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Streamlining

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It’s been a while since we’ve updated you on our progress, but we’ve been working hard. Most of the mechanics work has been focused on streamlining the game and making it more accessible to new players. I wanted to give you all an update on the things we’ve been doing to that effect.

We used to have a concept called “Storage”, which determined how many Relic cards you could have in play. Players started with a default storage of 1 and could get more by playing or buying certain cards. Storage was a value that would frequently change, which made it tough for players to keep track of and make sure they had enough storage for all their Relics. We wanted to get rid of this confusing concept while retaining the limiting factor on the Relics. Our current solution is to say that each Shrine can hold 1 Relic. This is a more natural progression and is very easy to visualize. It has the added bonus of increasing the value of Shrines and makes more sense thematically.

Previously, the mechanics wording on Influence cards were very flavorful. I was using a lot of keywords like “Discredit” and “Sacrifice”. To justify using these words, the rules had a glossary that players could use to look up their meanings. With the help of our playtesters, I came to realize how silly this was. By using direct and unambiguous language we make the game easier to learn and teach. Now instead of telling a player to “Sacrifice a Follower”, I tell them to “Remove a Follower you control from play”. It’s not very flowery and it’s much wordier, but a player can pick up this card and know what it does without having to cross reference the rules. We can just let the flavor text handle all the thematics.

One thing we are consistently working towards is reducing the amount of information we bombard the player with. We moved in the right direction with the Tribute changes, but we are now taking it a step further. Now whenever you draw a card, including at the end of your turn, you draw it face down. Face down cards can be spent, just like cards in your hand. At the end of your turn you can put these face down cards into your hand, up to a maximum of 6 cards in hand. This means that a player will only have to read, understand, and plan based on a maximum of 6 cards at a time. Since the players can still spend these face down cards, it doesn’t impact our existing economy. This also creates some consistency in how players draw cards, instead of having them sometimes draw face down and sometimes draw to their hand.

Lastly is a change that I will be trying out at our next playtest, so it may not stick. When we first introduced the idea of Prophecies I was very pleased with them. However, I’ve become less taken with them as time has gone on. The purpose of Prophecies was to make the game end dynamically so that players wouldn’t get an advantage based on turn order. While they perform this function well, Prophecies add quite a few rules to the game. I’ve also seen an unpleasant phenomenon where a player will need to completely calculate the current score of each player before they can feel confident playing the Prophecy that will end the game. In light of these issues I plan to do away with Prophecies and instead have Event cards trigger when a purchase pile is emptied or the Influence deck runs out and is reshuffled.

Combined, these modifications significantly reduce the length of my rules explanation. And while I’m not sure we will end up using all of these changes, I think we’re heading in the right direction. I’m looking forward to further playtests.

This Is Just A Tribute

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At a recent playtesting meetup, I was able to sit out and observe people play our game. I highly recommend that designers do this, because it allows you to really pay attention to people’s body language during the experience. It was plainly obvious that players were becoming bored waiting for their turn to come around. And as the designer, that’s really hard to watch.

So, despite our efforts to speed the game up, we still had a serious problem with turn length. Thankfully the playtesters and fellow designers that go to the meetup gave great feedback. Based on their advice we’ve made a change that has had an extremely positive impact on the game.

The core of the problem was the introduction of new information during a player’s turn, primarily in the form of drawing cards. Every time a player drew a new card, they had to read the card and re-optimize their strategy for the turn. This could slow down the game to a crawl. And since they could use the cards to continue a combo, it compounded the problem.

One thing we could do is simply take away card draw, except for at the end of your turn. Since the cards are also your currency, I felt this change would make the game too watered down and boring. Another option would be to take away card draw, but to allow the players to gain temporary currency during their turn that they could use to pay costs. However, we didn’t want to add any additional materials for players to track that with.

With those things in mind, we came up with the new Tribute mechanic. Now whenever a player would have drawn a card during their turn, they instead collect a Tribute. They do this by drawing an Influence card and keeping it face down in front of them. Players can use Tribute to cover any costs during their turn. If they have any Tribute left over at the end of their turn, they draw it into their hand.

This solution retains all the fun combo mechanics, eliminates the introduction of new information during a player’s turn, and doesn’t introduce any new materials or cards. So far, the playtests I’ve done with this new mechanic (including one online using Roll20) have gone extremely well. The turns were going much faster and the players, including myself, were having much more fun.