Hello residents of Scoville! Since you’re reading this, I’d like to just say “Thank you!” Thank you for following us as we continue work on Doomsday Peppers: The Corrupting and draw ever nearer to kicking off our first crowdfunding campaign. Thank you for sticking with me this long on this blog. Honestly, it’s fun to write the Designer’s Diary, but it wouldn’t be worth anything if there were no audience reading them. So again, thank you for being part of that audience.
Now, on with the show… and tell! Regular readers (bless you!) will remember entry #4: “The Mechanising”, in which I broke down a lot of the mechanisms in the game. You MAY even remember me mentioning “The Harvests”. Today, I’d like to tell you more about those Harvests and their effect on the game.
What’s a Harvest again?
Right from the very first conversation we ever had about Doomsday Peppers, we knew it would have the Harvests. They weren’t CALLED the Harvests, mind you and yes, they behaved in a slightly different way, but they were always there. Their function, from the very beginning, was to change the game. I knew that when the apocalypse arrived, I wanted it to feel chaotic and big, and the best way for players to experience that is to change the rules of the game. That’s what the Harvests do, at a mechanism level. For those who are just joining us: When a player is corrupted and the apocalypse begins, the first Harvest is drawn and the rules of the game change until the players end that Harvest. Another Harvest is then drawn, and the game changes AGAIN.
This continues until the Neighbors end all the Harvests in the game, thereby defeating the peppers and saving the world.
How many Harvests are in Doomsday Peppers?
Each playthrough, there will only be as many Harvests as there are players. However, although DdP has a maximum of four players, I want to include five Harvests with the base game. This way, at least one random Harvest is removed from the game during setup, and none of the players will know which one. The apocalypse should, after all, come with some amount of the unknown.
What Harvests are lurking in the game?
There have been a lot of revisions, rewrites, and edits to the Harvests through the making of this game, so nothing is permanent or guaranteed. But keeping that in mind, here are the five Harvests currently in the game:
“Famine”: The Famine makes all the Neighbors discard half of their seeds they have stocked up, and limits gathering more than two cards from the Wild on their turns.
“Sowing the Seeds… OF WAR!”: Drawing this Harvest forces Neighbors to attack each other. This makes them burn through some of the cards in their hand, as well as giving the cultist the Opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
“Rise of the Living Peppers”: Like a swarm of produce zombies, all the peppers revealed in the game rise and obey the Cultist’s command. While this Harvest is active, the Cultist can attack with a strength equal to the number of peppers they have (plus the number of peppers the defender has).
“Rotting on the Vine”: This one affects the Stores (where Neighbors get Equipment). Until this Harvest is ended, players can only trade for one Equipment card on their turn. Any cards NOT taken are discarded at the end of each turn.
“Karolina the Reaper”: If DdP had a “boss monster”, it would be Karolina. She’s big, she’s mean, and the Neighbors can’t end this Harvest until they’ve beaten her in battle! SO… That’s what the Harvests of the apocalypse have in store for the town of Scoville. But here’s the thing about the end of the world: There’s always room for more mayhem! I’d love to include additional Harvests in the future, whether in expansions or as promo items (SDCC exclusive, anyone? 😊). So please, if you have any ideas for a Harvest that would mess with the Neighbors or give the Cultist a little advantage, leave a comment and let me know.
