Again with the dancing

I played Under a Violet Moon again today, with one of the same players I mentioned previously who does Medieval dance as a hobby.  We tried out the group move mechanic that I had added based on his feedback last time, and he declared it successful - much better than before at capturing the feel of a dance, while maintaining the strategy elements from before.  The way it works is simple enough - there's a separate set of basic move cards, not exactly the same as the ones the players get but similar, and after both of the players have moved then everyone on the board moves according to the group card.  Because it's a dance that presumably all of the villagers know, the group cards are shuffled and then set out at the start of the game, so you can see the whole thing in order and try to work that into your strategy.  It did add a layer of complexity without overdoing it, which was nice.  And while it wasn't part of the original plan, in our game today I stumbled on the idea of only using some of the cards rather than the whole set, which would add some variation from one game to the next.  I'm happy with it.

Board Game Workshop contest outcome and next steps

Continuing a trend that has been pretty consistent so far, Under a Violet Moon did not make it past the first round in the competition where I had entered it.  Judging was based entirely on a 2-minute video.  I've had a little time now to digest the feedback that I got, and here are the main takeaways:

• Most of the reviewers really liked the theme and the core gameplay.  A few people specifically said they liked the way it brought social deduction to a one-on-one format, which was exactly my design goal with this game so it's nice to see that it worked out.  There were a couple comments about gameplay elements being unclear, but that was a problem with my presentation rather than the game itself.
• A couple people suggested that it might be too easy to figure out who the faeries are.  I'm not entirely sure yet from my limited testing, but it feels like this is probably right.
  
• A couple comments also about the game maybe being a little too simple in a way that would limit replay value.  I haven't played it enough myself to assess that one.
• One person commented on the need to rely on the faerie player to give honest and accurate information every turn, which could be a stumbling block (not even maliciously, but just with the need to be paying attention to a lot of different positions on the board at the same time).

So where to next?  Well, as I mentioned in a previous post, I've been working on adding a "crowd movement" phase based on previous feedback (I was holding off until after this competition so I could incorporate the new feedback as well), and if I get it right then I think that might add the right level of complexity to address the "too simple" complaint.

Replayability and balance?  I'll just have to do a bunch more playtesting.  Keeping score will show me if one side really does have it easier than the other, and I guess if I start getting tired of watching people play my game then that will tell me about replay value.  Although the suggestion to find ways to vary it up from one play to the next wasn't a bad idea either way.

Relying completely on the faerie player - in a different previous post I discussed a suggestion I had received about letting the villager player capture whoever they want, with the risk of false positives to go with that.  That certainly would mitigate this specific problem.  I'm still not 100% sure myself if I like it, but I do think it's worth testing it out and then decide after that.  Maybe with a rule that this can only be done after the first time the faeries capture a villager (which, in my mind, helps stick to the theme where the villagers don't realize they've been infiltrated until the faeries actually start causing trouble for them).

Neon Knights - revised draft available

I finally put in revisions for some (but not all) of the feedback I've gotten.  Took considerably longer than I expected, which is probably a surprise to no one who has done this kind of thing before.  I know I said something in a recent post about working on new adversaries and magic items, but those need to be polished up more so only one of those actually made it into the current revision.

https://www.scribd.com/document/621295097/Neon-Knights-Playtest-Doc