Play Test Round 1

The Design of my card game is going well.  This week the call volume is high which means time to buckle down at the day job.  Working on this is going to get put on hold.  Lunch breaks are 30 minutes, and I'm picking up extra hours.  No downtime to spend working on Dormouse Games, let alone a personal side project like this.  But over the past couple weeks some play tests were done, and some lessons learned.



Previously I had locked down the card list.  But then decided not to make all of the building cards.  In retrospect this was a good idea.  Of the game concepts the 'blueprints', aka building deck, seems to be working out the least well.  Keep that in mind if you're play testing as well.

The initial play was by myself and produced a ton of edge cases, and specific thoughts on the rules.  Unfortunately I did not record them adequately.  So take this as a lesson, and dont make the same mistake.  When play testing, either by yourself, or with others, make sure to have a way to record the specifics of what you want to change.

That being said, the biggest change to make is to the worker deck.  The way the cards are constructed at present, card draw is SUPER easy.  Playing cards is SUPER difficult.  You can get a ton of cards into your hand, but getting them back out is a bottleneck.  This is very frustrating.

There are two adjustments that come to mind.  The 'higher level' workers, the ones which cost salt to play, will get decreased card counts going forward.  This will change the chance the regular workers are drawn. Drawing those cards early sucks because salt has a lower draw rate.  These cards tend to just sit in your hand. Additionally cards like Logger, are going to lose the 'draw again' mechanic.  Which is going to be replaced with 'play one' instead.  This will prevent the build up of additional cards and make them come out of the hand easier.

There is tons of polish left, and lots to do, and these are just the macro changes.  There will be plenty of time later for the specific polish and edge cases.  Right now the Buildings deck needs a lot of work.  Although I'm not sure what exactly will change.