Last weekend a friend of mine and I participated in the 48 hour Global Game Jam and we're mostly happy with our entry Non-Stop Safari but there is one problem we're trying to solve.
I don't want to go too long with this post, but here's a quick summary:
As it stands Players collect pelts from hunts which they can sell during the game for 1 pelt to one coin return. the big pay off comes from animals going extinct and all their pelts being sold off. There are four species and the pay out increases as each species goes extinct. So the first species to go extinct will net you one coin per pelt (like selling during your turn) 2 coins per pelt for the second, 3 for the third and then the game ends, the fourth one doesn't pay out. At it's core Non-Stop Safari is essentially an investment game, you have to choose what expeditions to finance to try to get the best return. Problem is, as it stands it looks like winning is a matter of having lots of pelts of the third animal out. We're afraid this makes it too easy for players to tell, mid-game, who's got the best shot of winning or if they themselves are out of the running. If you want to check out the full rules, you can see them here:
http://www.globalgamejam.org/sites/default/files/uploads/2011/16129/Non-...
Some ideas we are playing with are:
The simplest, make the pay out for extinct pelts less of a ramp, so, 1,2,2. or 2,3,4 or 2,3,3.
Have a few more species we cycle in when one goes extinct, giving players new pelts to invest in. In this scenario, we would probably shorten the extinction track, still have you hunting 4 animals at a time but the pay outs would ramp up more slowly, like 1,1,2,2,3,3 or something.
Or play the game over a number of hunting seasons more or less resetting the animal population based on the prior season's order of extinction. This would, again, create a sort of reset to give different players a shot at winning each season.
We're pretty psyched about the game and would love to improve it where we can, so if you have any thoughts about this issue or any other you might find reading the rules (or playing the game ^_~) we would be thrilled to hear 'em.
Ya, I figured that, and would be super easy to try! In fact, I don't see why we shouldn't just try it ^_^, we've got the pieces.
I do still like the idea of a certain kind of 'reset' mechanic, but maybe we're over complicating things that way.