New Design 2 - To Space!

Enough of the teaser from my previous post.  Here's the information on my newest game design.

In a distant galaxy, there are 8 systems of planets.  Between these systems, there are 8 space stations that provide varied benefits to passing travelers; however, there is a major problem with the stations.  Due to flaws in the construction of those stations, they are all unable to maintain position in any one of the systems.  Every so often, the stations move to another system.

The inhabitants of the 8 systems gathered and decided on a solution: build a massive station to connect each of the stations.  By doing this, one station will be fixed in position near each system.

In the game, each player has a ship that travels to the various stations to gather resources to aid in construction of the central station, and then connect each station to the central hub.  Since each station has a different function, players must decide if they want to ally themselves with any of the stations (thus making it easier to use their functions).  However, becoming an ally with 1 station makes you disliked by another station, so players must balance their alliances  Also, players must watch out, as the order of the stations will change every 2-3 turns (depending on the phase of the game).

The game (currently called Stationary Change), is tentatively for 2-6 players and should play in 60-90 minutes.  The core mechanics are simultaneous movement and pickup and deliver resource management. There is a good amount of economic considerations in the game, as the cost for resources is determined by how far away the stations that provide resources are from the systems that produce those resources.

At this point, the initial playtest has been completed (2 player).  Based on that playtest, there were no aspects that required major rework or just did not work at all.  There were just a few minor items to investigate, which should not take too long (I have already made most of those changes).  For anyone that attends the Metro East Gamers meetups, I currently plan to have this ready at SWIC in 1.5 weeks, and welcome anyone that would like to playtest it.

Anytown - Game Overview and a Look Ahead

Anytown: At the Corner of No and Where is a worker placement, card drafting, resource management game for 2-6 players ages 12+.  The game length is 40-70 minutes.

In Anytown, it is the height of the Gold Rush.  The players have gathered at an area of available land in the vicinity of a gold mine with the idea of constructing a town, and attracting as many citizens as possible.  Over the course of 3 years, an empty patch of land will be developed into a bustling town, and the player that attracts the most citizens will win the game.

As stated above, Anytown is played over 3 years (rounds).  In each round, players draft building cards, then proceed to construct those buildings (as building space allows), while helping to construct common buildings that require more than 1 person to complete.  After buildings are constructed, they can then be used for various abilities such as resource trading or gaining Citizen Points (CP).  At the end of the year, players discard unused building cards, and then the available land for the town is expanded for the next year.

Since the town is new, there is no reason for duplicate buildings.  Also, each building has multiple copies in the deck, so players are racing to be the first to construct each building.  Then, in later years, buildings already in play may be upgraded, allowing for co-ownership of those buildings.  Having an ownership stake in many buildings is highly recommended, since every non-owner using a building ability provides the owners with a bonus (either resources or CP).

To date, Anytown has been playtested around a dozen times between all listed player counts, and will continue to be playtested whenever possible.  At this time, I am seeking blind playtesters to help prepare Anytown to the next step (searching for a publisher). 

I have briefly considered doing a Kickstarter on my own, but with my family and work, I do not believe I would have enough time to devote to setting up and running a campaign.  Perhaps that will change over the next year, but I have my doubts.

Game Design - What has happened the last 7 months?

So I have been negligent on updating this space now for too long.  Here's a recap of what has happened since May:

1) The original design of the game has been abandoned.  Gameplay was too long (2+ hours), I had to keep adding mechanics to get more player interaction (which made the game overly complicated), and it started to not be as much fun.

2) Stonemaier Games announced a Design Day that took place in November.  This jump-started my thinking into the common town approach to the game.  With only ~4 months to have something ready to show, I got started on the redesign of the game to use a common town.

3) The first playtest of the new common town design took place in September.  Jamey Stegmaier was present, and participated in the playtest.  There were many minor issues, but even from that first playtest, I knew this design was vastly superior to the old design.  Over the next couple months, several additional playtests were completed, and the design (now called Anytown: At the Corner of No and Where) was ready for the Design Day.

4) Anytown was playtested at the Stonemaier Games Design Day.  I was extremely pleased with both playtest sessions.  At the end of each session, I had questions ranging from "Is there a website where I can follow the progress?" to "When will this be on Kickstarter?"  I initially thought that everyone was just being nice and did not want to point out any flaws, but then I received news that Anytown was rated in the Top 10 of the designs presented at Design Day!  I was completely speechless!  I thought I had a good game, but I would not have guess that something I had essentially thrown together in 4-5 months would have been so well received.

5) Blind playtesting of Anytown is now available.  If anyone would like links to the documents for a print and play version, please let me know.

6) I have started designing a 2nd game.  More on that in a later post.

I think that brings you all up to date.  My next post will explain Anytown in a bit more detail for those interested.