Notes from Forty-first Playtest

End Game

Finally a playtest with 5 players! Eddy, Dan, Lester, and Kris all joined me during lunch today. Lester won, hoarding plants and a bunch of animals and guessed correctly that Hunt would score the highest. Dan and Kris also guessed correctly. The game was so low-scoring that Dan tied for second collecting only 3 tiles. Eddy had a great poach early on, but ran into some trouble (a.k.a. lots of bears) mid-game. I did really well hunting, but drew a couple 1 value plants, pressed my luck, and died, running out of time to sell everything I'd collected and ending up with one point.

Challenges

In a 5 player game you don't get many turns
This makes it hard to recover from one bad decision or roll. But the turn still go fast enough, the game might support up to 6 with extra tiles. 

Village placement is brutal with 5 players
The current method I'm using involves rolling dice and taking the highest roll. With 5 players that means 10+, which can put the village against the top edge, which guarantees people are gonna get blocked, and also with so many players it's a long walk to clear spaces. Also as players 4 and 5 Kris and I were too chicken to put the obstacles in interesting spots. I need some simpler board setup rules. 

Hunt keeps getting the highest score
The last 3-4 games Hunt has gotten the highest score, since raising the Wolf to 3 hide, and changing the plant value distribution to 1-2-2-2. We discussed it after the game and I think it was Kris who landed on what might be the problem: the village values (currently 2-3-3-4-5) guarantee each animal gets you at least 6 points, so you can hoard a bunch and the timing doesn't matter as much when you sell them. This was exaggerated by  how few turns you get in a 5 player game. But it's close enough to balanced that I'm going to try simply changing the values to 2-2-3-4-5 and seeing if that helps. Also, even though it's counter to a lot of what I've been doing with the game, at some point I want to try a Fibonacci progression, 1-1-2-3-5 and see if player behavior acts to self-balance the points.

Torch is still too complex
The torch's second use - being able to explore a 3rd time - did come up this game for a change. And I used it quite effectively to get my gatherer killed. The goal of this last iteration of equipment design is simplification, and the torch is still effective and worth the cost as a way to fight off deadly animals without this exploration ability. I'm going to scrap this extra rule. 

Scouting hasn't come up yet
I'm striving to simplify this game as much as possible, so this rule has been on the chopping block for a while. But I want to keep it around a little while longer. First, someone (and maybe someone with a better memory than me), should try intentionally not collecting anything one turn, so that they can scout on the way back and have knowledge of 5 spaces, at the risk that others know something about 1 or 2. Second, I want to see if it really works as a catch up mechanism after a run of bad luck. Maybe Cybil will try it when Emily comes out to visit. Or else Dan's pretty good at finding the wrong thing when he's exploring.

Successes

Not too much downtime
Considering there is no simultaneous like in many modern designer games, and the only thing to do during other people's turns is memorize what is (or might be) on a face down tile, the rounds go really fast. It helps that it's fun to watch the successes and failures of the other players.

Weapon costs and abilities feel balanced
I've gone through a lot of iterations on the weapons, making them simpler, and balancing how many points they cost vs. how many points you get to start vs. how powerful they are. I'm pretty happy with where they are now. The math shows different weapons are better for different situations, and it appears to be proving out in game play, where everyone did take different weapons (and we were all successful at hunting). I think it also helps that the costs have all gone down, so there are many more opening turn options, and the cost feels like less of a detriment to playing the strategy that you want.

The rules are getting simpler
Having simplified equipment means the base game will be easier to teach. That means once I get through another draft of the rules it will be time to start working on characters! Looking forward to using them for catch-up mechanisms and end game scoring bonuses. And of course it'll back to the most entertaining part of the game design process for my playtest team, brainstorming and trying out new ideas.