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This game shares DNA with Pandemic, yes, but I think a bit of the Forbidden series (Island, Desert, Sky). Oddly, in our playtest, this familiarity made it super simple for me (a veteran of those games) and incredibly easy to pick up for my co-designer (who'd never played anything like it). I guess it's a tested formula! However, your theme and goals are different enough to set it apart from the aforementioned. 

I think the theme is cute and appropriate for the target age you set. The setting, general conceit, and complexity feels perfect for that 8+ demo. Bonus points for it being unique! 

But I wonder if trash could enter the board in a different, more thematic way. The random die roll does work 100%, but it's not very dynamic. Think of Pandemic's epidemic deck or Forbidden Island's location cards and how they reshuffle. Players, at a certain point, know what's in there - it's up to them to determine what's most precious at the time because they can't save it all. There may be a way to imitate that feeling without flat out stealing the idea.

The upgrades felt good. Like real good. If you can tie that further into the theme, all the better. I'm not sure how I feel about the "6 upgrades per player" being a win condition, though. The escalation of cost is perfect, but after a few rounds, we won handily on the second hardest difficulty. (I realize dice luck is part of this.) 

To prevent this, can the bins get full? As in each bin can only be used a certain number of times? We played with two players and found it fairly easy to delineate sections. I'd imagine this is only easier with four players. We didn't find a use for the trade action with two and I can't see a use for it with four players, whereas in those familiar co-ops trading sometimes because incredibly necessary. Are there different types of a trash as a result? Is that too close to the aforementioned games?

The mud spots felt arbitrary. Where I enjoy that they escalate the endgame difficulty, I wanted more from them. (Or less? I can't decide.) Is it harder to move through them? Are they created in a different way? Do they have a different effect on trash? Thematic, trash in a mud puddle would be laden with water and thus heavier so more difficult to carry, right? Just spit-balling, but you might be able to turn that into something cooler.

In future drafts, I think the roll-and-write element could disappear entirely. It works for now, but since the game is so easy to set-up and the gameplay is breezy, it might not be necessary. 

Solid work! Cheers!

Thanks for your feedback Chris! You're spot on, others gave similar feedback, and I had similar thoughts to you.

Initially I had a more dynamic rule: First garbage shows up in a dice roll from the previous round, then second garbage shows up at random, then you roll for where the garbage will show up next round. It proved... meh. Unnecessarily complicated, cognitive load for rarely any payoff. Switching to 2 random rolls made the game faster and cleaner. I'd maybe see some exceptions, e.g. 'when a muddy square is rolled, another muddy square gets garbage', but the default random rolls seems to be the way to go for now.

As I said in a different comment, the '6 upgrades per player' was an afterthought because playing only for clearing the field was too long and boring. If you have a different suggestion for a winning condition I'd love to hear it.

I have to admit that I kinda had in mind to make a Legacy PnP game out of this, where stages and upgrade options are different every time, the mud spots stay there and become more and more, garbage in muddy spot need a 'Gloves' upgrade to be picked up, bins matter etc. I didn't have enough time to plan all that, so I just made the default game to get a sense out of it. The ideas you threw would fit there perfectly :)

Thanks for playing, glad you enjoyed!