It's been way too long since I've last posted here. I just got back from Unpub5 and it was amazing, great games and great people. I brought 2 new games I was working on, Meltdown! and Asteroid Exchange. Now it's definitely smarter to playtest your games a least a little before going to Unpub but I was going to risk it. I had other prototypes with that need some more work that could have been used. I would recommend not doing this though. I got lucky that both games were not broken.
Meltdown! was the game I thought was not going to work and would either be way too hard or way too easy. It's a co-op where players must play their 4 step cards before one of the reactors goes into meltdown. Each turn players will add a cube to their stack to represent the core heating up. If anyone's stack falls the game is over. I started with 6 step cards and with adding more than 1 cube per turn. I changed it last minute because I thought it would be too hard. I thought I'd try it out anyway and if it was broken I could just stop play and try fixing it. Fortunately the game was pretty close to being balanced. The players still win a little more than I want but the stacks are wobbling when they do.
People had a lot of great feedback and thought the game worked pretty well. They had fun playing and few asked to play again. The feedback got 4/5 across the board except a 3/5 for decision making. I'm happy with those numbers for a game designed and tested only in my head until it was played.
The other game I brought, Asteroid Exchange, was broken. I thought because it was a market game it would hopefully allow for it to balance itself. I was wrong, there was a dominant strategy from the start and some of the cards I had didn't work well. I got some great feedback and think it can be a really fun game once it is fixed. The premise will be to mine and sell gems in a market. The market will be determined by how many are sold though so you'll have to lie and weasel your opponents to get the most for your gems and let them get the least for theirs.
The last game I brought was a card game I based on the Space Team App. I will probably change the name of it and retheme as it sounds like they might be working on a game of their own. I made the game to try to give the same feel as the app as you work together to complete cards. The prototype game only lasts about a minute, but people had a lot of fun with it. It was just a quick prototype I wanted to make and see if it did what I wanted. Now that I know people like it, I will make more missions for it and make it more challenging with more crazy things too. I think it will be a fast paced co-op that will act as a filler game.
Meltdown! was the game I thought was not going to work and would either be way too hard or way too easy. It's a co-op where players must play their 4 step cards before one of the reactors goes into meltdown. Each turn players will add a cube to their stack to represent the core heating up. If anyone's stack falls the game is over. I started with 6 step cards and with adding more than 1 cube per turn. I changed it last minute because I thought it would be too hard. I thought I'd try it out anyway and if it was broken I could just stop play and try fixing it. Fortunately the game was pretty close to being balanced. The players still win a little more than I want but the stacks are wobbling when they do.
People had a lot of great feedback and thought the game worked pretty well. They had fun playing and few asked to play again. The feedback got 4/5 across the board except a 3/5 for decision making. I'm happy with those numbers for a game designed and tested only in my head until it was played.
The other game I brought, Asteroid Exchange, was broken. I thought because it was a market game it would hopefully allow for it to balance itself. I was wrong, there was a dominant strategy from the start and some of the cards I had didn't work well. I got some great feedback and think it can be a really fun game once it is fixed. The premise will be to mine and sell gems in a market. The market will be determined by how many are sold though so you'll have to lie and weasel your opponents to get the most for your gems and let them get the least for theirs.
The last game I brought was a card game I based on the Space Team App. I will probably change the name of it and retheme as it sounds like they might be working on a game of their own. I made the game to try to give the same feel as the app as you work together to complete cards. The prototype game only lasts about a minute, but people had a lot of fun with it. It was just a quick prototype I wanted to make and see if it did what I wanted. Now that I know people like it, I will make more missions for it and make it more challenging with more crazy things too. I think it will be a fast paced co-op that will act as a filler game.