2019 NOVEMBER

MONEY MAKING FOR THE GAME AGAIN

November was also spent for lot of work for clients. I supervised a web campaign and produced 135 short animated films. That was very exhausting and I felt completely drained afterwards.

Nevertheless I pulled myself together and improved a system that was the worst system in the whole game so far!

Due to the rework, it is the absolute best and most exciting system in the whole game so far! It answers the question:

How can players dig up artifacts to equip their monsters and champions with?

THE "DIGGING DECK" (NAME IS WIP)

I have developed a system based on 9 cards that are shuffled together with a pre-determined amount of artifacts. Then the player rolls some 12-sided dice. The amount of dice thrown depends on how many locations the player occupies with specific figures. The fewer dice the player throws, the higher the chance of finding something.

The chance is between 30 and 70 %. The player now "digs" through the deck and finds cards with different symbols on them. When he has found all the symbols he rolled on the drawn cards, the next artifact belongs to him. He can also continue digging to find another Artifact or a Might-marker to upgrade a monster. But be careful! If you draw the wrong card, the digging turns into a world of pain!

With this new mechanism, which simultaneously incites and punishes greed, players experience the true thrill of an “Indiana-Jones’y-search” of long-forgotten killing tools, armor and other useful monster equipment.

THE DIGGING CARDS

For this mechanic I had to go through endless series of tests and move symbols on the cards back and forth for 5 days until the optimal mix was found. I have never worked this long on so few cards since I started to invent the game. In 5 days I usually manage five times as many cards.

In this phase of the project, it's becoming more and more apparent that I'm shifting the focus from quantity to quality. This is exactly the right approach but I never thought I could feel it so clearly. If you know that you do 80% of the work in 20% of the time and 20% of the work in 80% of the time, then you don't even get nervous about this change.

I'm looking forward to the new details and the grinding and streamlining of the game.

Paytest, playtest, playt... What?

A planned playtest has unexpectedly turned into a discussion about the basic values of the game, where many new and interesting topics came up.

This has made me think a lot and I think this will lead to the fact that in the following months I will be able to slim down some real core elements of the game.

I always have great conversations with my friend Manuel and he is very forgiving and consistent with his argumentation and hints. Nevertheless he stays tough when he doesn't like something and he forces me to look at the game through his eyes.

This is always a very healing and painful experience. Manuel is the only one who has a 100% objection card, concerning the game design, because too many cooks spoil the broth!

NEW DEMON MINIATURE

I started to create a new miniature of a level 2 demon. This miniature replaces another one I was not completely satisfied with. Here's version 2. I like it.

Otherwise, this month's main activity was money-making. The project "New Computer" is still in the future, but not so far away... I have to get back to work!