Week 4

this week we playtested the game for hours and were able to pinpoint some of the problems we had with the game mechanics and rules. first, after a long time of playing, we realized that ending the game when one player reaches ten victory points is will make the game hours long. to fix this we cut down the number of required victory points to only three point. this would also entice more confrontation right away because the players are actually aiming for three points now. however, a good amount of strategizing would still be necessary to compete in the game. thus, we found that cutting the necessary victory points to just three speeds successfully speeds the game up while maintaining its strategic depth.

however, the game seemed to still be a little slow. to speed up the game even more we decided to grant each player one of each resource in the beginning of the game in order to allow them to spawn more units quicker.

another problem we encountered was the high cost of some of the units. the bear for example which costed three of each resource to buy seemed to way too expensive. so to fix this problem we started balancing out the cost and the ability (attack, health, and range) of all the units as we played until we reached a good good balance.

a third problem that was revealed with more playtesting was the fact that all players tended to try and spawn squirrels and deer only while ignoring the other three units. to fix this problem we manipulated the cost and ability of those "weaker" units to make it more attractive for players to spawn them. so far, the game seems solid with fun and easy to learn mechanics and only needs to be played by players who are outside of our group to ensure that there are not other problems with the game that we might have missed.

Mina Mikhail