Preliminary tests of the new competitive version of Arachnid show much promise. I was never able to implement the Chit-Pull system (Inspired by Wonderland’s War), but the unique Action Track system works well.
The game is mainly a challenge of area control between the players. This is where players score the most endgame points. This seems to work well because players enjoy laying down webs even more than hunting down invading Critters and eating them.
The energy economy is very tight. Players swing between feast and famine as I had always wanted. This switch between a Scarcity mindset and an Abundance mindset adds some richness to the game. The food based economy allows for some strong incentives for the players to take risks.
The battles between players are more of a shoving match whenever two spiders meet. The loser has to retreat, but also loses some food, which can be a very scarce resource. Battles are more about attrition and tactical maneuvering than player elimination.
The dual roles of Commander spider and Soldier spider, as well as a unique special ability for each Soldier spider adds a nice variety to the game. I have to work on making these rolls more unique, because the Commander is currently under-utilized. The next iteration, hopefully, will solve this issue.
There has been some confusion with the unique action track system because players haven’t seen anything like this before. I believe that; with some streamlining, a better explanation, and a clear user interface, this won’t be a problem. This is the only truly unique mechanism in this game, so it shouldn’t be an issue.
The latest iteration is ready to test digitally on TTS and in physical form. I am currently refining the core mechanics of the game before adding some cool additional features I have in mind. I can’t wait to see the results of the upcoming play tests.
After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to give Arachnid one more chance. It will be a competitive game like I had originally planned. I believe I can now solve the political problems and dissuade players from “Turtling”. (sitting back while other players battle it out) There were a few things which players enjoyed in the game throughout its development:
Spinning webs to enlarge the spider’s territory was fun.
Fighting, pouncing and biting critters (Or opponents) was fun.
Catching flies for food was really cool and sometimes challenging.
Acquiring skills was satisfying.
Being part of a colony was comforting.
In the competitive version, each player will manage their own colony of spiders, acquiring skills, expanding the web, and growing the colony. Some traits will be unique to each spider in the colony, but some will be shared. One spider in each colony will be the leader which will acquire the shared skills and command the other spiders. The other spiders will have various roles and unique abilities, but can also use the shared skills when necessary. The colony will work together to grow, learn and defend the web. As the colony grows and expands, it will inevitably clash with the other colonies.
Early Version of Arachnid
The Nuts and Bolts
I was thinking of a simple chit-pull system for resource management and conflict resolution. It would be similar to the chit-pull system used in Wonderland’s War, with a few twists:
The chits will generally be publicly displayed.
Some will be shared while others stay with the specific spider.
Some will represent energy resources.
Some will represent talents and skills.
when a conflict arises, the chits are placed in a bag along with any shared skills and drawn out to resolve the battle.
Some chits like energy and shared skills can be lost in battle.
Some chits like talents cannot be lost.
I will try using a hex based modular system where the hexes can be stacked to represent stronger webs and give spiders on the higher hexes a tactical advantage when battling.
Of course, what would a the game be without a few NPC’s running around wreaking havoc and a global catastrophe or two. These, of course, would be added later if the game appears to be working well.
I will put this game on a short leash. If it doesn’t seem to be working in the first few iterations, it will go back onto the scrap pile permanently. It would be cool if I can pull this one off. Fingers crossed.
After much deliberation, I finally decided to scrap this game. It just wasn’t viable in my opinion. It had many fun features but it occasionally fell flat on its face. The economy was balanced on a knife edge between scarcity and overabundance. When resources were scarce, the tension was high and the decisions were interesting, and difficult. Then the balance would shift to overabundance, resulting in a very boring game. There was also an obvious dominant strategy of keeping the web clear of Critters, which was often easy to do, since they were randomly generated at a fairly constant rate. Overall, I thing the game was too determinate, lacking the variability in the negative events and lacking the extreme fluctuations in the economy necessary to keep the players engaged.
What I’ve Learnt
The main take from this experience was that you can’t force it. Like pushing a rope, it simply doesn’t work when you try force a game to be fun, or force it to be like some initial idealistic vision you had for the game. The harder you push, the further you tend to get from your goal. A couple recent games of mine come to mind.
The first is Nova-Raiders. It is a fast paced, dice driven, space game inspired by Backgammon. The first few attempts didn’t work well, but there was definitely a game in there somewhere. Playtesting proved this out. After a few more iterations, the game seemed fairly solid and players enjoyed playing it. I’ve recently tweaked the User Interface, modified the scoring and have tried to mitigate the arbitrary Take-That features of the game. It seems to be humming along very well. This was only possible because my core mechanics were sound and people like playing the game. The game, in a sense, was pulling me along, rather than me trying to push it. This is, I believe, the way a proper game design should work.
There are always surprises, of course. Fried dice is the second game I would like to mention. It is a simple roll and write game with an interesting dice mechanism which I came up with to entertain my young nephews. It turns out that it didn’t interest them but the adults sure had fun with it. A game could take you to unexpected places, but as long as it’s taking you somewhere, it’s probably a viable game.
The Bad, the Good and the Not so Ugly
We’ll start with the Bad:
The game started out competitive, but I switched it to cooperative because I couldn’t overcome the politics of one player sitting back while the other players duke it, depleting their resources. This was the wrong reason to make a cooperative game.
The game wasn’t going anywhere because the core mechanics were never solid and robust.
Adding more stuff never fix any problems and tended to make the game worse. I had to take a hatchet to the game and do some serious trimming down more than once.
Players needed interesting choices, not obvious ones.
Mismatched mechanics that didn’t reinforce the theme caused thematic dissonance and thematic breaks. This can ruin a good game and make a bad one worse.
Now for some Good things:
The marble based action selection mechanism I came up with in one iteration will make a really good core mechanism in a future game.
The various card based action selection mechanisms that I experimented with will definitely be useful in other games.
I’ve worked with many other game designers while developing this game and made a few friends.
The Not so Ugly
I’ve really honed my digital prototyping skills and have become proficient at designing and desktop publishing.
I still can’t draw worth a damn, but my graphic design skills have come a long way.
I worked with a professional printer and managed to have some very nice prototypes made.
Overall, it’s been a good experience, but I have to recognize when a game just isn’t working and pull the plug earlier.
I had just received a Kickstarter game that I was eagerly anticipating for a little while now. Botany turned out to be a beautiful game, made with with high quality components. I immediately punched out the components which all fit into the well thought out storage trays and added the two additional expansions which also fit nicely in the original box. I then dug into the rulebook and started to learn the game.
There were a few confusing parts of the rulebook and what appeared to be some ambiguity in the turn sequence. I decided to try a two player game with my wife, assuming that all would be clear after the first play. This first play was a bit awkward, like a first play usually is, but we got through it fine. Going out on expeditions, collecting samples, and pushing our luck to grab those last few samples was very rewarding. However, we often found ourselves stopping to resolve issues that came up, disrupting the flow of the game. This resulted in numerous thematic breaks, just as we were getting into the game. We chalked it up to inexperience and resolved to try it again the next day.
About half way through the second game, we noticed that the game flow had actually seemed more discordant than the first time and there was some ambiguity in the turn action order as described in the rules. We tried to follow a more consistent turn flow during the second half of the game to reduce the thematic breaks and were finally successful near the end. It seemed to be the event cards which gumming up the works. Not the events themselves, but how and when we resolved them. The game took even longer the second time, even though we were more familiar with it. This was due to the Reputation Track, which was also the game timer, being constantly set back by the event cards. The game overstayed it’s welcome. It was a shame to see a game that was basically a work of art with some really fun parts to it, being bogged down with confusion and set-backs. It’s time to add some house rules.
The main source of disruptions in the game was the drawing of the event cards and when a player chose to resolve them. According to the rules, you could optionally draw and resolve the card at the beginning of your turn, or wait until you acquired your first specimen during the movement phase. If you didn’t acquire any specimens, you could get away without drawing an event card. The events generally were something bad or something good, which was determined by rolling a single die. More often than not, it was best to avoid the events unless you had a large number of Expedition cards which helped you mitigate the die rolls or evade the harmful effects. Only a true masochist would opt to draw an event card at the beginning of every turn, but this was necessary if you wanted to pick up any specimens in your travels. Drawing the event part way into the movement portion of your turn, however, was very disruptive. You had to stop dead in your tracks, draw an event card, then search for Keywords on all of your Expedition cards to see if they matched the keywords on on the event in the hopes of avoiding any harmful effects. By this time you have completely forgotten how many more movements you have left and you have broken out of the really cool theme of the game. This had to be fixed.
House Rule #1
You must draw an event card at the beginning of your turn if you plan on picking up any specimens during your turn. This way, the disruptions are dealt with up front and you then can get back into the flow of the game. (If you don’t draw an event card, you can’t pick up any specimens, sorry about your luck.)
House Rule #2
Organize your Expedition cards by Keyword so they are easier to parse. I am tempted to take a highlighter to all the keywords on the cards, but I will hold off for the moment. We’ll see how grouping the cards works for now.
House Rule #3
You can have only one of any type of Expedition card. This eliminates the many ambiguities of having more than one of any specific card. Some of these cards require you to roll a die. If you have two cards, do you roll two dice and resolve each individually? Do you roll one die to achieve double the effects? What if one card allows you to succeed and the other causes you to fail? Let’s just avoid all of these problems by eliminating any duplicates. If you draw a card from the face down pile and it matches what you already have, you simply discard it and draw another one. If you can’t find any cards that you don’t already have, you have too many Expedition cards anyway. Having more than one type of card also gives too much of an advantage to a player.
House Rule #4
Modified turn flow and turn reference card. The existing turn reference card was very helpful for a standard turn and reflected my earlier suggestion of drawing an event card at the beginning of your turn. Between step #3 (Move) and step #4 (Specimen Cards) there should be a special highlighted note to Flip the card over if you reach the Estate. (Your movement ends)
Standard Turn
Pay one coin
Draw an event card, Optional
Move
Flip this card over if you have reached the Estate
Draw new Specimen Cards
Collect Income
Buy an Expedition Card
Estate Turn
Draw new Specimen Cards
Collect Income
Deposit Specimens
Optionally Sabotage other players
Gain additional income from Deposited Specimens
Optionally purchase a Garden Feature
Optionally Cycle the Expedition Cards
Fund the next Expedition
House Rule #5
Remove 19 of the of the Event cards. There are a total of 76 event cards in the base game and players will only see about 25 of these during a typical game. Nobody is going to miss the19 cards you removed. The following cards can be eliminated:
13 situations which could cause a player to lose reputation. This will speed the game up and keep the tension high.
5 cards which could cause a player to end their turn immediately. Losing a turn makes it very unpleasant for the player.
the “Income Taxes” card because it forces players to choose between two vary bad outcomes. It just isn’t fun.
Removing these cards should prevent the game from dragging on too long and provide a more positive experience.
We haven’t fully tested these rule tweaks, but we will in the following weeks. If you’ve tried these out yourself, please let me know how it went.
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