It's been a crazy year so far. You'd figure that with the pandemic being a known quantity and the holidays coming up, at least there would be some semblance of 'normal' with everything that's happening, but nope. Still, life (and game designing :) continues to happen. Here's where I'm at:
Nebula
I 've been keeping up with Nebula playtests where I can. I keep making tweaks and adjustments, hoping to find the sweet spot for the game. I think I'm getting closer; I've had a lot of positive feedback lately from my playtests. I think putting it all into a list is probably the best way to organize it:
Still chugging away, but I'm happy with how the game is turning out.
Side Project
One of the things that has been slowing down my designing progress has been something new and shiny to work on. If you've ever done any sort of extended project like this, you'll be familiar with the feeling of some new and cool idea coming along, distracting you from finishing your current project. Well, I've hit one of those. It's not another board game, though, but something digital. Specifically, something on Discord!
I've been spending a lot of my time connected to Discord lately. Besides being a really great platform for video gaming, it's also vital for staying in contact with other board gamers. This one community I'm attached to also has a game, playable right within Discord! It's a mostly text-based game where you play as a fantasy adventurer, going around slaying monsters, gaining treasure, gathering crafting materials, and powering up your weapons and armor. It's fairly simple game compared to most games out there, but just the fact that it can be played through a text chat makes it highly accessible and playable anywhere.
So, of course, I figured if this is a thing, maybe I can make one too?
Cue the montage of learning about Discord API libraries, databases, Discord servers, network bandwidth considerations, connection pools, cloud-based private servers, Linux administration, SSH tunneling, Discord bot directories and rankings, image hosting, error-tolerant programming, and probably about a million other things I'm not thinking of at the moment.
After hacking at it off and on for a few weeks, I have a working Discord bot. Right now it just hangs out on my private server and one other. Say hello to it, and it will give you an uplifting greeting in return. Tell it to wait for a certain amount of time, and it will ping you after that time elapses. Ask it to search, and it comes back to you with colored hearts. Tell it to combine colored hearts into a gift, and it keeps the gift in your inventory for later. Tell it to throw a gift at someone, and it will send that other person a cuddly hug animated gif. And tell it you want to play a game, and it will give you a set of five dice and play Yahtzee with you. :)
Most importantly, each of the concepts I had to learn to make any of those features work will be useful in some way trying to make a full-featured game later. I'm not quite sure I have all the pieces I need to make a complete game yet, but at least I have plenty of ideas floating around and directions to go. Hopefully this is something I can continue to hack away at.
And that's all for now. Focused on one board game and one online game. Plus side orders of playtesting other people's games, staying connected on Discord, and watching Twitch streams. (Along with gaming streams, there's a surprisingly large amount of good music streaming on Twitch.)
Nebula
I 've been keeping up with Nebula playtests where I can. I keep making tweaks and adjustments, hoping to find the sweet spot for the game. I think I'm getting closer; I've had a lot of positive feedback lately from my playtests. I think putting it all into a list is probably the best way to organize it:
- My last couple of playtests have had very positive feedback. It seems like lately the players are more enthusiastic about the game after playing it. I've even had a couple of players say stuff like 'I'd like to buy a copy now' or 'let me know when your Kickstarter launches'. Very encouraging to hear!
- On the flip side, better game means less in the way of constructive feedback. I had one playtest that basically gave me zero feedback; the players thought the game was good enough that they didn't have anything significant to offer in terms of improvements. So, while it's good that the game is viewed well, I know it can't possibly be perfect, so I have to work a little harder to get indications of things to adjust.
- I'm up to four playable ships now! I was always planning on having multiple ship layouts, each with special little quirks and such. I had created some alternate layouts a while ago, but only recently did I do a balancing pass on those to get them roughly in line with the power level of the original ship. (Of course, I can't make them exactly equal, nor should I try. But they should be close while still being different.) I ran a couple of playtests with the alternate ships available, and while they're certainly not perfect, I don't think they're too far off. Just needs a couple of adjustments. Feedback on the new ships has been kinda meh, though. They're definitely different but apparently they don't change the play experience much. Something else to work on.
- Still trying to balance the goals and upgrades. The upgrades are, I think, doing well. It's getting harder for players to decide between different upgrades, which is good; two different powers should appear roughly equal in power level while still providing different strategy options. I think some of them might need a slight bump in victory point values, but that's mostly it. The goals I'm still having a difficult time with. I've got a few that are very good, and a few that are playable but not well balanced. Problem is, I don't feel like I have enough of them. For some reason these have been difficult in terms of trying to keep the amount of effort on par with the reward, and yet still keep then roughly balanced against each other. Right now I have ten goal tiles; I would like more but I think this is going to be the limit.
- I've been hitting a problem I call 'exploding turns' for a while, where one player gets a massive burst of resources (usually mid-turn) and ends up taking far longer to finish all their moves than everyone else, resulting in a lot of player downtime. (Not to mention that player usually ends up running away with the game.) I've been attacking that problem by trying to reduce the amount of resources players can gain during the turn; it's best when the gains are gradual and all players gain at similar rates instead of having the resources fluctuate wildly. I've been slowly turning down the bonus 'chaining'... gain an energy instead of a cube over here, gain a track step instead of energy over there, gain a fuel instead of energy at this spot, etc. It seems to be helping; players are still making a lot of progress but it's more evenly distributed.
Still chugging away, but I'm happy with how the game is turning out.
Side Project
One of the things that has been slowing down my designing progress has been something new and shiny to work on. If you've ever done any sort of extended project like this, you'll be familiar with the feeling of some new and cool idea coming along, distracting you from finishing your current project. Well, I've hit one of those. It's not another board game, though, but something digital. Specifically, something on Discord!
I've been spending a lot of my time connected to Discord lately. Besides being a really great platform for video gaming, it's also vital for staying in contact with other board gamers. This one community I'm attached to also has a game, playable right within Discord! It's a mostly text-based game where you play as a fantasy adventurer, going around slaying monsters, gaining treasure, gathering crafting materials, and powering up your weapons and armor. It's fairly simple game compared to most games out there, but just the fact that it can be played through a text chat makes it highly accessible and playable anywhere.
So, of course, I figured if this is a thing, maybe I can make one too?
Cue the montage of learning about Discord API libraries, databases, Discord servers, network bandwidth considerations, connection pools, cloud-based private servers, Linux administration, SSH tunneling, Discord bot directories and rankings, image hosting, error-tolerant programming, and probably about a million other things I'm not thinking of at the moment.
After hacking at it off and on for a few weeks, I have a working Discord bot. Right now it just hangs out on my private server and one other. Say hello to it, and it will give you an uplifting greeting in return. Tell it to wait for a certain amount of time, and it will ping you after that time elapses. Ask it to search, and it comes back to you with colored hearts. Tell it to combine colored hearts into a gift, and it keeps the gift in your inventory for later. Tell it to throw a gift at someone, and it will send that other person a cuddly hug animated gif. And tell it you want to play a game, and it will give you a set of five dice and play Yahtzee with you. :)
Most importantly, each of the concepts I had to learn to make any of those features work will be useful in some way trying to make a full-featured game later. I'm not quite sure I have all the pieces I need to make a complete game yet, but at least I have plenty of ideas floating around and directions to go. Hopefully this is something I can continue to hack away at.
And that's all for now. Focused on one board game and one online game. Plus side orders of playtesting other people's games, staying connected on Discord, and watching Twitch streams. (Along with gaming streams, there's a surprisingly large amount of good music streaming on Twitch.)
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