Sunday, October 18, 2015

Back to back play tests

Greetings every one!

For the past few days I - Matthew - have had a few play test sessions at my place. The first one pitted my friend Niko and our new 2D artist Chris against each other. The second had my wife Jenn and our friend Evan duke it out. Then lastly we had a friend Greg vs. Chris, our 2D artist.


This was a great series of play tests and I actually live tweeted all of them at @HalfHeartGames. I've decided to live tweet the matches so people could follow along, as questions in real time and generally see what goes on.




Haddy and I have made a bunch of changes to the cards, decks and the overall game. Some of the big changes include warping, Rank ability and Generation ability. Let me explain those a bit.

It used to be that if you warp you could move 1 flotilla anywhere on the map, but that would end your turn. It was and is the second thing you can do in your turn, the first being draw until you have 7 cards in hand. Now we changed it so that you can only warp a max of 3 spaces away from your original location. It still ends your turn and it still is the second thing you can do in your turn. We found that warping anywhere could result in a lot of  issues, making it impossible to capture that flotilla and games would last much longer.

Rank up is an ability for Humans that would allow that vessel to increase in power, defense and/or movement. It used to be that you'd pay X amount of resources to Rank up, but that didn't feel natural or keep with the theme of the game. So haddy had the great idea to make it experience based. In other words the X wouldn't be the amount of resources you pay, but rather how many turns the vessel needed to be in combat. The longer it was in combat the stronger it would get.

Generations is a new ability for the Machines that Haddy also came up with. This ability is similar to Rank up, but more machine themed. How it works is if a card has generation (X) on it then that means that vessel needs to be destroyed X amount of times. If you do destroy that vessel the required amount of times then it turns into the next iteration. So for example a card called Mark 1 needs to be destroyed 3 times. Once it does then it is replaced with Mark 2, which is stronger overall. It also has generations so it can turn into Mark 3, which is even stronger.


 The first play test with Nikos and Chris didn't last too long as Nikos was stuck at work longer than he expected. Some things you just can't avoid and getting paid is higher on the priority list than playing games.
But either way he did arrive and I taught Nikos and Chris the game and changes that were made. They never got to use the Rank up or Generation ability, but they did use the new warp mechanic and it worked very well. There were other changes that Haddy and I made that helped make the game move smoother and overall were more enjoyable. This includes while in combat you draw until you have 7 cards in hand, which was previously changed so that you only draw 1. However drawing 1 card felt too weird to people.
Overall Nikos and Chris had a good time, even if they didn't get to play a full game. Since then Nikos has been raving about the game and constantly pitches ideas to me. One in particular is pretty interesting in which a cache drop would appear on the map, which could make the players eager to fight over whats inside. However, I'm still trying to figure out what would be inside the cache. I'm thinking maybe some resources that would be added to your resource pool next turn.

In the end the two didn't get to play much and thus I got limited feedback. Some times this happens, but some play is better than no play. I also have another play tester eager to come back for more.

Yesterday October 17th I had two game sessions running. The first was with Evan who has played the game before, but several months ago. He faced off against my wife Jennifer who has been watching Fleet Calamity grow since the beginning, but doesn't get to play much. Following them was a match between Greg who has played the game multiple times but has severe ADHD and getting him to concentrate is difficult to say the least. He faced Chris who is becoming ever more active with Fleet Calamity and Half Hart Games as a whole.

Overall we got a lot of feed back and learned a bunch about the game. I'll just touch on a few points as this post is getting long.
To begin with Generations is too hard to achieve. It needs to be easier and that's something I'll be focusing on for next time.
There were a few OP cards that have since been nerfed with the help and suggestions of the testers.
Rank wasn't used much primarily because not many of the cards in the human deck used rank.
Overall the human deck had a bunch of issues and was viewed as generally being weak in comparison to the machine deck.
Same issue with the Squad ability as with the Rank ability. Not enough of it for it to really matter.

I could go into more detail, but this gives a pretty good overall tone of the tests. The testers all very much enjoyed the game overall and thought the mechanics and structure was solid. Their complaints were mostly about deck and card balances, which is to be very much expected with a card game.

Moving forward we will be really looking at the cards and how they are used, if they aren't used and which are used more than others as well as why.

In addition to the testing I have also been working more on GUI for the main game. I've been adding a few panels for upgrades and traps so the player can view what is on the field, flotilla or vessels at any time. More on this to come!


Take care and don't forget to follow us on twitter @HalfHeartGames or like us on facebook https://www.facebook.com/FleetCalamity?view_public_for=245019235659967

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