Mutant Pizza

Okay, Otherworldly Beings, this update is going to be brief. I want to share with you some of the revelations on a prior playtest I’ve had on One Last Job and discuss the future development path for the game.

I was able to get a prototype in front of a few local designers for playtesting and the comments they had will help push the game forward. Here’s what feedback they had:

• The drafting mechanic (choose characters from a tableau of sorts) bogged the game down too much
• The most fun aspect of the game is rolling dice and using your character’s dice abilities, but it’s over far too quickly
• Players are inundated with a tableau of characters and they have to read through a lot of text to figure out what a character can do for them.

All of that valid feedback has given my brain a lot to chew on. During playtests, I’ve also felt that the game is too simplistic in its general objective. Your goal is to gain a number of cubes. Now, making the objective has been the point so far. I wanted to focus on defining characters and finding the fun parts of the game first and foremost. Keeping the win condition simple has helped me do that.

I feel like I have a good foundation for One Last Job and now it’s time to kick it up a notch. What does that look like?

Right now, I’m organizing the different mechanics, assets, and gameplay elements into an easily parseable list for me to find patterns. I’m also brainstorming ways to expand gameplay to put the focus on the dice rolling with a more scannable interface.

I have a few goals for my next design phase:

• Create classes based on what a character does for better clarity: For example, do they steal for you? Are they good at playing defense?
• Evolve the objectives: What if gaining cubes and coins, or stealing them, were missions that you competed against opponents to complete, and you had to complete a few of them to gain points or harm your opponents’ criminal outfits?
• Layer on and alter mechanics for a better challenge: What if you had a “mastermind” character who was the “brains” of your outfit, and they were the leader of your crew and came with a persistent benefit to you? What if you had a base? Would it be fun if characters had health and did damage?

I’m excited to get all of this built into my next prototype and see what the game plays like. I’ll report back my findings.

That’s all for now. Until next time, Otherworldly Beings…