Hello residents of Scoville! I hope you don’t mind, but I’m cutting into the regularly scheduled blog posts with a current update on the state of things. We recently hosted our friends at Cardboard Revolution Co-op for playtest night and got some wonderful feedback on Doomsday Peppers! I’m absolutely going to share some of their thoughts and kind words but first, a little about Cardboard Revolution: We met these wonderful folks at Protospiel Online last year, and immediately clicked while trying out one of their prototypes. They have the same sense of humor as we do, and their game design philosophy is very theme-oriented. This always makes for an endearing combination to my brothers and I, and we’ve really enjoyed keeping in touch. We got the chance to playtest their latest game, LOAM, and it’s a ton of fun. It’s about to hit Gamefound for funding on May 23rd, and you’re not going to want to miss it. It features gorgeous, hand-made clay sculpture photo illustrations, really fun and engaging set building gameplay, and BUGS! Lots and lots of cute little bugs. After reading today’s Diary entry, go check it out here.
Now, on to the playtest results!
We had a great time teaching and playing Doomsday peppers with Cardboard Revolution, as well as the additional treat of having my good friend Phil along to play with us!
Everyone had some really great things to say about the game so far (“delightful”, “funny”), and days later I was still getting messages from them with feedback and ideas, so to know it stayed on players’ minds was very satisfying. There were also some really good ideas being thrown around afterward (which is my favorite part of playtesting), so there are some exciting changes in the works!
Without digging into the nuts and bolts too much, I can tell you this much:
- Most of the changes are focused on the first half, in order to help focus players on two goals during the Preppening:
- Get good Equipment
- Gather info on the Harvests! Players should try to find out what’s coming, so they can get the right Relics to be ready for the Apocalypse!
- Players now start with no cards in their hands. This not only serves to help focus players on gathering good equipment, but it also plays well thematically, as players should feel like preppers who… just aren’t very good at prepping!
- The way that the Corrupting chooses a player to become the Cultist is very different. Using this new way, it removes the possibility that players can so easily choose to be the Cultist (I’m lookin’ at you, Phil!).
- Gathering has changed slightly, but it plays directly into how the Corrupting has changed. Instead of drawing up to 5 little cards, then seeing how many peppers you pulled, you’ll reach into a bag and pull little tokens that represent seeds and peppers. You’ll pull these one at a time, and if you draw a Doomsday Pepper you have to stop gathering and add the pepper to your play area (where your total number of peppers adds up to your possible corruption!). This adds an interesting “push-your-luck” mechanism to gathering and becoming corrupted. Do you keep pulling tokens, knowing that the next one might be a pepper? Is it worth it, knowing that the peppers might make you stronger?
- HOW can the peppers make you stronger, you ask? Well that brings me to the other big change. The Cultist’s Spell Book has become a Spell Book that’s accessible to all players, right from round one. Some careless Cultist has left their Spell Book lying around, and now it’s become community property. ALL the Spells in the game now live in it’s pages, and they can be claimed (and used) by Neighbors and the Cultist alike. But be careful! These Spells are culty by nature, so there’s a price to be paid if you tap into their power!
- These changes have made some really great opportunities to think about some fun new game components! Nothing that has any direct game play impact, but I’m a sucker for good table presence and cool game components. I’d really love to include the one’s I’ve got in mind, even if they’re stretch goals, so keep an eye out when we launce the crowdfunding campaign!
So with these changes in mind, we’re busy building the new version of Doomsday Peppers and looking forward to sharing more playtest news with you in the future!
