Last weekend I went to TotalCon, one of my local gaming conventions. It was a fun time seeing friends, playing prototypes, and even playing published games. Here’s a recap of the weekend as best I can remember.
Thursday
The Mines of Mi Otal
This game was originally designed for a Game Crafter contest. One of the people who played it back then was James, who enjoyed it and asked me about it after I had shelved it. So when I saw James I knew I had to play the new version with him. This was the first test of the new version which changed a lot from the original. It was incredibly unbalanced and I lost by a lot. It was a great test though that gave me a baseline of what was worth fixing and what was not.
I’ve now had 3 tests of it and the game is coming together. There were a few elements I left out from the original that I’m going to put back, they helped mitigate some of the randomness.
Circle the Wagons
After testing Mines James taught me Circle the Wagons. A nice two player wallet game from Button Shy. I managed to win with a long wagon train. This game is quick to learn and has a lot of variety with the different scoring methods.
Comic Auction
This started as a 15 card micro game of auctions and set collection. I added more variety and extra cards for tracking player’s debt so it’s around 108 cards now. The game is a continuous auction for groups of comics. Each comic has a unique combination of two characters. For scoring players must make sets of comics all containing the same character. So players could be fighting over the same comic for different sets. Players can only go so far into debt though. Then they have to sell off comics.
This was the first test of this since I updated it. My friend Steph really enjoyed it and the group had a lot of great suggestions. Some of which we tested out. A big thing I need to figure out for this is how to value the comic sets so that it’s worth bidding high to make larger sets, but doesn’t grow so much that one extra card wins the game.
Bunny Kingdoms
Back to published games. This was a fun card drafting and area control game. You draft cards to take control of spaces on a grid map, build building and add special features. You score each round for the number of towers you control times the number of different resources you control. The scoring started off so small, I think I made 3 points the first round. It seemed like it wouldn’t be possible to make a larger area. But it quickly escalated with special abilities and growing my area. By the last round my kingdom was earning me 55 points. The drafting was fun, and I enjoyed trying to balance between expanding my territory to connect more areas and building up what I had to increase the multipliers. This was my favorite published game of the weekend.
Dinosaur Island
Building a dinosaur theme park is fun. I was not so good at it though. I was tempted by the goal cards and raced to get one but neglected to build up my park. I didn’t have time to build up for points before the game ended. 2 goals were similar and could be completed by the same action so the game ended pretty fast. It was fun, but I definitely need to work on my strategy.
Friday
Circle the Wagons
Since I had learned Circle the Wagons from James I was able to teach it to Steph. I’m still not good at working on building areas. But it has a fun decision space with what you can score. And I always want to tuck cards under, but you can’t.
Comic Auction
One of the suggestions from Thursday was to add an additional character to the game. Since I was going home each night instead of staying at the hotel, I had a chance to print up additional cards. The larger deck worked well and I introduced some bonus scoring. We played around with the numbers and came up with a cleaner method of selling comics mid game. Really coming along.
Hit the Jackpot
A prototype by my friend Chip. It’s a deck builder where you play 3 cards a turn to a slot machine trying to get symbols to match for bonuses and scoring. I was surprised how the theme of slot machines worked so well with a deck builder. But they both have the randomness and hope of getting combos. I think the game needs more chances to cut cards from your deck but it was interesting over all and I look forward to playing it again.
Plutocracy
Chip and Emerson played part of a game of Plutocracy. Chip had to leave so they couldn’t finish, but they played enough to give me some great feedback. Including the question of why I had action costs that I wrote about last week. I was hoping to get some tests in to check the game before I printed it at the Game Crafter. The changes from this test required more reworking of the components than I expected, but I think the game is better for it.
Cockroach Poker
I love the bluffing and trying to read your opponents. It plays quick and is easy to teach. A nice way to finish the night.
Saturday
My game published by Button Shy currently available for preorder. We had a few minutes to kill while we waited for a player, so I pulled out In Vino Morte. It’s so easy to teach and you can get several games in quickly. One of the players was even interested in buying it so yay me for marketing.
Adrenaline
When I first showed up Saturday my friend Mike asked if I was looking for a game. He was starting up Adrenaline. Once the 5th player we were waiting for arrived, we started. I’d heard a lot about this game. An area control game themed as a shooter video game. Everything about it played to the theme, variety of cool weapons, picking up ammo, running around to shoot your opponents and not get shot in return. The only problem was the long downtime of 5 players. You really lose the flow of action when you have to wait for other players to take turns. But everything else works so well. I enjoyed it but would like to try it with only 3 players to see if it feels smoother.
Rajas of the Ganges
I had scheduled a play test with my friend Derek for a game he was helping test. But we had to wait for another player. To fill the time he taught Rajas of the Ganges. This was a neat worker placement game with lots of different things going on. I love the win condition of having a money and fame track going in opposite directions and when you cross your piece on the other track you win. The dice system was interesting and kept making me have to try and reroll as efficiently as possible to get stuff done. I didn’t do very well but it was enjoyable.
Post Human Saga
This was the game Derek was testing. It had a lot going on. A full on adventure game with a lot of detail, like tracking the health of my bat. In its current form it doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do. We played for 2 hours and didn’t really get much into the game. Some interesting mechanics and story elements but I think it needs to be streamlined a lot.
Vanilla
Derek, Angela and I went to get some dinner and played my new version of Vanilla. The updates worked well but I still have a lot of balancing to do. Angela said she wanted more engine building in the game to have a sense of progression. I completely agree. So I’ll be working on how to implement that in the future.
Clank! In! Space!
We got back from dinner and Derek and I joined a game of Clank! In! Space!. I enjoy deck builders and Clank sounded interesting. I haven’t played the original but heard Space was an improved version. I liked almost everything about this game except two things. There wasn’t much culling, so my deck got very bloated and inefficient. And the fact that I died one space from the scoring area with a huge point lead. The randomness worked against me on a few parts that made my inefficient deck even more frustrating. I’d be willing to try it again now that I understand how important movement cards are.
Plutocracy
It was already past midnight but I was able to get two players for a test of Plutocracy. I was glad to have a chance to test the changes before I had a copy printed. The game dragged a bit, but the changes I made had no negative affects. Still need to adjust numbers to get the play time right. This was the first two player game in a while.
And that was my time at TotalCon 2018. Even though it’s local, it’s over an hour drive for me. I’m thinking about staying at the hotel next year so I can get more gaming in.
My next Con will be the Granite Games Summit in Nashua, NH next weekend. If you’re there come and play in the In Vino Morte tournament Saturday night.