Otherworld Games

May 6, 2020 Neutrino Burrito Blog: Game Development

Quarantine, Tabletop Simulator, and Improved Prototypes

It’s been a minute, let me catch you up on what I’ve been up to. COVID-19, the Coronavirus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), whatever we’re calling it—as long as we’re not calling it something prejudiced and hateful—has absolutely delayed plans. I had weeks worth of playtesting on the schedule. All of it erased. These things happen, I know. No one could’ve predicted this, and I’m well aware that my plans to develop a tabletop game being pushed out a bit are the least of everyone’s worries. I can weather the storm.

This doesn’t mean that A Colorful Game is cancelled. Far from it. This means that I’m rearranging my plans to develop a Tabletop Simulator version of the game. My plan was to learn a bit about Lua and scripting later, after I had mostly secured the game mechanics and design and the game was more or less in manufacturing. I’m shifting gears on that.

Uh…what?

Let me reveal a hypocritical anecdote about myself: I currently work in the tech industry and love technology but I severely dislike the efforts to bring tabletop games to the digital realm. Yeah, I’m one of those. I play board games to get away from screens. I don’t judge people who enjoy playing digitalized board games, I just don’t enjoy doing it myself. The only exception to that rule was TheCodingMonkeys digital version of Carcassonne (RIP). Even that was killed off by the horrid gimmicky 3D version that Asmodee vomited all over us. Have you ever bought the perfect piece of clothing, only to have the vendor come back to you ten years later and say, “can we replace that with this designer trash bag?” It’s like that.

Digressions aside, this isn’t about me or my curmudgeon tendencies, this is about getting a game out there that I think is quick, fun and can work on a digital platform. It’s not done, but here’s a sneak peak:

Screen Shot 2020-04-29 at 9.48.04 PM.png — A Colorful Game features limited quantities of tiles that you have to strategically add or move

But what about a version for that whatcha call it…physical realm?

I’m working with someone on the material design for A Colorful Game. I’m leaning toward using wooden assets, but I’m keeping my options open. I want to make sure the game looks good and feels good, but it also needs to last. What’s great is that this game has been whittled down to a few components, so I predict that I can keep the price reasonable while seeking high quality assets.

Here’s a look at what (aside from the rules sheet) is likely to be included in the physical version.

Screen Shot 2020-04-13 at 3.05.24 PM.png — There’ll be 30 roads and 10 tiles included, along with a rules sheet—compact but fun!

What’s next for this puppy?

Getting the game into tabletop simulator will allow me to ramp up my playtesting schedule more. A few things that I need to focus on:

Rules sheet layout and design
Box design
Settling on general game design

Then I can start advertising the game more and setting up preorders. All-in-all, I’m looking at this winter or likely early next year before a kickstarter. I’m OK with that. And, hopefully, we’ll be healed enough to be able to seek some good ol’ fashioned tabletop games fun.

Sorry for taking so long to write this. I’ll try to make more frequent updates.

Until next time…

February 7, 2020February 7, 2020 Neutrino Burrito Blog: Game Development

The Many Trials of A Colorful Game

I’ve been heads-down refining the mechanics for A Colorful Game. Here are some of my discoveries from the 10 playtests that I’ve had so far:

Issue

Games were way too long. (1+ hour)

Resolution

I took care of this by minimizing the card count. Put the game at a smooth 30ish minute playtime. That’s the goal!

Issue

The game was also far more complex with decisions than I wanted it to be. You have to place AND move a tile—ugh! Too much brain juice to spend on what to do best. (I watched a player’s life flash before their eyes for more than 10 minutes, hoping to glean some forgotten wisdom to help them make a decision.)

Resolution

This was advice from another designer: Don’t make players have to add a new primary color tile to the play area AND have to move another tile. That’s a lot to deal with during a turn.

Note that doing this also helped to reduce the playtime to around 30 minutes.

Issue

Scoring points is just altogether difficult sometimes.

Resolution

Wild cards and bonus points! I added some cards to the game that let you fill in any blanks with a color of your choice. For example, if you have a contiguous path — orange, orange, green, purple, purple — you could play a wild with that to treat the green as a part of your path.

