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Help progress by playtestinng

I am new to the world of game design, but I am learning all the time that this is immensely fun, but a very difficult market to get into.

I am in this process for the love of the game I am wanting to design and hopefully get published. My gaol is that people will play my game and will enjoy it.

The game I am working on at the moment is a board game but using cards. players will roll the dice and turn the cards over to move the required spaces.

They start of in the town and have to make their way to the mines. The gangs will go on an adventure to make the most money they can.

You can check out the rules for a stroll through the Wicked west on my website www.migrationgames.com

please help me iron out flaws and know what you think of my initial ideas.

Comments

Story games

I like the story that you are trying to create with this game, as I have a preference for "story" games rather than abstract games.

The selection of skills looks good, since they can be applied to lots of different situations.

In the examples given, there is no player interaction. Is that deliberate? What is your target audience? If low (or zero) player interaction is one of your design goals, then would it be suited as a solo game?

I like the fact that the Event cards have multiple choices on them. One of the things to consider in designing the event cards is whether they present the player with meaningful choices. Simply choosing between Gun or Hand is not a real choice, because it is trivial to calculate the best option based on what characters you have in play. You need choices for which there is no best option every time. For example, one event might present a safe easy option vs a hard option with greater reward. Or another event might present the opportunity to spend gelts to buy an item which may (or may not) be useful later. The main thing that is going to make the game good is the way the cards are designed.

With the current rules, it seems like you will need a very large number of event cards (you have 160 of them, but many are currently duplicates). This may take a long time to create them, and duplicate cards add to the game production cost without improving gameplay. Consider if there is a way to decrease the size of the event deck while keeping (or even increasing) the variety.

Similarly, you currently have many duplicate counters. Could you reduce the number of counters while improving the gameplay? For example, if there was only one Snakeskin and one String, then this would create an incentive for players to trade with each other (if they had one each and somebody wants to create the Snakeskin boots).

Overall, I think you need to be clear about who is your target market, and what is it that makes your game excellent. Focus on these elements, and trim down the rest.

All the best with your game.

Regards,
kos

+1 to what Kos mentioned

Also, i would drop the dice for movement and swap it for Press You Luck.
Make drawing another card an option, rather than a random factor. I.e you get to decide if you want to continue your journey, or camp.
Camping (ending your turn) would restore your health/stamina etc., while drawing another card will make it increasingly harder, as you spend your resorces with each card drawn.

Thank you for your help

First of I would like to say a huge thank you for play testing my game and for taking the time to post feed back. It is very welcome and helpful.

As you can see from the game that it is in early stages of design and that there are things that need work. No player interaction was meant to be a deliberate thing, I understand that people do enjoy being able to affect hey other players but I am trying to re create a fantasy theme board game where your gang is going out to seek glory and earn lots of money. I did not really feel that gangs would be helping each other in this fact. you could argue they could sabotage each other, but there are enough dangers in the wicked west with out this adage, and yes I would also like this to be soloable. Earn so much gold and survive to the end kind of thing. With the cards I would like them to have good options but what I am thinking is in the top half of the card is a comic book style caption explaining what is going on. Then the bottom half split in to what tests you need to achieve and what the outcomes are. There is most likely going to be a change in some cards.

I have thought about reducing the amount of tokens but I will have to look into this as I want the cards to be used to earn them, and not to be traded as players are not going to be meeting. There is choice on many of the cards as to what the outcome is and what you will receive.

I am not keen at all on getting rid of the dice as this would change the whole idea and format of the game I am designing and is not the avenue I feel is right for this game. The intents is that its a Board game using the cards as a board. I want to keep this feel and improve upon the bones of the games I have, not create an new game entirely.

Once again thank you for taking the time, and it will probably take a wile to update and there is a few things I am trying.

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