01-07-2024 – Complete remake of the play area, maps are gone, tiles and tokens are gone as well.
No video this time, just some words on the changes made.
I attended a designers meet up, where me and 6 other game designers played my game extensively.
None of the 6 other designers where deep into RPGs or Fantasy games, which was a limiting factor, but we managed to play a few games and the feedback I got was not what I wanted to hear, but valuable none the less.
I have decided to drop the maps, and the tiles for spells in order to make the game more appealing to play, meaning less complex and easier to learn and understand. This is mainly due to the fact the maps were making the game more complex, because players have to relate to movement, line of sight, placement on the map and strategical considerations in terms of where to move and when.
This resulted in a few games, where people would turtle hard, or prolong the fights with defensive spells which was dragging the games out to the extent that we had a game which we could not complete, even after playing for 2.5 hours. Due to none of the players being willing to “take a risky” move and expose their players to the other team.
After reviewing the feedback I decided to strip the game down to only contain cards and some dices (D4,D6,D8,D12,D20) + a turn sequence card and a hitpoints tracking card.
I also remade all 144 cards, to remove movement, strip them of excess text, so they are easily readable, and increase the font size a notch.
Once I get the new prototypes home, I will schedule another designer play test session and hopefully next time will be more successful.