Category: Games Cancelled

It looks like most of the core mechanics worked. However, the Loss Aversion monster reared its ugly head. The players were punished severely when the storm hit and further hammered when an unusual number of bugs escaped from the web. This caused some bad feelings for the players because they felt that they lost everything they gained in a quick one-two punch. There are a few reasons for this.

Removing the limits on the actions resulted in the two new players quickly slipping into a decline position which was hard to climb out of. This might have been caused by my game teach being sub par. I may not have made the magnitude of the consequences clear enough as well as the importance of not over-extending yourself. The economy is very tight in this game and un-forgiving.

The lack of readiness for the upcoming storm resulted in an overly severe result when it did happen. The bugs escaping was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It was an overly harsh penalty when both players were financially strapped. I definitely need to “Nerf” the “Wiggle” mechanism which allows bugs to escape from the web, this is just cruel and unusual punishment. The storm, however, needs to stay in the game because it is a critical timing mechanism, as well as providing a great deal tension.

Once the players have survived their first game, they will get a good feel for these events and learn how to deal with them. The “Wiggle” tiles discourage players from storing too much food and add a moderate level of risk, but they can be toned down a bit to lessen the punch without affecting the timing of the game. The “Storm” tile enhances the energy swings from feast to famine and cannot be removed. It can, however, be tamed a little for the first time play of the game, until players get a good feel for the rhythm of the game.

This is where the training wheels come in. The idea of no limits in the game simplifies the play, but it can be very un-forgiving if players make one or two errors in judgement. The first experience should be fun so I am introducing a beginning mode to the game. In this mode, all multiple actions will be capped at two and the storm will be capped at a maximum of two destroyed web spaces. This should help prevent the rapid slip into a “Decline” state for beginning players.

During the last test, I changed the direction of the “Robo-Spider” token, not realizing that this would reduce the rate of energy introduced to the game. This created an energy crisis and we had to give everyone bonus energy, just to get through the play-test. I will try it again on the next test with the right energy balance in mind.

I will also modify the Home action so it triggers the feeding/maintenance cycle as soon as it is played. Delaying it only causes confusion and disrupts the rhythm of the game. I can’t remember why I chose to delay this action, but whatever the reason, it was a bad one. The actions should be simple, you play a card and perform the action.

One more problem with the last playtest was that the players felt the movement was too restrictive or costly. This hampered the expansion of the webs and slowed down the game. I will address this problem after I get a good test with the previous revisions I have planned. It’s too early to address this one at the moment.

Once players get a game or two under their belt, they can remove the training wheels (action and storm limits) and take on the full risks of their actions. The players can also flip the game board over to the advanced side where they create their own map boundaries and choose where to place the “Bait” markers. If that’s not enough, they can head to the local game store and buy “The Hunters” expansion which adds non-web spinners like the Wolf Spider, Jumping Spider and the deadly Wandering Spider. This, of course, will be long in the future. I need to get this game going first.

Feel free to comment and let me know you want to try the game out on TTS.

Hey, It actually worked!

Version number five worked better than expected. After only four official playtests, I appear to have a fully functional game which shows some promise. I know I’ve said this before with the fight night game, only to send it to the scrap pile a week or two later. I’ve also said this about my Nova Raiders game which is currently sitting on the shelf, and may just fade away into mediocrity. I really mean it this time. LOL

In the initial part of each turn, players move their spiders to a new position in their webs. This provides a hint to the other players as to what you may have planned. They then place two cards face down from their hands which will determine which actions each player will be performing. The cards are then revealed one at a time in turn order as the actions are performed. This provided for a great deal of bluffing and trying to second guess your opponent.

The drawing of the events tiles, such as bug strikes on the webs, swarms and storms provided a great push-your-luck experience. Players tended to build more frail webs which was due to the new and revised action cards. Players were constantly aware of the storm which could come and wipe away their frail webs before they had a chance to reinforce them.

The swarm event tile provided some real bug feasts which pushed players into an overabundant state, forcing them to expand their spider family whether they were ready or not. The extra overhead costs of the larger web and spider family were actually a detriment if your family grew too fast. The occasional famine was another thing to watch out for. A famine forced one player into a “Degrade” state where their web started to slowly degenerate. They were able to recover in a couple of turns, however, and were going like gangbusters soon enough.

This is all accomplished through a really tight energy economy which each player has to manage. Players try to keep things on an even keel, through feast and famine, where, either extreme, a surplus of energy or an energy crisis can force you into a precarious position. This seemed to work as expected and is one of the key elements of the game.

Limiting the players hands to five cards created some asymmetrical behavior, but it may have been a bit too much. It seemed too limiting in the last playtest. I’ll have to try different initial card counts to get the right balance. The introduction of new cards acquired in the market didn’t happen fast enough either. New cards were added to the discard pile like in a traditional deck building game. I will change this to adding the new cards to the player’s hand. This will allow for more tactical opportunities.

The different spider powers were cool and intuitive. Resetting only one spider power per “Home” action seemed to curtail any overpowered spider behaviors. I have to take a close look at the spider powers with a focus on tactical play. This has to be worked on next iteration. The spider powers were great fun, however, when they did work.

