What if the “World Space Organization” (WSO) decided to clean up all the space junk floating around our planet. This would be great for communications and research but not so good for all those spy satellites that aren’t officially there. This could make for a great cat and mouse game, full of hidden movement, secret objectives and subterfuge.
The WSO will start mapping out the skies to locate all the space junk, but the spy organizations will try to keep the locations of their spy satellites secret. It will be a race to collect as much “Intel” as possible before the WSO detects the spy satellite. Do the spy organizations “Orgs” reveal their satellite’s position, effectively shutting them down, or do they risk gaining more “Intel” and possibly losing it all if they are discovered? Do the “Orgs” overtly try to control where the “WSO” searches, which might provide information on their own positions, or do they try to throw one of the competing “Orgs” to the wolves by revealing their position. It’s Spy vs. Spy on a global scale.
This game sounds like too much fun. Somebody should really make this.
Finally, I was able to incorporate some interesting decisions into the Arachnid game with version #10. Before this, the game was predictable, repetitive and things weren’t happening fast enough. The game and the theme promised loads of fun, but it just didn’t deliver. The players needed to make more interesting decisions and the players always wanted to do more. The new shifting action tableau solves both those problems.
Players get a hand of action cards and place them onto a constantly shifting action tableau which works like a conveyor. Each time a card is added to the left, the tableau shifts to the right and the last card is taken back into the hand. The cards themselves have three different, or modified, actions which trigger based on the card position in the tableau. As the cards progress down the tableau, the costs of the actions tend to increase, and, in some cases, the actions change.
The player can perform any or all of the actions available on the tableau as long as they can pay the associated costs. Instead of a card action, a player could place a movement token on the card to move a spider, or a consume token on a card to eat the bugs on their web. On the next turn, the skipped actions will shift to become more expensive.
The player is faced with some interesting decisions. The timing of when to introduce actions into the tableau and the necessity of sacrificing actions to consume bugs and move their spiders, makes for some interesting tactical planning. Performing multiple actions effectively is fun and changing your tactics because of another player’s interactions is maddening. (But still fun.)
The game flows much faster and is full of some tense moments. I’m just tweaking things now to get the bug economy working right and make the game flow smoother. Version #10 is ready for some real testing. Fingers crossed!
In the previous version, I decided to eliminate as many constraints as I could and let go of the reins. As the playtest started, I eagerly anticipated the game moving along like a run-away stage-coach at break-neck speeds……but I think the horse may have fallen asleep. The most insightful comment was “The best part of the game was the teach”. In other words, the game was full of promise, but just didn’t deliver on any of them. I had to call it quits early again because the game just wasn’t progressing. The economy was also dysfunctional, one player just couldn’t get things rolling because of an early expenditure of energy to buy an action card, and another player experienced an over-abundance near the end. Much of the excess gains were just wasted, but in spite of this, the players, still, couldn’t do what they really wanted. The energy track and maintenance costs were simply not working.
I know there are some fun bits in this game, but the players just haven’t been able to get to them. It’s time to take a serious look at the economy of the game.
The second problem, of excess resources, is easy to fix. A slight rule change regarding the incorporation of the bug hexes into a player’s web and a different distribution should correct this problem. These tiles will also be double sided so that their function will be more clear. The broken economy, however, is another story. I’ve often heard the expression “Sometimes you have to kill your darlings” as it pertains to game design. I decided to take out what I originally thought was the most crucial part of this game. The Energy track, along with the maintenance costs are being eliminated.
There will still be some type of economy, but it won’t be an explicit energy track because the maintenance costs are unnecessary and punitive. Players can incur costs many other ways, like opportunity costs when they have to decide between one action or another, or spending resources or actions to gain new abilities. I will be reworking the action card mechanics in order to embed these costs in a less direct way. This might be a bit tricky but I’m sure it can be done.
Another thing that came up in this playtest, as well as the prior one, was the ability of spiders to move onto the opponent’s webs. I originally didn’t allow it, but I really can’t see why this shouldn’t be allowed. This can open up many strategic possibilities, and the opportunity cost of being on an opponent’s web, rather than expanding your own web, will help counter-balance this tactic. I don’t know why I didn’t allow this sooner.
It’s time to move on to version #9. Hopefully the next game will make it all the way to the end. We’ll see what happens with the next major play-test.
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