Arachnid has gone through some major changes to reduce the number of components, simplify set-up and streamline game-play. I was worried for a moment after I finally worked out most of the problems with the action deck and action board. Once the game flowed smoothly, I realized that there weren’t enough interesting decisions throughout the game. I thought this game might just end up on top of the ever growing scrap-pile of dysfunctional games.
I took a short break from the game before deciding it’s fate. After taking a fresh look, and getting some good input from my #1 playtester (my wife) I was able to narrow down the problems. To start with, the game was too easy to win and the path to victory was too obvious. The “Critters” attacking the web weren’t really much of a threat and the end-game countdown (Hoover) wasn’t very dramatic. This all made for a boring and predictable game. With just a few tweaks, I was able to turn all this around.
The main objective in the game is to acquire the four keys in order to unlock the “Launch Button”. I made this task more complicated so players had to work together or find different ways to get them. I added more Critters and gave them more interesting and dangerous behaviors. This really ramped up the tension in the game and forced some tough decisions between defending the web and acquiring the keys. Having so many things to do and limited time to do it, automatically, made the end-game count-down much more dramatic.
It looks like the game is back on track and it’s time to write a final set of rules. Writing the rules is an important part of the design process. It reveals logic errors and provides a completely different perspective on the game. I’m really looking forward to ironing out the final glitches. I just hope there aren’t any really big issues I’ve missed. The “Kinda” “Sorta”, simultaneous turn-order (but only if you need to…) is going to be tough to explain. This should be fun!
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