Game Design Diary – October

And so as October slides into November on a surface of damp leaves and sweetie wrappers, and both sue the park attendants of time for not clearing up appropriately, I realise it is time for my monthly game design post! October has seen a switch in my priorities away of game design, as I mentioned in my last post. I still want to make progress, but it wouldn’t be as much of a focus for October and the next couple of months. Despite that, things have actually progressed rather nicely!

• Solo playtest Hunt the Bismark – Yes, sort of. I started making some moves and realised how much of the prototype was still missing. I now have a list of things to decide on and finish to have a complete prototype.
• Make a step towards a bigger Euro design – No (Damnit!) This should have been so easy but by the time I realised the month was running out, I decided I had to prioritise developing my other games.
• Explore Catch the Rainbow – Yes. This has been re-built a couple of times after two playtests this month. Yay! Progress!
• Wren’s Churches rulebook – No. While this is something I could feasibly work on during my commute, articles and video scripts have taken up any time I might have dedicated to this.
• Roll and Write – Yes. I received feedback from the judges of the Global Roll and Write Game Jam which, combined with last months playtest feedback, has been implemented into a new prototype version (although the rulebook has not been updated).

Almost Failing

I said that design wasn’t going to be as much a focus for me over the next couple of months as other jobs took precedence and apparently that stance almost immediately terminated my design work entirely! I went to one Playtest meetup at the start of October and then did no work at all for the two weeks following. As the month’s second meet up approached I was tempted to skip it. I hadn’t made any changes to my designs but I forced myself along – and I’m glad I did!

Keeping habits going is super important. Rather than risking missing one meetup and not going back for months, it is more valuable to make sure I always go along even if I haven’t got anything to test – that should give me a kick up the butt to do some work for next time! Even if I don’t have much time at home, having the meet up in my calendar ensures I keep design close by, so I can’t let long stretches slip by!

The ongoing Hunt

Pulling together a prototype for Hunt the Bismark had turned into a farce. I’ve realised that just the amount of time I had spent not working on this had completely knocked my confidence with the entire design. This was not good. Fortunately I had written out a rulebook for this game so I was able to relearn my design from a reasonably organised document rather than the scattered thoughts of a notebook, which has helped somewhat.

Unfortunately my attempt to solo test this quickly collapsed under the weight of incomplete card ideas and rules. I know some people say just test and make stuff up on the fly to fill things in. That might work for them but all my experiences seem to be that I need a “complete” design to be able to make any productive progress. I need that starting point. So I’ve finally got a task list of elements and rules I’m missing! With that in hand I’m hopeful I can bring this ludicrous saga to a close and start testing. Once I get a first test done I’ll hopefully feel much better about what I’m trying to do here!

The Rush to Mid Con

As you read this, I’ll have just got back from a UK convention, Mid Con, at which I will hopefully have had chance to playtest some of my games with a friend. Unfortunately, I didn’t have anything in place up until a week before the con started! Commence operation prototype update. So, I quickly figured out what state my designs were in and how much effort everything needed to get back up to a playtest-ready state. I’m not sure if we will get them all played, but at least I’ll have got them ready and end the month on a high point. There’s nothing like big meetings to spur you on!

Catch the Rainbow

I’m still not sure this is the best working title but since it’s a little bit arbitrary at the moment anyway, we’ll stick with this for the time being. In Catch the Rainbow you are building rainbows in a big tableau from drafted cards. Complete rainbows score points, as do pots of gold, the closer they are to the end of your rainbow. It’s going over rather well!

The first rebuild this month involved stripping away a third superfluous scoring mechanic and having each feature between 1 and 4 bands of rainbow colour to create a few more decisions when building your rainbow. It was much improved but missing a real arc to the experience and lacking something to build tension in when to play cards into your rainbow vs drawing from the ‘market’. The shear number of pots in the game was also completely ridiculous so I’ve done another full rework with a redistribution of colours (Yay! More colouring in!) and a little bit of engine building in how you can grow your hand size and your rate of playing cards as the game progresses. I’ve no idea yet how this might tie into the theme (such as it is) but I think I’ll worry about that later! Onwards to future tests!

Tricky Treats update

Tricky Treats was my entry to the Global Roll and Write Game Jam in September and earlier this month I got feedback on it from the judges. This aligned pretty closely with feedback from a later playtest I’d managed to get in after the jam closed. That the game is good but missing something and perhaps goes on a bit too long.

Players draft dice and mark up their sheets as per so many roll and writes. The number of the chosen dice determines a house to visit which gives you a certain shape of sweet. This you put into your sweetie bucket so that one square of that shape covers a square matching the colour of your die. Players get points for completely filling rows and columns.

To improve the game (I hope) I’ve reduced the number of houses you can visit (which serves to shorten the game) and added bonus abilities that trigger when you complete rows. While completing rows earned players points, there wasn’t enough on offer to motivate carefully completing rows against filling columns. The addition of abilities should also open up some powerful combo style turns that weren’t available before, and create a few more decisions, which is no bad thing at all! Hopefully I’ll get to test that soon (especially as it’s past Halloween now!)

November Aspirations

The things I want to do, and almost certainly won’t!

• More playtesting! – for Wren’s Churches, Catch the Rainbow and Tricky Treats at least. I’ve got two Playtest UK evenings and high hopes for some testing at Mid Con (last weekend at the time of writing!)
• The Bismark checklist – I can do this. It will not escape me this month!
• Wren’s Rulebook – rolling over from last month. Writing tasks may again steal my time, but I also really don’t want to get stuck forgetting my own design again! Hopefully I’ll find some time towards the end of the month, if not before.
• Design Contests? – I want to start thinking about these. I found the roll and write jam so useful that trying some more might be a very good exercise. I recently discovered the monthly 24-hour design contest on BGG, whose incredibly limited scope certainly has something going for it. November’s inspiration word is ‘leaf’. There is also a 54 card contest that runs December to February with actual prize money involved, which is kind of exciting! Again, those restrictions are valuable!
• That bigger Euro? – one day, Matt, one day.

So there are my plans and progress reports! What have you been up to this month? What are you going to try and do this month? Leave a comment! Hold yourself to account!