mcobb83's blog

Well, another week, another blog post! Unfortunately I had no play test this week, but thats ok. Come September I will have a lot more play tests again; lots of people are out of town wrapping their summer vacations and stuff. It gives me time to begin preparing some files to be uploaded to The Game Crafter!

In big news though, I have decided on a name for my game, since Viking Invasion was just a working title. I have decided, based in part upon the opinions I gathered from play testers, that my game will now be called Defenders of Wessex!

Here it is! The long awaited Rules for Viking Invasion! I've had several people ask me for them (Elkobold in particular!) so here they are.

A few notes- The document is 10 page long currently, thought there are blurbs with fluff and history in them. The real length of the rules is about 8 pages.

I'm working on adding pictures to the document. Admittedly they will only be pictures of the rough prototype until I get finished artwork in hand, but they will help to break up the mass of black and white, as well as illustrate some of the concepts, which will save on words too.

So, today I got to have another play test! And it was epic!

I have altered the rules and now the game is capable of playing within 2 hours (obviously it will be longer for more players, shorter for fewer players). The game was ultimately win-able, though we did not win (random card draw part of the game ended it for us!). But still, the game worked exactly as it needed to.

My parameters for this test: Play in under 2 hours, have the outcome be close (either a near win or near loss), and have little negative feedback that would require rules edits.

So today I had an hour and a half meeting with the artist who will be providing the pretty pictures for my game. He is Howard Cobb; I don't know that he is exceptionally famous, but I mentioned him here before. His gallery is composed mostly of landscapes, but I know his talents and interested better than that. He has a history of, among other things, comic book art (He's done some Punisher, Quantum Leap. His most famous comic book work was probably on Virus, the comic that spawned the movie).

Today I was able to pull together enough people to play test my game, Viking Invasion (working title). This is the 4th or 5th play test, and after each test there have been adjustments to the rules and to game play to make things move a little better. This was the official test of version 2.1.

To start, the game was a smashing success! Everything worked absolutely perfectly, and even though we lost the game (very narrowly) I was able to see all of the mechanics function near perfectly and the game was incredibly entertaining.

It fit my criteria for the game: