You’re late! Also you posted a daily update the first four days then went silent until today!

I am! Sorry! I originally started writing this on thursday thinking the game was done (so one day after that week 2 primer sneak peek) but then… you’ll see, anyway, the following paragraph was written on thursday, then everything else was done after

Final? On this time of year? Localized entirely within your blog?

Yeah, turns out I had an extremely productive prototype test session last night. The game was very fun, just inconvenient to play. But we came up with a solution that I’m very happy with and tested this morning. The game manual is still not perfect, but it’s at a place that I’m happy enough with for a 1 week project. The game itself is just a lot more fun than I expected and I’m very stoked about it. However I think the improvements left to be done are very minor, so unless tonight’s session really gets my noggin joggin I’m ready to call it here (and I won’t mind having a few extra days for next week’s project, cause I sure complicated things by adding an over the top but complicated to address message to it)

OH GOD EVERYTHING IS WRONG

Okay so that test session thursday night not only made the neurons fire but it also gave me some very important problems needed to be adressed before calling it a day on this. So back to the drawing board, for the moment enjoy this picture of the mess created by a four player game using yarn as lasers.

Changes made:

Game is super simplified, board is now back to the size of one letter page. No more red cards. No more prisms, they allow you to get on board of another player’s “mirror circuit” too easily. Because of no prisms, players now get to place 2 starting lasers. Back to rubber bands, yarn was awful. Game is now way shorter via cutting of many card copies in the deck. Game is now 2 players only, the concept would work on a computer for 4 players, but in a board game it makes too big of a mess be it with rubber bands or yarn. Maybe if a super material was found for the lasers the game could work with 4 players and be a bit crazier, but I can’t spend longer on this game.

Changes in practice:

Changes are good! Obviously it feels bad to throw out bits of the game you worked on, but it’s for the best, so no harm no foul. The game is still fun to play, although I might be the only person to miss red cards (perhaps because I was the only one to understand them?). Prisms being gone is also pretty sad, but they just made every game to dependent on them, so I won’t personally miss them. 2 lasers to place seems like a good change, but I only got to playtest this new version about 3 times before I had my “deadline” come up on me. Right now the biggest issue is last player advantage, I don’t have the numbers to back it up, but based on pure intuition from how the game plays out I can only assume the first player always gets a disadvantage as they can’t react to the last move. I can think of one way to remedy this, which would be to let the first player count their points at the end of their last turn before the last player goes. But again, gotta move on. Here’s a picture of the simplified smaller game.

So you’re late but you still say you respected the deadline, what’s up with that?

Right, so the only changes made after the deadline were in the manual of the game. The real reason for the delay Sunday was being at the salon du jeu in Montreal. A board game convention get together type thing. In there I got to play a couple cool games whose names my brain refuses to remember (well I remember planet, a short and sweet area of control game and paladins of the west kingdom, but I only played its demo not a full game). Why did I stick to the deadline for most aspects of the game but not for the manual? Well I talked to a guy with very cool initials (JC) who works for FoxMind and he encouraged me to submit my game! Don’t get me wrong he didn’t give me any false expectations, he just said I should try submitting it if I was interested by sending as much info as possible. I figured the game was presentable but the manual was awfully outdated. Since this whole exercise is about learning I more or less just said fuck it and decided I should learn to submit a game as well.

So, new manual?

Any last thoughts on this game?

Yeah, there are a few changes I’d like to try. Mainly the removal of “place” cards, letting players place a free mirror every turn instead. Also I’d like to see how the game plays with no cards at all and instead just 2 actions a turn, for 6-8 turns, but this would definitely be veering away from the challenge requirements. Overall I’m a bit sad the game has to die here, but who knows, maybe I’ll come back to it in the future.

Expect a true challenge 2 start + news post soon.

HEY IT’S ME, THE CAPS-LOCK EDITING FAIRY, JUAN FORGOT TO UPLOAD ALL THAT WAS NEEDED TO TRY THE GAME YOURSELF, HERE ARE THE CARDS AND SHOPPING LIST ENJOY

Shopping list:

Rubber bands ( 2 colours )

Pins (lots of 2 colours, a few of a “neutral” colour)

Cork board (letter size)

Paper or cardstock for printing cards and map

A little masking tape

Instructions: Use your preferred method for printing cards to print the cards. Affix the map to the cork board with a couple of pins, then, place the pins around the outer edge of the map as shown in the following picture:

On your board, the white pins should be the neutral colour pins. Add a small line of masking tape to the top of your mirror pins to indicate their rotation (8 per player, seen in the outer edge of the map in the empty area)

That should be it! If anything is unclear please let me know!

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