Violet Moon - minor updates

Main thing to mention today is that I finally updated the Screentop version of the game to match with the most recent rule update.  Besides that, most of my attention today (and for the next week, especially when I have time off work coming up) is on making a better video than I had before so I can submit it to Cardboard Edison.  Not much in the way of new designing or revising, but it's still stuff that needs to be done.  And it doesn't involve so much caring about fonts like when I'm making a sell sheet or a convention flier.

PAX Unplugged 2023

Yesterday was my one day that I was able to go to PAX (advantage to being local is that there's no pressure to make the most of my time if I have to travel anyway).  First half of the day for me was, once again, playtesting in the Unpub room.  Wonderful feature, very much appreciated as a designer, also one of my favorite bits the year that I went as just a random person without my own game to test.  I was running Under a Violet Moon, mainly focusing on fixing the balance between the two sides.  Tried a couple different tweaks, might have over-corrected (Faeries won almost every single game yesterday), still working on that.  I did prove pretty thoroughly that I do not have the home field advantage I thought I might for being the designer of the game.  Despite all that, for the most part people really got into it, and I got a few comments on the mechanics being unique.  Most folks just played one game and then moved on, but there was one pair of players that wanted to give it a second try right away since there was no one else waiting at that moment, and they were both definitely getting a better grasp on the strategy in the second playthrough.

One negative that I picked up on, which I only picked up now that I had a chance to sit through multiple consecutive playthroughs, is that the advanced movement cards felt less and less useful over the course of the day.  There were occasionally moments where someone had just the right one to put them in a good position, but it didn't feel like they were adding that much value.  I'll come back to this in a moment.

The other big event for me yesterday was that I had pitch meetings with two publishers for Violet Moon.  I've never gotten past the initial email before when I've submitted a game to publishers, so this was incredibly exciting.  Unfortunately they both ended with "this is a really interesting game but it's not right for our brand."  One of those was polite but brief, but the other one was very enthusiastic about how much he did enjoy the game.  The way the pitch went, I talked for a minute, then he asked if we could play, then he stopped in the middle of the game to give me some feedback, then he wanted to dive back in and finish the game before he gave me his conclusions.  So I'm taking that as a partial win at least - I didn't get the result I was hoping for, but getting that kind of encouragement from a publisher is a big enough deal for me that I can run with it.  Of the feedback that he gave me, what resonated the most was about the advanced move cards.  He agreed with my earlier observation that they didn't feel as valuable as they should have, with the added observation that having that big deck to draw from set the wrong balance between strategy and luck.  He suggested that there should instead be separate, more limited sets for Faeries and Villagers that play to their respective strategies - namely, that Villagers benefit from moving more people to the middle ring and from separating people who are clumped together in one space, while Faeries benefit from moving more people out of the middle ring and from keeping them more clumped together.  I think this is a great idea, and while I still need to fiddle around with exactly how I'm going to implement it, this is going to be the next big revision.  Hopefully I have it put together and tested before too long, and if it works then I can get back to my slightly-less-Sisyphean pitching...