Did a fair amount of work today on balancing, score tracking, playtesting, and finally graphic design. Attached are a few photos.
This is an image of the play surface: a model of one hemisphere of the afflicted planet, assembled with cards. Players move their piece to the intersection points between cards, flipping the cards over as they harvest the planet Elements. There are six icons scattered across all the cards in an equal distribution, representing the six different Elements the players can collect.
This is an image of an early version (that is, you can see my scratches and changes written in pen!) of the Elements Tracker. I apologize for covering up the icons in each of the sections… The little red and green cubes are used to track player collections in a two-player game I was playtesting. I think the game will be able to support 2 to 4 players (though only 2-player games have been playtested so far).
This final image is a rough version of the bonus chart. Each of the stars noted on the Elements Tracker provides the player with an opportunity to gain a bonus. Some are simply extra Elements to add to their collection, while there are also some which provide significant advantages the players can use to collect more resources, move across the map faster than their opponent, or both. The top row provides bonuses to scoring at the end of the game.
Tomorrow I intend to create typed-up versions of the revisions I’ve added to the Elements Tracker and Bonus Chart. Draft of the rulesheet will likely happen Tuesday evening.
This prototype is progressing and I am pleased with the results so far…! :)