Feedback braindump.

I met up with Daniel Peterson from Mayday Games tonight to show him some of my games. We ended up playing two games before we finished. He liked some things about them, and provided a lot of helpful feedback. To get it down before I forget it, here is a brain dump:

First we played Grab the Loot. It didn't really play well with two players. I need to play games to balance it at that point.

Grab the Loot:

  • Coins should be used as a cost and should prevent you from taking better actions.
  • Grab a coin as a generic space.
  • The being forced to move your meeple to a different card makes for interesting decisions
    • I just had an idea to block the row as well as column.
  • The randomness of the finish is not well beloved.
  • Cards should come out faster.
    • Talked about revealing new card each turn.
    • I think perhaps each round could rectify the problem also.
  • Modifying greed was very cool
  • Exponential should stop at some point.
  • Focus on the cutthroat element of the game if that is what people like.
  • You should have cost to get effects.
  • Placing captain's meeples are cool. You should place more of them
    • perhaps once a turn
  • Talked about having multiple meeples, and you get them back when they fell off the end of the board.
  • new abilities:
    • Show bottom greed card to another player
    • look at the bottom 2, or 3 for a coin cost
  • pull out cutthroat cards when playing more euro style
  • add in cutthroat cards when playing more take that
  • Another idea I just had was reducing the treasure count for fewer players

Madness place:

  • Streamline it
  • The timing is weird
  • Turns after someone passes should be limited
  • Remove all or most free actions
  • Some abilities (storing, sacrificing meeples) should be "free", and only cost a turn.
  • This game is the "right depth" for Mayday game's current direction.
  • Think about turns as a resource.
  • Building machines are fun - the game has real potential if it could be smoother
  • Powerful machines seem to break the game - no matter who plays them
    • Idea: when you steal the ability to use a machine, pay the energy to that player.
  • The scoring felt like it did not work for him - he thinks that the math is off.
I am happy with the feedback, and I am going to sleep on all of it and write more about it tomorrow. I will certainly be making some more changes to the games in the near future. 

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