Thanks for playing
I had the basic idea for a tactics game where you duplicate the board about 6 months ago but It surprised me how little I had pinned down until I started on this. The first thing we did when we started was make paper prototypes so we could test out the mechanics before designing it. We ran the game probably 6 or 7 times with different mechanics until we settled on the balance that is currently in the game.
The first design had no way to fight back other than making copies and the players could only move one space but it felt really limiting. The 1 for 1 attacking and 2 space movement was added so that the player could have more options and create space on specific boards. The slime's movement and attack never changed from the first concept. We wanted them to be slow and predicable, taking a lot of inspiration from the bugs from "Into the Breach". All in all, after picking the game idea we had it designed in about 5 hours.