Finalizing the Mechanics

Last evening, the group decided to meet at the Livingston Apartments to discuss the final plans for our core mechanics. We went into the meeting feeling like we were not in a position we wanted to be in. We knew the very basic premise of our game, but we didn't know the details of the game that would make it smooth, enjoyable, and, most importantly, fun. However, after working diligently for 90 minutes, we felt very confident with where we stood.


 Our first order of business was to play test the game and see what we noticed. We started off by having all players receive three cards that represented the attractions that they were trying to build in addition to 10 tokens. The three cards proved to be a sufficient amount of cards as the materials required to build them took longer to acquire than we thought. We decided to have 2 material cards faced up that would be replaced every round if nobody picked them. Players had the option to pick one of the 2 face up cards or purchase a random card for one token. That still did not give us the result we desired, so we came up with the idea that players should have a "for sale" pile where they could show the cards they were willing to sell. We sold them for 1 token.

Then we decided that players would be able to have two actions per turn. It could be a combination of clearing land, buying a card, swapping cards, or offering to trade with another player. The land that the players cleared revealed one number. The number would allow the players to receive extra tokens if the dice that is rolled once per round is equal to that number. In the beginning of the game, there were very few attractions built so the dice rarely hit the number. We then decided that each place should have two numbers to increase the chances of the dice being that number.

The decisions we made last night made the game a lot more smooth and fast paced. It was a very fun time play testing and figuring out the little details of the game. We are very happy with where we are and we are excited for the game to come to life.

-Matthew