Also, if you scored with three or more cards, you get a bonus point; four or more and you get three bonus points!

This new format for the game helped shape it into the quick abstract strategy game that I was looking to make. That’s a huge milestone!

I’ve playtested this new version quite a few times and have found some new challenges to work through:

Games are a little too short now. It’s difficult for a player that’s behind to see a chance to come back and try to take the win.
Idea to test: I’m going to add cards to the point deck or have the discard shuffle back into the deck.
With the introduction of wild cards, games feel like they’re not strategic enough (a little too luck of the draw).
Idea to test: I’m going to add more wild cards and make them have a greater negative impact on players who use them.
Once you score a path, you remove all of the roads that you used to score that path with. That reduces momentum and gives too great an advantage to the first player to score.
Idea to test: I think a “pick a color, remove all roads for that color” method can give the right balance of changing the play area in a fun way and not making players feel like they’ve got to start from scratch.
I need to work out how the game ends a little more. Right now, the game ends once the point card deck is depleted and neither player can score on their next turns…it just feels like an odd way to end the game.
Idea to test: A “first player to x points” win condition should fix this. I just need to test whether this is fun and try to discover what “x points” value is best.

That’s all for now! Until next time…

January 2, 2020February 7, 2020 Neutrino Burrito Blog: Game Development

What I’ve Been Playing Lately

The my favorite thing about the holidays is that it brings people together…for board games. Here’s what I’ve been digging this holiday season.

Mysterium

Mysterium is a cooperative murder mystery party game. Psychics conduct a séance to divine how someone died in a mansion. One player plays a spirt that can only communicate to the other players (the psychics) through abstract, surrealist imagery. Players must work together to formulate the suspects, locations, and objects that were involved in the ghost’s demise.

The key challenge to Mysterium is that the ghost is not allowed to speak or signal through expression any indication of the correct answers to the other players. They can only hand abstract and surrealist depictions on cards to the players to help clue them in. (For example, if the school teach is a suspect, the ghost may hand me a card that depicts a mechanical, letter delivering turtle with a helicopter propeller on its shell.

La Mancha

La Mancha is a fun party game—if you were to only invite Lit majors to it. (Which sounds like a dreadful party.) It’s based on the classic Spanish novel penned in 1605, Don Quixote. In La Mancha, everyone plays a self-appointed knight errand that must woo women, gain powerful weapons, ride their trusty steed, and of course: tilt at windmills.

Where La Mancha shines is that there are different types of event cards (Romance cards, Encounter cards, etc.) and the player who draws that card becomes a judge for other players. Other players must use cards in their hand, which have excerpts from the novel, to construct a story or poem depending on the situation that convinces the judge to give them that card or an item card! This leads to an atmosphere of knowing a bit about what makes your fellow players tick. The judge also gets a slight bonus for just being a judge.

Shobu

Shobu is a two player abstract strategy game in the spirit of Go. Players control their own set of stones on four small boards, each board with a 4×4 grid. Your goal is to push all of your opponent’s stones completely off the board.

They must make two moves on their turn, in this precise order:

Passive: Move your stone up to two spaces in any direction without pushing another stone.
Aggressive: Make the same exact move with one of your other stones on another board. (This time you can push your opponent’s stones around.)

This game requires a lot of domino-effect style thinking. Most of the strategy revolves around positioning your opponent in a way that prevents them from making their own aggressive moves.

December 30, 2019 Neutrino Burrito Blog: Game Development

Happy Playtesting (and Holidays)!

This may come as a shock to anyone reading this, but I play a lot of board games. Gasp! I know. This holiday season, I’ve had the chance to play a lot more board games with my close friends and family. I cherish the holidays. But enough about me, let me talk about how my board game designs are coming along…

Untitled Nation Manipulation Game

I’ve got a solid prototype that I’ve been playtesting with people. It’s balanced enough at this point that I’m going to start long form playtesting. (Playtesting the game at least ten times before weighing any feedback-based changes.)

