Too many games, too little time

 Lots going on lately, across multiple games.  Here are the various updates for the last couple weeks:

• Werewolves of London got knocked out of the Cardboard Edison competition, which is not too surprising when they have ~350 games submitted and only take 21 finalists (which I think was still more than they usually do).  But my scores do keep moving up compared with games I've submitted in previous years.  Besides that, the judges who looked at Werewolves were almost unanimous in that they liked the theme, they liked the overall gameplay to the extent that they were able to assess it, but they wanted combat to work differently.  So that's something for me to polish up before I start submitting this one to publishers.
• Dolomball was back on the table today, in a very stripped down form so I can get a better sense of what actually needs to be in the game and what doesn't.  I got some good suggestions for that, and (with encouragement from today's playtesters) I got more comfortable with an idea that I had already been considering - dropping the link to the existing IP and no longer being constrained by trying to fit with how someone else defined their aliens in their game that, honestly, has nothing to do with my game except for my trying to shoehorn it into the same universe.  I definitely appreciate the support that I got from the folks at Galileo Games as I was getting this started, but trying to stick to the Dolomé has definitely let me to make some decisions that have detracted from gameplay, so it's time to let that go.  Which of course means I'm going to have to go through that title change thing again.  But in any case this one is probably going back to the back burner for a while because I also need to talk about...
• Scales - a new game, this time not based on a song title but on a little pun that- I actually don't even remember how it came up.  But someone said the word "scales," and I said "that should be a song about dragons learning to play musical instruments," and now I've got some rules sketched out and a 0.1 alpha prototype almost ready to go.  It's a cooperative game where all of the dragons are not only learning their own instruments but also they're in a band, and the goal is to get good enough to win the battle of the bands at the school talent show.  Once I have the basic materials together I need to get a test game to make sure the core gameplay works, and then I've got some bells and whistles to add, but I'll talk more about those once I know that the game is ready for me to add them (and that that's actually even the direction that it's going).

METAL!

I know, I've been quiet lately, bouncing between game revisions and other non-game things (which therefore don't go on this blog), but I do have one quick bit of news for today:

Neon Knights has hit copper bestseller status on DTRPG!

Dolomball: updates 1/20/25 (no clever title)

I finally figured out how I want to implement the revisions based on my playtest a couple weeks ago, so I spent a good chunk of today working on that.  Redid the cards once again, with the idea being that you get a couple of shorter moves instead of one longer one, plus a separate "special effect" that you can play whenever it's applicable (same effects as some of the cards I had before, but without feeling like you have to waste one because it's your only card with the right move distance or whatever the case might be).  Rewrote the rulebook, got the new cards mostly set up, still need to make a couple more diagrams to go on the cards before I can make the new deck (I came up with a couple more special effects that weren't there before, replacing some of the ones I took out since they don't fit with this revision).  And I also put in the moving barriers like I mentioned in my previous post.  Really excited to see those in action.

Dolomball - a new season

PAX is over, Werewolves is in competition limbo, so I'm finally back to focusing on Dolomball.  I ran a test game with some minor changes following from the previous playtest, six months ago, and it looks like I'm moving in the right direction of having a good fast-paced strategy game but I'm not there yet.  Got some good ideas from today's game though, for some more radical changes that I think will take it much further.  Both of the test players agreed that the most fun aspect of the game in its current form was ricocheting, so that needs to get amped up next time.  Current idea is to add a few straight panels which start out in the middle of the board but which players can rotate and shift during the game to block opponents or set themselves up for fun trick shots.  I'm looking forward to seeing how that one works out.

Other ideas brewing as well, but I'll wait until after the next test to talk about those.

