Hello Avid Game design followers,
Here is an update about what is in the lab at Weird City Games this month. Pigs – currently under the working title Little Pig (thanks benny) has made it to the 2nd prototype phase. After a few solo tests and two group tests I realized the main mechanic, choosing where you want your pig to gather was too dependent on luck of the draw and not enough info was shared so that players could make a solid guess. It has been retooled with each pig having one gather card for each site, which they can augment with action cards. At the start of each turn the resource card is flipped and indicates how many of each resource become available in each area. If players go to that area they will split the resources with all other pigs there. Also new special builds, modifications to wolf rules and a structure of gather, one build and one extra action – extra buy, gather one resource, trade, draw action card. This allows more flexibility and strategy. Lastly still working to develop the Wolf Hunter strategy.
Weird City – this one is finally coming together and it is really nice to have two projects to bounce back and forth on. Weird City is a mix between rummy and Illuminati and mostly flavor though I think there should be some good game play. In the game there are approximately 100 cards – 30 locations/events, 40 people and 30 activities/objects. All of these cards will have between 1-5 descriptive adjectives. There will be a total of 10 pairs of opposing adjectives: new/old, safe/dangerous, radical/traditional. The object of the game is to build sets of weird combinations. Grandmothers (old, traditional, quiet) with skateboards (loud, radical, dangerous). Points will be scored for how many opposing adjectives you have. Three and four card sets can consist of adding a location/object or other personality type that compliments both cards and heightens the weirdness. Extra bonus points or safe sets for closed circuits where all adjectives are matched.
The main design obstacle is coming up with the ten adjective pairs so that they can describe almost anything and to have them diverse enough and then build it with a nice balance of all groups. Got to take a look at illuminati’s words and how they did the math. Anyhow those are what we are working on and getting excited for demoing at Gamestorm and sending in a submission for the Gaem Design contest at KublaCon in SF.
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