Polishing our playable prototype

Many things were changed yesterday since our last play-testing session. We sat in school from 10:00AM – 08:00PM to brainstorm and play-test our prototype. The first thing we did was to come up with new spells that the dungeon master could use to separate the players because they were usually too powerful while walking together in packs.

The new things we added were the following

Whirlwind – Pushes all the players on the same tile to a separate tile around it and summons two level five monsters in the middle so that the players just can’t walk back to the tile they were pushed out from.

Evil laugh – As many players there are on a tile, that many turns are skipped for those players. Example: if 4/4 players are on the same tile and the dungeon master decides to throw ‘’Evil laught’’ then the players can’t do anything for four turns, which gives the dungeon master the opportunity to build its hand.

Poses – Makes the dungeon master take control over one player and make him/her damage another player on the same tile. The damage depends on what weapons the possessed player is caring.

Another thing we added so that the players wouldn’t be too powerful was the spell ‘’Demolish’’, which destroys a players item.

Example: Sword of Awesome that gives +3 in damage and is the best sword a player can equip. Although players can equip two swords at a time, so if one player has two Sword of Awesome and one of them is destroyed and if the player has earlier looted a Sword of Mediocre which gives +2 in damage then he/she can equip that sword instead. So the players can carry more weapons but only equip two. And if two players are on the same tile they can also switch weapons and other items.

The last thing we added so that the dungeon master could separate the players were ‘’Switcheroo’’, which is my personal favorite. The thing switcheroo does is to change place with one player and a token which is already placed somewhere on a tile.

Example: When all the ‘’keys’’ are found and the players are moving their way back then the dungeon master can use Switcheroo to move one player from outside the tower to the tile which is furthest away.

This is really effective because all the three or four keys have to be used at the same time. So if one player with one or more keys is moved then he/she has to make its way back and possibly die along the way. And if the key keeper dies then someone else has to go and pick up the key from the same tile that the player died on.

Another thing we noticed that we needed to balance was the amount of mana the dungeon master gets because he/she reached maximum mana too early on in the game. We changed that by doing so the dungeon master only gets mana depending on the tiles and no extra mana each turn as before. I was the dungeon master when we tried this theory out and the negative thing I’ve noticed was that there were too less low cost spells which lead to that I couldn’t cast any spells at all until the middle of the game, which became really boring. Therefor we added a few more spells and changed the cost of some of the old once.

We are still working on the polishing of the amount of mana the dungeon master gets, but there is one card we added to the dungeon master deck which works as an emergency if he/she gets low on mana. That spell card is called ‘’Meditate’’ which costs two mana but makes the mana spin move one step further.

We also thought there were too less enemies, specially of the higher levels, therefor we added ‘’Demon Invasion’’ wich summons two level five monsters and two illusions.

But as we play-tested with more players we noticed that everything became too easy and it went too fast to finish the game and beat the dungeon master. To change that we decided that if there are two players the amount of tiles is 5×5, and if there are three players the amount of tiles is 6×6, and 6×7 tiles if there are four players. If there are four players then one extra key is also added to the game (four instead of three).

The last thing we did was to let Marcus (one of the teachers in our school) playtest our game. First he was one of three players collecting keys to easier understand the rules and the second time he was the dungeon master itself and he pwned us in our own game. That was although the only time I wasn’t playing myself.. so I blame my team members for that loss *muahahahaaa*. Joke aside..

He thought our game was fun and he said that he liked it. Neither had he had anything to complain about so I guess we are continuing doing what we do, because obviously we’re doing it right.

Another thing we decided during the day was the art style for our board game. I suggested a cartoony style which was gladly accepted by the other group members. The reason it fits our game is because it’s all about having fun and a more serious art style I believe would lower that feeling.

Here is a photo from the last play-testing when Marcus was the dungeon master.. Poor Mariam was the last woman standing.