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Another "Playtesters needed" topic

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Awaclus
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Joined: 07/17/2012

I need playtesters to test an euro-style strategy game of mine. The rules and the cards are currently written in Finnish only, and I'm not particularly interested in translating them unless I know someone is actually going to use the translation, so let me know if you're interested and I'll translate the files to English and upload them somewhere so that you can just print and play. The template is black-and-white printer friendly, the cards have empty space on them reserved for art, but they I don't have any art for them.

All kinds of playtesters are very welcome - I don't even know, who's my target audience for this game. However, I do have one request for whoever playtests this: please don't be under the influence of alcohol while playing, thank you.

The game has been in development for over three years now, and I know it works and I'm sure I enjoy playing it a lot in this state. I feel like I need feedback from people who aren't my family, and that's why I'm having this topic here.

Here's a quick explanation:

The Darkness Enters

Have you ever wanted to become a god?

Trolls, imps, ghosts and even magpies have been roaming freely in the world of humans lately. To deal with this problem, some chosen people were given the chance of becoming a god to fix everything. You happen to be one of those people. In addition to fighting these monsters, you want to make sure the people who worship you are most honorable ones and that you are the wisest, the wealthiest and the most powerful god ever.

In The Darkness Enters, the players choose a value which they support and a value which they are against from five different values (Intelligence, Work, Anarchy, Community and Battle). These choices are hidden from other players until the end of the game. Then they take turns controlling Characters of their choice - every Character supports one value and has their own unique ability. The players get to activate abilities, buy Equipment, make certain Events happen and fight Monsters. The Equipment provide additional unique abilities for the player and help defeating the Monsters. When you defeat a Monster, you get victory points, but the value your current character supports also gets honor points. In the end, you get lots of victory points if the value you support got the most honor points - will you choose the Character which has the most fighting power, but also supports the wrong value? Will you choose the Character which supports the right value, potentially revealing your choice of the supported value to other players? Will you simply choose the Character which has the ability you need and just waste that turn without getting to fight?

The salt of the game is the Character selection mechanic. Every three turns, the Characters are selected so that the starting player picks one and passes the rest to the next player and this is continued until everyone has selected three Characters. The fun detail about this pretty common mechanic is that the Character you pick up last ends up on the top of your Character pile, which means that it'll be the one you actually play first. This makes the decisions even more difficult - the Characters that give more resources are often among the most powerful Characters, but if you pick them first, you will have wasted two turns with Characters that would have done something if you just had the resources. On the other hand, if you don't pick them first, someone else might pick them before you get them. You also might just want to remove a Character that would be useful against you from the selection pool. All this in addition to having to take into account the values the Characters support, and even experienced players will have to prepare for not knowing what to do.

The Darkness Enters is suitable for 10 years and up (intended for adults), takes about 60 minutes to play and 2-5 players can play it. The luck factor exists to increase replayability, but does not play an important role in determining the winner.

Taffer
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Joined: 04/14/2012
So, I'm interested in play

So, I'm interested in play testing (the Finnish version). We have a board game night on Tuesdays in Tallinn. I'm also getting a printer this Tuesday (tomorrow) so maybe I could even print it out for the next one. It's possible that tomorrow we'll be too busy with other games, though, but I could also try some other week.

Awaclus
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Joined: 07/17/2012
That's awesome! Sorry it took

That's awesome! Sorry it took me a while to reply, I'm currently preparing for a con which begins the day after tomorrow.

Here's the Finnish version: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16948609/TheDarknessEnters_fin.zip
I hope I didn't forget to include anything relevant from that.

Taffer
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Joined: 04/14/2012
Sorry, haven't found the time

Sorry, haven't found the time for the playtest yet -- hopefully next week.

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