Major Changes Afoot

This week involved my quarterly visit to Sheffield as part of the clinical trial that I'm on for a new MS drug. It means four hours of train travel one morning, as well as the hospital visit, which leaves me stuffed for hours for the week at work. So no Vacuum playtest this week :-(

Of course, the wonder of modern trains is that you can sit in a fairly comfy seat, with a coffee and your laptop (plugged in, so you don't run out of battery after fifteen minutes!) and actually get something useful done. I choose to use these days to write blog posts (including this one) and do prototype graphic design :-)

Last week's blog post was my most popular so far this year, with the most interest on Twitter I've ever had - 5 favourites, 5 retweets and three shout outs - so there's some pressure on this week to keep the quality high! I had hoped to do an analysis of Reiver Games sales over time, but unfortunately I'd failed to copy the relevant files to my new laptop when the old one died, so I can't (at least, not today, I still have them backed up somewhere).

So instead, I'll be talking about Zombology again. At last week's Newcastle Playtest I'd played Zombology for the first time since the very beginning of December - it had sat unloved on the shelf for a couple of months awaiting the artwork for the NaGa DeMon winners copies (and my playtest copy of course). We played two games and afterwards I got a couple of pages of suggestions and criticisms from the very thorough discussion.

There was more criticism about the lack of zombie theming (which I've heard before from other people) plus criticism of the complexity:

• Multiple decks - it's not clear when to draw from which one
• I was the only player who knew how many rounds we had left and I had to count it each time someone asked
• Having two different types of cards in hand, some of which you were only allowed to use in specific rounds

Seeing as I'm pitching this up against games like 6 Nimmt! and No Thanks! this complexity is a major problem, 6 Nimmt! and No Thanks! are both very simple games that you can explain in a few sentences and are easy to pick up, even for non-gamers. Theme is less important in a 10 minute game (I've no idea what the themes of 6 Nimmt! and No Thanks! are, despite loads of plays). I think the zombie-flavoured artwork will go some way to alleviate the lack of theme, but there's more I can and should be doing in that arena.

One thing did get positive feedback though, the new scoring was much simpler which was a good thing - everyone was able to calculate their own scores (as opposed to earlier games where I worked it all out for everyone).

I spent most of Wednesday's train journeys working on a new version that addresses these complaints by:

• Adding a round tracker so everyone can see how far through the game you are
• Adding some zombie-themed events to theme it up a bit
• Removed the two types of cards complication
• Simplified the drawing of new cards

I've added some upgrade cards and some event cards to tie the theme in tighter (you can now get hazmat suits or suffer a zombie monkey ravaging your lab!) plus I use the round counter to introduce some urgency with decks that are named after how bad it's getting out in the real world. I'm hoping to add some art to the back of the cards which also brings that home.

It's a major departure from the last version, but at its core it's still a 10-15 minute game for 3-10 players that features drafting as its core mechanism. I printed it out on Saturday, now I just need to see if it works!

NaGa DeMon 13: One Last Hurrah

Yesterday I managed to get a lot of games of Zombology in. I had set myself a target of playing four games in this final week of the month. I'd played two on Tuesday lunchtime, and I was hoping for one more Thursday lunchtime, and then either one at Games Night or one at Newcastle Gamers tomorrow.

In the end we played three games at lunchtime (with Wilka who'd played several times before, and Steve, fresh back from his honeymoon, who hadn't played yet). We completed those three games and the rules explanation for Steve in 28 minutes. It's fast!

At Games Night we played another three games, so Steve and I played six games, Wilka, Hoops, Dave and Gav three games, The Wife two and His Nefariousness one. Everyone seemed either interested in playing several times or at least not averse to it. Obviously, these are all friends of mine, so there's a bias involved, but still that's really good. In addition, Steve said what must be any designer's favourite words during a playtest: "I'd buy that!"

At the end of Games Night, I got my first feedback from a playtest not involving me. Konrad (@pidaysock) who'd been one of my best customers during my Reiver Games days had printed a copy out and solo'd it a few times last week. Last night I got an email with feedback from his first three games with other humans.

Konrad's feedback was much more critical (and hence useful, five PIPs for you, sir!). His friends in Germany really didn't experience the theme in any meaningful way, none of them felt the game had anything to do with Zombies, and most of them didn't even get the science bit of the theme either. Our group (as well as others I've played with) really got the science feel, especially with the conference rounds in the newer versions, but we all agreed the zombie link is tenuous. I'm alright with that, the games I'm trying to compete with, things like 6  Nimmt! and Hol's der Geier are very quick games with very tenuous themes. I've no idea what the bulls have to do with 6 Nimmt! And while the cards in Hol's der Geier all feature mice or vultures, all you really care about is the numerical value of the cards played. A bit of zombie art will help here, but it's never going to be as thematic as most (shotgun heavy) zombie games.

The other major criticisms from Konrad's group were that the game was too short and too chaotic and there wasn't enough information early on for you to be able to plan a winning strategy. Again, that's definitely on the money, especially since I changed to the three different types of cards. Now you have no idea which suits will have the fours and fives until the fourth round - halfway through the game.

Konrad had a few ideas about how to address these issues, if I can make it along to Newcastle Gamers tomorrow, I'll see if an opportunity arises to try some of them out...