The action cards also need to be re-worked for more balanced tactical play. The building of the webs works well at this point, except for the slow rate of building them. Maybe the “Baiting” of the webs over an existing web is a bad idea. I’ll try adding the bait as a new web space, which will increase the web expansion rate. The webs seemed to be a bit too static in the last play test.

The new rule we introduced in the last play test, of discarding a card to gain one energy worked great. It was the magic bullet which stopped the energy economy from crashing. Another new rule regarding the swarm tile, also made the event tiles work much smoother. I just need to modify the mix of events slightly to make the game go a bit quicker.

The last game lasted about 2 hours. Given the game complexity, it ran too long and overstayed its welcome. I have to get the time closer to an hour or slightly over that. This can be accomplished, I’m sure.

The next task, is to work out the tactical play between the players so that there is a good amount of choices and strategies, and there isn’t one dominant strategy. I also need to look at the cost and valuation of all the cards, which will be a blend of both mathematical and perceived values. This is where I really have to roll up my sleeves and get to work. Wish me luck, I can use it.

I definitely got the game running a lot smoother. In fact it was so smooth and intuitive the players tended to fall asleep. This is not good. The choices were obvious and a bit repetitive, which led to a boring game. I also balanced the building of the webs too much, resulting in a simple strategy which was obvious and completely bypassed the Push-Your-Luck aspect of building frail webs and hoping a storm doesn’t come too soon. Fortunately this is all fixable.

I believe the players should have more things they would like to do than the resources to do it. This results in tough choices and compromises, as well as strategies and tactics that shift during the game. To accomplish this, I re-worked the web building action cards and spider powers. The player will have to choose a smaller working hand of cards, with the option of changing things up later, at a cost of course. The players will also have a good idea what the opponents cards are, but not enough information to guess their possible moves.

I introduced a foreshadowing stage and a very simple programming stage to the turns to encourage bluffing and trying out-guess your opponent. The programming of two action cards will hopefully add just a little chaos to spice things up. The baby spiders which are added to your web will encourage more asymmetry. The different spider powers and bonuses will hopefully provide multiple paths to victory.

I am ready for a playtest of version #5 tonight. Hopefully the game stays on the rails, the latest overhaul was done fairly quickly. Fingers crossed.

The last playtest was very constructive. The game flowed like an old engine wanting to start but sputtering to much to really get going. The problem turned out to be a wonkey turn rhythm. The heart of each turn is simultaneous play which seems to flow well, but each turn begins with a purchasing phase based on turn order. This disrupts the flow and takes the players right out of the immersive theme of the game. I yanked this part out and tossed it aside. In version #4, the purchasing is triggered individually with an action card, just like all the other actions. Turns should be simpler and more consistent now.

Another problem was the turn order token which is periodically passed from player to player. It was awkward, disruptive, and didn’t work well. I tossed that into the scrap bin as well. I’m working on a player order randomizer which can be implemented whenever required to resolve the order of playing actions. It will be pretty slick once I figure out exactly how to do it. Meanwhile, players can just draw colored tokens from a bag to determine play order.

The worst of the problems was the excessive randomness in the game. You could be doing everything right and still get beaten down by random events. There were actually four randomizing elements in the previous version. That’s enough to ruin anybody’s day.

Players drew random tiles from a bag to build their web, some of these provided much needed food, and others did nothing but expand the web. Draw too many of the latter and you’ll end up starving. This was not acceptable. The tile placement should be a decision point, not a punishment. I eliminated the bag, modified the way potential food points are implemented, and stacked the tiles in front of the players so they can choose which tiles to use. This even allowed me to implement a new headwind mechanism which I will describe later.

The second randomizer was the rotating action card market. This did nothing but handcuff the players. The economic constraints and the new card which allows you to buy or sell only one card is more than enough to mediate the market. Having a limited choice is not necessary. Having all the card types available (but in limited supplies) also helps promote asymmetric play and should make the game more fun.

The random draw bag containing the food and special events is definitely staying in the game. It adds loads of tension and a fun push-your-luck element to the game. This, along with the “Wiggle Die” which is occasionally used to determine if the bugs escape from your web, should provide just enough randomness in the game to make it fun and a little unpredictable.

The last playtesters wanted more player interaction. I had already planned on doing this, once I get the game flow right, so I have done this in the latest version. I’ve added a starting card which will enable every player to mess with an opponent’s web as well as a couple advanced cards which players can buy if they want to be more aggressive.

Finally, one last flaw reared its ugly head during the last playtest. There tends to be a slight snowball effect, when one player gains an advantage. A player could possibly gain a runaway lead and be un-stoppable. Rather than a blatant catch-up mechanism, which might seem contrived, I decided to implement a headwind mechanism to deal with this. In version #3, as each new spider was added to the web, an additional maintenance cost was un-covered, increasing the overhead costs of the web. I took this one step further and added an additional maintenance cost under the seven stacks of tiles in front of the player, This will hopefully slow down the run-away leader just enough to keep them in check.

The costing of items is currently seat-of-the-pants guessing. I plan on focusing on this once I get the game flow right. You can’t tune an engine until you get it running reasonably smooth, so the accurate costing of actions and other components might have to take a back seat for now.

I hope all these changes have the effect I desire, but that’s what testing is all about. Fingers crossed on version #4. You can check out the TTS prototype here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2554703613

Feel free to comment or drop me a line.