Jurassic Space again
The gorilla game is moving along. Rea likes it, so we have played a few games (without a traitor, however). We also played two games at work, and it was well received. The players liked the traitor mechanic. The bad guy might be too powerful, because he won handily, but I can always modify the setup in order to weaken him.
Two players were QA, and as such, they came up with all sorts of interesting interpretations of the rules. I need to specifically say that you cannot lay the gorilla down flat on the table when you are loading it up with other animals.
They also showed the need to come up with a timer to stop someone from taking way too long setting up their turn. They would certainly play the game again, and I am definitely going to continue working on it.
I have also been preparing Age of Vikings for submission to a publisher. I finally have a copy of it assembled again. My last copy was consumed in the Iludo game design competition. When the game won 2nd place, one of the stipulations of the contest was that I had to allow them to keep the copy that they played with. I have had a few ideas for modifying the game while the contest was on, and I just tried them out two nights ago.
The changes were mostly to make the game move along more quickly, and to make the players have to remember fewer things. I also simplified the turn order, which should make it a slightly lower cognitive load to play. I will need to play more games to make sure that the game is still solid with these new changes, but they were not extensive, so hopefully I can submit the game before too long.
My son and I have been working together on a remake of an old game that I never did much with: Jurrasic Universe. As a 3 year old he loves dinosaurs, and this game is now "Timmy's game". The rules are way too complex for him to play correctly (the game was along the lines of High Frontier in terms of what was required to play it), however I have simplified it a ton, and he can at least try to play it now.
I pared the ecosystem crafting down to a really simple ruleset, removed the technology deck completely, replaced all drafts with one big (interesting, hopefully) grid based draft with rules regarding what you can draft based on the position of the cards, simplified the planets, and added in a cool mechanic which rewards players both for waiting to launch until they have an amazing ship, and also rewards them for launching immediately to steal the good planets, so players have to determine which reward is going to be the best during the game.
I am going to continue to work on it as long as Timmy keeps asking me to play with him all the time. I think that I will also try to get it played by adults (as I am really making it for them, and keeping it playable by Timmy is a design challenge).
During our second game, he launched four ships to my one, and though I was going to get a lot of points in the long run, he really was making a great score for himself immediately. His favorite thing was to send animals to "Killer Whale", which is one of the planets that he named.
Actually, he named all of the planets but one.
Two players were QA, and as such, they came up with all sorts of interesting interpretations of the rules. I need to specifically say that you cannot lay the gorilla down flat on the table when you are loading it up with other animals.
They also showed the need to come up with a timer to stop someone from taking way too long setting up their turn. They would certainly play the game again, and I am definitely going to continue working on it.
I have also been preparing Age of Vikings for submission to a publisher. I finally have a copy of it assembled again. My last copy was consumed in the Iludo game design competition. When the game won 2nd place, one of the stipulations of the contest was that I had to allow them to keep the copy that they played with. I have had a few ideas for modifying the game while the contest was on, and I just tried them out two nights ago.The changes were mostly to make the game move along more quickly, and to make the players have to remember fewer things. I also simplified the turn order, which should make it a slightly lower cognitive load to play. I will need to play more games to make sure that the game is still solid with these new changes, but they were not extensive, so hopefully I can submit the game before too long.
My son and I have been working together on a remake of an old game that I never did much with: Jurrasic Universe. As a 3 year old he loves dinosaurs, and this game is now "Timmy's game". The rules are way too complex for him to play correctly (the game was along the lines of High Frontier in terms of what was required to play it), however I have simplified it a ton, and he can at least try to play it now.
I pared the ecosystem crafting down to a really simple ruleset, removed the technology deck completely, replaced all drafts with one big (interesting, hopefully) grid based draft with rules regarding what you can draft based on the position of the cards, simplified the planets, and added in a cool mechanic which rewards players both for waiting to launch until they have an amazing ship, and also rewards them for launching immediately to steal the good planets, so players have to determine which reward is going to be the best during the game.
During our second game, he launched four ships to my one, and though I was going to get a lot of points in the long run, he really was making a great score for himself immediately. His favorite thing was to send animals to "Killer Whale", which is one of the planets that he named.
Actually, he named all of the planets but one.
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