Sunday, March 3, 2024

Dolomball - preliminary updates

I did a solo test today with some changes based on the playtest from a couple of weeks ago.  Specifically:

  • Everything moves on the lines of the game board now instead of in the spaces
  • Bumpers only take up one space instead of the crazy shapes I had originally
  • Movement is based on cards instead of dice, and each one moves you farther now compared to the original system.  Each card also has a variable number of dice that you roll for throwing distance if you pick up a ball with that move.  Moves still have to be programmed three at a time though.
  • Implemented a rock-paper-scissor system to determine who gets the ball if multiple players go for it at the same time, using keywords on the movement cards.
  • Stunning is no longer a thing

It definitely feels like an improvement.  I don't know that I'm there yet though - with the bigger move speeds it's actually harder to get into exactly the right position, and players were ricocheting off the walls a lot (which is fun in and of itself, but I don't know if it's something people will want to deal with as much as I had it going on in this solo test).  Plus with the longer throwing distance there were times that balls were getting thrown most of the way across the board in one shot, which is not what I think the sport of dolomball should be like.  I think the best fix for this will be to change the numbers on the dice, so I can still keep the minimum distance that I want but otherwise move the whole bell curve lower.

So now I need to update the rule book and the game board, and then the game should be ready to show to people again.  I also want to add some more cards with team maneuvers on them so they're not all just one player moves X distance (although that will probably still be the majority of them).

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The nice thing about having too many projects at once is bouncing between them

Violet Moon has started going out to publishers, I need a break from revising Neon Knights , so today's work was focused on Dolomball ....