Game #5: Everest by FastLearner

Horray! :)

Boo :(

Boo :( <-- maybe not boo. Depends on the scoring you go with.

Horray! :)

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean. Additional weather? Is this instead of the weather system you had originally? Or is there some weather that's tied to the calander or something and then some other weather as well? I guess I'll wait and see what you came up with, but the red flags are up on this one.

- Seth

How's Everest Version 2.0 coming along? For what it's worth, I looked at the rulebook today (it's printed and sitting next to my bed) and noticed something....

You might sell a few copies to people who think they're buying Everquest :)

- Seth

Since you brought this game back up in "Settlers vs Ra", I thought I'd revisit the topic over here now that you've begun playtesting.

First, quick question -- what is the font you've used on the board? I see it everywhere, but don't know what it is.

Anyway, on to the game. I'm wondering, now that you've been playing, whether there's an "effective elimination" effect whereby a player in the back never really has a chance to catch up and win. I'm concerned about this for a couple of reasons. The one is that you say the game seems to end with 2 turns after one player has reached the top level. The other is that you originally had a rule that said that whenever any player crossed a level, ALL other players then had to draw tiles from that pile rather than whatever level they were on. This could lead to a runaway leader problem, taken together.

Have you seen that in the game play? Can a player "come from behind"? And from how far back? How early is it determined who's "in the running" and who's out of it?

In a one hour game, it probably doesn't matter much, but even so, if you're basically done for after 20 minutes, and can't really affect the other players any more (because tiles must be placed on your current level, right? -- although, I guess you're still involved in the bidding, if those still exist), then it's still a concern.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm wrong in some of this analysis, misremembering rules and such, but I'd be interested to hear where the project is at and whether a lagging player can come back to win, and whether you even want him to be able to in the first place. (I think "no" is a valid answer -- after all, this is a race, and people should be rewarded for playing it as such! But if there's no chance of winning, the question is all how early this gets locked in.)

Glad to hear you're moving into the playtest stage with this one!

-Jeff

FastLearner,

Thanks for sending me a link to your latest version of Everest. I went ahead and looked it over and have a few comments and suggestions.

Great layout on the rules; it is done very professionally.

As for the rules themselves, I was a little confused on some parts. In the "Setup" section it would have been nice to maybe have another page showing a picture or description of what exactly is a "player piece", "Route" pieces on the board, and an "energy cube". Also a small section in the beginning indicating the various attributes on the climber cards.

I did not understand the statement, "Place the appropriate Glory Point markers on the board number side up, matching the letters on the markers to the letters on the board." Maybe it is because I can't actually see the board with the letters on the squares. Disregard this remark.

You talk about taking, "as many Energy cubes as he has blank Energy spaces on his Climber Cards." Again, it would be helpful to indicate what the energy space is on the card by having a page describing the card in more detail. Also on the diagram for the "Player Area After Setup" you point to "Energy", should you specify energy cube?

With changing the weather, can you keep discarding the current weather and drawing cards? Something of the effect that you can not draw more than two cards or something.

On the player's turn, he has a lot of different choices to do. When I saw this, it seemed like this would be a problem. You do allow multiple actions, but I would be interested in if it bogs down the game during play.

Your game is pretty ingenious. How long does it take to play?

I don't know if you want to add any variations or anything. But what about the weather influencing some of the tiles. For example, in sunny wheather, an ice tile can be replaced or turned over to rock. Maybe you can have a special wheather card for an avalanche, that would cause all climbers above or below a certain tier to fall.

I would try to add a little more randomness to the game.

Besides these niggling things, it appears you have a solid game. Do people really enjoy playing it?

I don't know. My intuition tells me that this game is lacking a spark or something that would entice players to play.

-DarkDream