PAX Unplugged 2024

Yesterday was my annual tradition of attending PAXU to do some playtesting with Unpub and try to get any attention at all from publishers, so today is the annual tradition of breaking down how it went.  The game I brought was Werewolves of London, and it was a great success - the people who played Under a Violet Moon last year mostly liked that game, but the people who played Werewolves this year really liked this one.  Overall I came out feeling like this is much closer to done compared with how Violet Moon felt after a busy Unpub morning (still a few bits to polish, but no major changes).  Here were some specific things that stood out from playtesting:

• Now that I've finally gotten to see the game all the way from start to finish, I can say with confidence that the duration is about an hour.  Slightly longer than I was aiming for, but it felt right during play - long enough to have some interesting back-and-forth, not so long it overstays its welcome.
• Everyone who played felt like once they were a couple turns in and got the basics down, everything felt very intuitive.  I even had some unintended semi-unguided testing, as I got wrapped up in a side conversation at one point and the players went through about one-and-a-half rounds without me hovering there, with no difficulty.
• The theme clicked right away, and people wanted to be vicious toward each other
  
• It always felt like there were multiple viable strategies to succeed, and players found it really interesting to think about whether they should focus on spreading out vs focusing on a few territories, and how to work endgame bonuses into their plans (whether for their own benefit, or just to prevent opponents from getting bonuses).
• This was the first time that I got to see the new combat mechanic in action, and it worked exactly as intended and felt fair to players - someone who was willing to risk more had a better chance of winning, but was never guaranteed
• Players in the first group suggested an improvement to the rule for sabotaging opponents' investments, and it worked out great when I implemented it later on
  

No luck with publishers unfortunately - only got one meeting, and they quickly concluded that the production was heavier than they were interested in (and probably the gameplay too, but it was a short meeting and we didn't get into that as much).  So I might want to veer toward publishers who do heavier games, even if the gameplay itself is solidly midweight.  But in any case I'm not doing any more pitching until Ion Awards are done, and probably also Cardboard Edison (and I've worked in whatever feedback they give me as well).

And in the meantime I will once again have the time and brainpower to get back to serious work on Dolomball...

I guess I haven't updated in a while

 Still here, just haven't had much to say lately.  Made some last-minute revisions to Werewolves that I'm excited about, gradually working on putting the physical prototype together so I can bring it to PAX Unplugged, looking forward to seeing what a full morning of playtesting will show me.  Also excited about the flyers I made to bring to the convention with me.  That's pretty much it for now.

Just rip my lungs out, Jim

Massive overhaul on Werewolves of London after the last playtest, and then got to test the new version yesterday.

• New map - focusing on Inner London only, with territories divided up a little more arbitrarily, rather than doing all of the boroughs like I had before.  Fewer territories than before as well.  This was moderately successful both at reducing information overload and at increasing frequency of players fighting over the same territory.
• New end condition - the game now goes for a set number of rounds rather than "until all territories are owned."  I still need to figure out what the right number is, but this is definitely an improvement in any case.
• Cleaner division of each round into "day" and "night" phases.  This made it easier to keep track of what was happening when, and succeeded at reinforcing the werewolf theme a little better.
  
• New income rules - get money for territory that you own and also have the option of pulling money out of one of your investments and multiplying it based on the value of the territory where you invested.  This was good for reinforcing the "business predators by day" side of my game pitch, but had the slight problem of being able to grow insanely wealthy in just a couple of turns with the right investments.  And since wealth translates to control over the map (and maybe also scoring at the end of the game; I'm still fiddling with that), this is pretty important.  Still weighing options for how to solve it.

 

And then there's combat.  I had put something like this into the previous iteration, following from the "not wolfy enough" comments in the first one or two test games, and then for this version I took it further.  When two or more players are trying to hunt in the same territory, they bid a secret amount of Meat, with the winner getting to hunt and the loser(s) licking their wounds and going home empty-handed (and also increasing the risk of tipping off Scotland Yard).  What we got in testing was that this was the core of a good idea, but the way I have it current set up, there's little incentive to bid less than all the Meat you have, unless you really care about the current state of the investigation.  So the challenge now is to find a way to keep the blind bidding system but 1) make you really care about how much you're bidding, 2) not be too punishing to a player who is already too far behind, and 3) not accidentally be too punishing to the player who wins the fight.  And maybe also other unwanted consequences that I haven't bumped into yet.  Hopefully I can get this figured out soon, because I've got less than two months to put together a hard copy for PAX Unplugged...