Honours Year

A variety of screenshots to show the (out of date) character screens, along with the game being run and played by 4 people with cards and tokens across the game.

Final test probably, and likely the best yet. Still found some small things to tweak and change, but overall the broad strokes of the desired game are all in play now and testers relayed that they both felt it was much improved from previous tests and enjoyed playing the game for it’s own merits.

Main changes to make now before PlaysBegin are:

Tested tonight with some people who haven’t seen the game since it’s earliest versions.

Game was cut short, but generally went well. Some rules hiccoughs here and there, but overall has been feeling smooth and players seemed like they had a direction they were going in.

Also tested the Haunting rule for the first time, unfortunately the only fight it was relevant in (before the game ended) was the single enemy fight in the game that’s not been updated with the new rules that keep track of dead players, and therefore Haunting did not work as intended. Due to this, I can’t tell if the rule itself is flawed/unworkable, or if it was just flawed due to being in an off-situation. Will continue to test it and find out more.

Also, I’m still feeling like there’s not enough Loot Cards in players hands, and there’s too regularly players finding themselves having nothing to steal.

The first test after a large series of significant changes to the game. The game is now much more geared towards cards that specifically encourage or force social interaction, and rather than giving players a more ensured sense of ownership over cards, has players more paranoid and with a sense of unreliability about keeping cards.

Feedback was very positive, with most of the suggestions being focused on balancing certain cards or areas, or suggesting other ideas that go along with the new theme, as opposed to outright rejecting concepts or cards.

The new method of balancing off the cards and atmosphere of the game with archetypes as well has seemed to be a success, giving players much more freedom to do what they want and feel rewarded for doing so, rather than feeling forced or pressured into committing early to specific paths or decisions.

Notes, things to change: Redirect cards Trap Master prompts wrong players Miniboss out of date Classes out of date at start of game and nicknames Con Artist rules need clarified Character screens need visually tweaked, peripherals Mask of Joker circles around rather than discarded Soulbond amulet should only trigger on damage deaths More loot cards to sit in hands, hands felt quite empty during game More ways to revive players, or to revive as an option on cards 1st boss conversation set up tone of players and dynamic

During the rework of the game, I’m trying to focus down on how the players might choose to advance or progress in the game, and whether or not they’ll want to do specific things. I feel that the previous options on cards were too wild and carefree, simply just being a massive list of options for the players that didn’t always feel relevant.

Now, however, I’ve split the usable stats, classes, rooms, quests and general choices into certain archetypes that keep them all cohesive and drive how a player might want to progress.

These are:

Combat & fighting, aggressive actions = Strength Stealing and Disrupting, improving your board state = Luck Surviving and Protection, selfish actions = Agility Puzzles and Dilemnas, group decisions and votes = Will.

Just a quick flow chart of the boss’s intermittent conversations with the players, and how their decisions might affect the future conversations and the bosses final stance towards you.

Most up to date version of the game so far, albeit it’s in the middle of a large rework of the game which should help focus the game more and re-target everything towards the players and social interaction. This means that some of the rooms or elements are either unfinished or no longer working as intended, and will soon be changed or replaced.

That said, it runs smoothly enough for now and seems to run randomly off of enough rooms that it’s not simply the same two or three rooms repeated, however there are still few enough rooms that repeats seem often enough, while missing many of the other possible rooms.

So the game was still messy, not too much got changed since the last one. I made some changes to the code and a handful of cards to correct some of the more prominent problems and the game definitely ran smoother and more interesting, with a lot more build up and interest in the game.

However, have also lost a fair amount of social interaction, with the new cards pass. In an effort to give players the chance to build themselves up and develop RPG style, I seem to have shifted the ratio notably far away from interacting with the other players. There was still tension and dissension, but seemingly less that could actually be done to each other about it.

After a fairly long discussion dissecting the past couple of tests and looking into what’s happening, I think I’ve come to a realisation: over the course of the past month or two I feel I’ve lost sight of the forest for the trees. With such a condensed development schedule and so many features to implement in line with each other, I think I’ve been getting caught up in details of certain specific aspects, such as making sure the monster fights are balanced and challenging, and making the cards varied, interesting and equally spread across the board. I seem to have lost some sight of the overall goals though, and now the game does feel less focused (i.e, it’s become more about fighting your way through monsters to get to the end of the forest, rather than travelling through the forest and needing to work together solely).

I’ve been given some suggestions, namely to focus on archetypes/playstyles (based on the classes and quests) and build the cards around that. But I think I want to take it a step further and redo a number of the rooms and even the combat system too, in an effort to change the tone of the game a bit.

I still want dice rolling and the cards as a major factor, but I feel I can afford to significantly reduce the “fight the monsters” feel that the game has, as it’s currently almost a necessity to progress. I think the game should be rewarding players for other decisions and actions as well, and monster fights should simply be one aspect of that, rather than the primary one.

Quick post today! Test was generally to test out a large amount of new features, so the game was a lot messier than usual and more clustered. I missed my Group2 test last week (have moved it to this current week) so the game is more drastically different between playtests than it ever has been before, and thus more problems have appeared than usual. This is on top of a notable redo of all the cards and the inclusion of character cards amongst some other changes, so it’s to be expected.

Players generally seemed to enjoy the changes though, liked the character creator and the inclusion of “Rogue Cards”, and were only really bothered by the problems that arised: primarily that Loot Cards ran out too early leaving players unmotivated to take action in the lategame. The game has also shifted back to being somewhat too easy, leaving a lack of risk.

A quick video just demonstrating the character creation and class selection at the beginning of the game. I wanted the players to feel even slightly connected or involved to their characters, so have given players the option of three skin tones, six character classes, and a name of their choice (with defaults in place).

It isn’t much, but I feel it is just involved enough that a player should be able to gain some attachment to their character in the early moments.

Created some class specific cards for players to choose from. There are currently 6 classes with only up to four players available in a game, in an effort to maintain an element of difference between games and some replayability. I didn’t want players to simply get used to the character classes having constant effects during the game. This should allow some variance between games and change up some of the abilities that affect the group as a whole, or interact with the game itself.

I’ve made an effort to try and avoid the classes feeling like just base bonuses to the four stats (Combat+2 etc) and have the abilities do a variety of other things that don’t make players feel locked into a certain combat/stat build.