Why haven’t I done that already? Well, the game wasn’t balanced AND I haven’t had the time to playtest the game that many times as of yet. The game is still lo-fi (image of some cards below for reference) but I’ve got it to a place where I can just bust it out and people can enjoy a long, mostly uninterrupted by rule confusion, session with people.

Screen Shot 2019-11-29 at 4.19.04 PM — Cards! Cards everywhere!

I’m also mostly finished with the one asset that hasn’t dramatically changed in theme during my construction of this game, the War Hero.

I bet he’ll look good on a card. (Still working through some textures.)

Early this January, I’m going to be finally hitting the playtesting scene hard for this game, and I’m excited for it to get torn a new one by strangers.

A Colorful Game

I made this game for the Button Shy 18 Card Game challenge, originally, but didn’t get picked to be a finalist. I later realized that for the most part, the challenge is based more on pretty designs and less on unique, fun game mechanics. I won’t be participating in another challenge, at least not for a while.

But something good did come out of it. I created a primary/secondary color creation game where you create secondary colors in sequences to score points. Here’s what that looked like for the challenge. (I threw the design together in like 5 minutes, so it’s pretty messy.)

Screen Shot 2019-10-13 at 6.46.39 PM.png — Primary colors one side of the card and secondary colors on the opposite side. Rotate the card to activate a certain color.

Well, I like the idea of the game but not the idea of it existing in cards like this. So that game evolved into this…

Now in A Colorful Game, you take certain placement or movement actions to generate secondary colors. Each primary color has different rules for how you can place and move it. You create paths of secondary colors through this, and in this, you score points based on the pattern of paths you created.

It’s taken me three weeks to redesign this game from the ground up, but it’s also ready to hit the playtesting circuit more heavily. Funny out that works, my Untitled Nation Manipulation game has taken almost two years to get to where it is right now. So it goes.

November 30, 2019 Neutrino Burrito Blog: Game Development

Prototypes for Days

Here’s a Quick Status Update

Bullet pointed list, activate:

I just finished printing a new prototype for my hidden identity, country manipulation game
I’m close to a new prototype for my quick tile laying, tactics-based game
I’m working on revamping and injecting more fun into an abstract color making game

Here’s a Long Status Update

My latest build is coming along. I got a lot of feedback on game pacing and balance which I’ve incorporated into this version. I haven’t had time to cut out these new assets yet but it’s on my to-do list.

Cards! Cards everywhere!

The nation! Just ripe for the manipulation: although, there are good and bad types of manipulation in this game

Player mat with mechanics that drive Wealth, Education, and Reputation (all needed to kick ass in this game)

Crisis board, tells you the effects of each crisis resolution based on player votes

Secret hidden private confidential characters! (Shhh, they’re a secret.)

I’m experimenting with different art and graphic styles and I nail down some of my more concrete assets. (None of my final designs are present in the gallery above.)

How do I collect feedback, you ask?

I use a google form and sheets of paper during the playtest. I actually ask people to fill out the google form before providing open feedback. I do this to collect metrics (who won, how many players were there, and what character did everyone play) more than look at what they had to say about the game.

I also collect open feedback at the end of the game. What was fun, what wasn’t, etc etc. That’s what I act on when revising my later builds of the game.

My Other Games in Progress

I have two other games in the pipeline aside from this one. They’re both getting heavy makeovers.

A Colorful Game

This is an abstract color making game. You manipulate primary color cards to form the most of your secondary color on the board. I still have some kinks to work out. Mainly, the game starts in a grid format and I think I can do better. I’m going to convert these cards to square tiles and make it more of a tile laying game.

Screen Shot 2019-10-13 at 6.46.39 PM — Current assets that will soon receive a fabulous makeover—and be converted to tiles

Untitled Tile Laying Tactics Game

This one has been a blast to design but I still have a lot of work to do. I’m going to go full on hexes for this game, add a tile laying aspect (it’s currently set out in a grid) and add combat mechanics. Eventually, I’m going to change the way each element plays the game for some asynchronous strategy. (Although, the game won’t be entirely asynchronous.)

Screen Shot 2019-11-21 at 10.37.19 AM — The four playable elements

That’s all, Folks

Thanks for reading! Until next time…