Summer is bad for playtesting.
Design Diary: Cooperative Deckbuilder
- Thread starter Jason Waddell
- Start date
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Yep, good time to take a break and return to your game with fresh eyes imho!
I feel like maybe the game shouldn't be cooperative.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Wasn't that what people liked about your game though? The puzzle of which cards to pass to reach a common goal? Removing the cooperative part might be a path worth exploring, but it will probably change the dynamics of the game quite drastically.
I've been kind of procrastinating responding to this.
I think the game works two player. It's functional, but not sensational (in my opinion).
The problem really rears itself when you have more than two players. Take a simple card that says "Pass a card." You need to:
- survey what the other players at the table need
- consider what your current bottlenecks are also
- pick a card to pass and a player to pass it to
It's a lot of mental load, combined with the fact that the turns are happening simultaneously. Each player has their decision tree, and these trees are intertwined, and all of a sudden you've got this knotty mess of 3- or 4-pairs of wired earbuds you're pulling out of your pocket.
The highs of finding a great line were nice, but only really happened in a 2-player setting. Beyond that it was kind of a headache.
I think your musings from June 29th (where you were considering focusing on container passing) might be something to test, instead of essentially scrapping a good portion of your design. It even makes intuitive sense - instead of just tossing feathers and frogs and stuff at people, you're sticking them in a box and handing them over.
Onderzeeboot
Ecstatic Orb
Not yet!