possible Solution: Make the end game occur before the players reach their last card, possibly third to last. This will still give players choice on the last turn. Of course, this solution will cause a new frustration: player wanting to play the rest of their hand!
Not being able to ship directly from sector to sector
Frustration: The core idea of the game is that you always have to stop at the space port when traveling from sector to sector. There is no direct route. If there was a direct route, there would be little reason to use the space port (the whole point of the game).
Possible Solution: Give each player one or two Direct Route Cards to allow this to happen. It should appease player frustration enough, and answer that question “Why can’t I just go from here to there?” The best “abilities” in games come from easing player frustration.