[Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to the artwork pictured here. This art is being used for prototype purposes only and will not be a part of the final game.]
Here is another photo of my Sky Pirates game prototype as it stands right now. This has evolved slightly from the previous post I made about it on here. Some of the significant changes I have made from the previous version are:
I have playtested this new version a few times. Overall, the changes have been positive; there is less confusion about how to stack the cards, and more meaningful decisions for the players. The ship cards are apparently still not quite balanced correctly; some cards are definitely better than others, and even with a new card cycling ability added is it still possible to get stuck with a hand of bad cards. I still need to play with the card numbers and abilities. However, the core mechanics of the game seem to be solid. You know the game is making progress when you are no longer making major structural changes and are instead just doing balance tweaks.
Now I just need to figure out what route I'm going to take with this. While Manaforge is definitely *my* game and I am publishing it (and its expansions) on my own, I am open to the idea of handing Sky Pirates off to another publisher. (My free time is finite; should I spend it publishing or designing more stuff?) Anyone know of a publisher looking for a filler card game? :)
Here is another photo of my Sky Pirates game prototype as it stands right now. This has evolved slightly from the previous post I made about it on here. Some of the significant changes I have made from the previous version are:
- The location that each ship is going to has been removed from the ship cards themselves and placed on separate location tokens. This is the most important change from the earlier version in that it solves several of the problems I was having. One location token is now played together with the first ship of every new fleet, and the locations are separate scout targets from the ship cards.
- Each location now has a 3rd place VP value, only used when playing with 5 players. Only the 1st place value is used when playing with 2 players.
- The "no token no treasure" rule: if you don't have a fleet pointed at a particular location, you cannot gain VP from that location, even if you manage to win due to just long-range attack power.
- The wall of text has been removed from the cards' rule boxes and replaced with equivalent keywords. The effects of each keyword are spelled out on a separate cheat sheet.
- The point values of the locations and the power values of the ships have been rebalanced.
I have playtested this new version a few times. Overall, the changes have been positive; there is less confusion about how to stack the cards, and more meaningful decisions for the players. The ship cards are apparently still not quite balanced correctly; some cards are definitely better than others, and even with a new card cycling ability added is it still possible to get stuck with a hand of bad cards. I still need to play with the card numbers and abilities. However, the core mechanics of the game seem to be solid. You know the game is making progress when you are no longer making major structural changes and are instead just doing balance tweaks.
Now I just need to figure out what route I'm going to take with this. While Manaforge is definitely *my* game and I am publishing it (and its expansions) on my own, I am open to the idea of handing Sky Pirates off to another publisher. (My free time is finite; should I spend it publishing or designing more stuff?) Anyone know of a publisher looking for a filler card game? :)
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