Alien Destruction
Over the last week I played three more games of Terran League of Defense Robots (which also has a lot of other names), and one more game of The Age of Vikings.
TLDR is coming along nicely. The last few games have been pretty smooth. I have added character cards, and modified a lot more about the game. The game is still way too hard, but I have begun to work on adjusting the difficulty in a downward direction. I also have nothing in the rules about how to actually fight, so I need to add that stuff in.
The way that I am decreasing the difficulty might be interesting to some, so I will discuss it now. The game used to get harder each time the deck was shuffled because a new alien meeple would come into play each shuffle, and the aliens would do 1 more things each round than they used to do. This proved to ramp up the difficulty really fast, so instead I decided to add a card to the deck called Alien Destruction.
Players may put any number of Alien Destruction cards into the deck to set their difficulty. They make that hand a little harder by not allowing you to see as many cards as you would normally see, and also they make the game harder from that point onward by occupying a slot that other aliens would go into (acting as virtual aliens that cannot be destroyed). If 10 destroyed cities get into play, the game ends because the next alien cannot be played anywhere.
I have yet to test them out, but I have high hopes for them being a fix for the difficulty woes.
In our game of AoV this week we started at the fourth turn by simulating the first three turns. Using this method we were able to make it through the entire game before the end of the lunch hour. It ended up being a pretty fun game. The last turn was a three way tug of war where the third place player surpassed the other two, and then was surpassed by the (new) third place player, who then ended the game.
Not only was the game fun, but it was also useful. We identified a problem with the game (the penalty for the last player who passes can be really punishing late-game). We decided to change the rules to make it less of a penalty - the player gets half their income instead of no income.
Also, I made new copies of the islands that fit the medium hex tile from the game crafter.
I also recorded a movie of me playing Hungry Oni for a publisher that wanted it.
TLDR is coming along nicely. The last few games have been pretty smooth. I have added character cards, and modified a lot more about the game. The game is still way too hard, but I have begun to work on adjusting the difficulty in a downward direction. I also have nothing in the rules about how to actually fight, so I need to add that stuff in.
The way that I am decreasing the difficulty might be interesting to some, so I will discuss it now. The game used to get harder each time the deck was shuffled because a new alien meeple would come into play each shuffle, and the aliens would do 1 more things each round than they used to do. This proved to ramp up the difficulty really fast, so instead I decided to add a card to the deck called Alien Destruction.
Players may put any number of Alien Destruction cards into the deck to set their difficulty. They make that hand a little harder by not allowing you to see as many cards as you would normally see, and also they make the game harder from that point onward by occupying a slot that other aliens would go into (acting as virtual aliens that cannot be destroyed). If 10 destroyed cities get into play, the game ends because the next alien cannot be played anywhere.
I have yet to test them out, but I have high hopes for them being a fix for the difficulty woes.
In our game of AoV this week we started at the fourth turn by simulating the first three turns. Using this method we were able to make it through the entire game before the end of the lunch hour. It ended up being a pretty fun game. The last turn was a three way tug of war where the third place player surpassed the other two, and then was surpassed by the (new) third place player, who then ended the game.
Not only was the game fun, but it was also useful. We identified a problem with the game (the penalty for the last player who passes can be really punishing late-game). We decided to change the rules to make it less of a penalty - the player gets half their income instead of no income.
Also, I made new copies of the islands that fit the medium hex tile from the game crafter.
I also recorded a movie of me playing Hungry Oni for a publisher that wanted it.
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