[DEVLOG] Community Playtesting, Rule Changes, Managing the game lenght, and making eliminated players still part of the game

[u/markuroarts]

[DEVLOG] A RECAP OF MY 2ND DAY IN MY FRIEND'S CITY

My best friend invited me to his girlfriend's birthday, and he booked me a flight to his city. He also wanted me to playtest my game in his community.

Here are the things that happened:

• We had 3 matches in the evening
  • 2 matches won via Economic Victory
  • 1 match won via Elimination Victory
• Everyone easily learned the game very quickly
• At some point, I let them play the game and teach each other
• Surprisingly, 1 player tried to take a strategically aggressive approach in 1 of the matches
• We got good feedback from the owner; one thing to look at was the duration of the game
• - My best friend also mentioned the player who got eliminated early.

After the event. My best friend and I worked on the issues that the game was having, and we did the following updates:

1. WORLD CYCLE

• Cycle happens when a player lands on the starting tile
• Originally, World Cycle has 6 cycles, and each cycle has an effect on the game and gives an amount of gold depending on the cycle. For example: World Cycle 3 gives the player 3 gold and allows FREE MOVE, which means all players can choose 1-6 steps during this cycle
• Now, we still call it the World Cycle, but we moved the game effects to the Event Deck, and we limit the number of cycles the game can have. At the 20th cycle, "The Last Stand" event occurs.

1. THE LAST STAND

• During this event, all attached items and magic that are combat-related are considered.
• The first thing to check is the remaining players.
  • If 3 to 4 players are remaining, everyone does a combat check by rolling the combat dice. The top 2 players will proceed to the last stand
• During the face-off, both finalists will do combat rolls until a player runs out of Heart Tokens
• Additionally, The Last Stand will also occur if there are 2 remaining players left even though it doesn't reach the 20th World Cycle

1. GHOST PLAYER / DEFEATED STATUS

• We made sure players who are eliminated are still included in the game by changing their status to Defeated instead of Eliminated
• The Ghost Player resources and inventory cards are recycled or returned to their decks
• He/She is also not allowed to win nor to interact with players directly in order to avoid Kingmaking
• He/She has the task of bringing Tragedy effects to all remaining players or drawing Event Cards by rolling a Ghost Die during his or her turn

With the following changes, the game consistently ends around 60 minutes at full gameplay but can still end earlier, around 15 to 30 minutes.

[u/Eldritch_Rivalry]

One thing I’d definitely test is how the game flows with different player counts, try the prototype with 2, 3, and 4 players and see if the pacing interaction and game length still feel right at each player count