itch.io

Thank you very much for this post – it's precisely the kind of feedback I was hoping for when I released a public playtest. I can't believe I forgot to include some of the answers in the rules. 

1. If an Enemy needs to move, but is already in Zone 6, it crashes. Put a number of damage tokens equal to the Health stat of the enemy onto the closest card (either the player's ship or the planet) and remove the enemy card from the game. That's the whole point of Astroliths – you gotta blow them up before they hit the planets!

2. Identical enemy cards with different rewards is intentional. I went back and forth on whether identical enemies should have identical rewards, or if them having different rewards would incentivize the player to prioritize different targets.

3. Gotcha. There is supposed to be enemies in Zone One at the start of the first turn, but rules as written, you're right. I need to clarify that.

4. Right now, all enemy cards in the column of  a destroyed planet get removed from the game. It's interesting that a valid tactic is to sacrifice one planet so you can focus on the remaining two. I like players pointing out interactions that I hadn't foreseen like this. In future versions of the game, I'm thinking about having Planet Cards provide some sort of static bonus (and possibly including more than three cards to choose from), so that might not be a valid tactic anymore. We'll see.

The main reason Enemy Cards above a destroyed planet get removed is because I though it would be a hassle to scoop all those cards up and redistribute them beneath the other two Enemy Decks. But that might be another option. It makes narrative sense – that part of the enemy fleet did its job, and so now comes to assist with destroying the remaining planets.

5. Discarding Ammo Cards at the end of the turn is not mandatory. I thought there was a may in there, but I'[ll go clarify that. The idea is that the player can either hang onto remaining cards they think will be useful for next turn, or toss cards they don't want in the hopes of drawing something better.

6. Ah, yeah. Right now, I'm trying to fit the game into a mint tin. So the cards are mini cards (2.5" x 1.75") and mint tin cards (3.43" x 2.05"). But making everything standard poker card sized might be cheaper to produce. I'll have to investigate that.

7. The duplicate Zone Marker cards are extras. I'm wondering if having them on BOTH sides of the play space will make things easier to line up. Mint Tin cards come in sheets of 18 (and aren't cheaper if you use less), so I have a number of "spare" cards currently.

As I said above, I thinking about giving Planet Cards some kind of effect (like increasing the Health of your ship, letting you hold +1 Ammo Cards, increasing the damage of your weapons, etc.) and including more than three in the game. I'm also thinking about a second ship that fires a beam (and damages every enemy in the column) instead of missiles with the purple icon.

Thanks very much for playing ASTROLITH and for posting these questions. :)