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Critics

A topic by AroN64 created May 24, 2022 Views: 86 Replies: 1
Viewing posts 1 to 2

It was a pretty long time ago since I played this, so I hope I remember all my points of critique. Before that though, I'd like to say that I think it's amazeballs that a game has finally been made based off a game I omit for reasons I think should be obvious to you. Love that part. Here are points I think can be better in this game.

First of all, the 100 turns rule. During gameplay, I have not kept track of the amount of turns I've played and I think nobody has really during a board game. Even during trading card game events have I never seen that. This is ripped straight out of the [RETRACTED] video game. Nobody complained about it then, because the game kept track of turns for us, but that just isn't a thing with boardgames. There are things you just can't do in a board game, because work in making the game work is done by humans and humans also want to have fun.


Second of all, relation between cards and figures on board is not clear at all. Yes, I tried dices to make the relationship between tokens and cards clearer, but even then I had to be careful, as dice could just roll over, because of a flawed table we were playing on. Besides, counting the eyes on the dice and then trying to figure out what token it was again was not exactly a fun chore either. In cases like these, I think it's best to just label the cards with a number relating to a token (no this has not been done).

A side note to this is the fact that those paper tokens need so much space to not fall over that you aren't completely sure what space they occupy, but I guess that is forgiven, as this is just a demo.

Finally though, the food or actually how the game works in general. Thanks to the food mechanic, the battles already don't really take forever, so leaving that would make the 100 turn rule obsolete. However, leaving these mechanics the way they are don't exactly result in a successful game either. Because why bother with the graveyard and revival if the amount of times I can send in an unit is less than the amount of units I have? Yes, I have an item card that can give me food temporarily, but it has a one time use. There is no real continuous way of gaining food and if that's what you're going for, I guess that's fine, but the graveyard-revival thing will then only be useful if you let each player begin with a lot of food and/or more food item cards.  So this game needs either more food or a continuous way of getting food if you want to make it more fun. And yes, the continuous way of getting food might be a thing that would give us games that last for 100 turns and more, but maybe we can say that competitive rules just demand a timer for each player and first player running out of time loses.


So those are the things I needed to say about this game. I really want this to be a thing. I want this to be huge. But that means some rules need to be changed

Developer

Thank you so much, both for playing the same and for taking the time to write a review!

Indeed, there are a few things that need some fine tuning, and others that are just clunky in a board game, as opposed to a videogame. I was afraid of the card-token tracking, and you just confirmed that.

I did not want to limit players in the strategies they might come up with, so I think that printing a sorting number on a card is not the way to go. Something temporary, however, like a sticky note might work better (for a paper version; an actual game might have a plastic piece, like a paper clip). Perhaps there’s something that can be explored using shapes and/or colors, to make it more obvious?

Re: Food I have considered many times squashing food and resources together into a single resource. I would become a lot like mana in traditional card games, I guess, and that’s what led me to keep them apart. I think that the food mechanic is unique enough to be fun, but I agree that it also needs fine tuning.

Perhaps one could use resources to permanently buy more food, instead of gaining it for single turns. But, with more food available, I am afraid all decks are going to gravitate towards heavy units. It might be necessary to adjust the number of minions from 6 to 8, or something like that. Maybe have the players rotate them, so that they have 8 in total, but only 6 can be playable at a given moment.

Re: turn limit This is a cheap mechanic, yes, and one that definitely does not work in a physical game. I have a few non-implemented ideas for tie breaks. In the end, this rule might not be necessary at all, and can probably be left out.