Escape the Entity Design Journal #5

New year, new design journal entry, Otherworldly Beings—

I recently had the chance to playtest the latest build of Escape the Entity. It went well! The game still has a ways to go in terms of balance and gameplay flow before I can even start to really test the limits of its design. I wanted to talk about where it is in terms of balance.

The Entity finally has teeth

As you may remember in prior design journal entries (linked below), the Entity player struggled to get anomalies on the board to wreak havoc for the Puddlejumper player. It was a major problem.

Prior Escape the Entity Design Journal Entries

Well, I solved it. Boy, did I solve it.

Here’s a blurry image (sorry about that) of the Entity player board

The Entity player is now able to get anomalies on the board fast. These anomalies range from asteroid fields that make it more difficult for the Puddlejumper to move to stars that push or pull the ship in various directions. I even solved the issue I was having where the Entity didn’t quite feel like a “tempo” character by giving them the choice of when to change to different states, as long as they paid some of their resources (Dark Energy) for the change.

The issue now is that it’s a little too easy for the Entity to get anomalies on the board and the anomalies are a little too punishing to the Puddlejumper. These are easy fixes, in my opinion. My primary plan is to make things more costly for the Entity, so they’ll have to spend more Dark Energy to get certain anomalies on the board.

I also realized another thing, that most of these items just do damage or push the ship around (or both). I want anomalies to have their own personality, so I’ll be working on ways to carve out more strategy options for the Entity. I want you as this malevolent creature to know “I should place a tendril here to cause a specific type of harm to the ship” versus “I should place a tendril here because it causes damage.” Most anomalies cause damage, so expanding on what types of harm the Entity player can do to the Puddlejumper will be key to making this feel more dynamic.

The Puddlejumper’s deckbuilding is gaining its sealegs (spacelegs?) but needs work

Right now, Escape the Entity is a two-player asynchronous game of cat-and-mouse. With the Entity being the cat and a lone spaceship, named the Puddlejumper, being our metaphorical rodent.

An image of the Puddlejumper player board

Puddlejumper gameplay is to work as a deck builder with a pick-up- and-deliver win condition. You start with a few cards with the desire to gain more powerful ones from a market. You have your own discard pile and your own, separate deck that you are cultivating to thwart the Entity and do your job—which is delivering items to various star systems on the board. You gain “route points” (victory points) to gain further advantages and to win.

In a lot of cases, route points and other mechanics are placeholders so I can get down the balance and flow of the deck-building element.

I want the Puddlejumper player to feel like Jerry in Tom and Jerry or the Roadrunner in Wile E Coyote and the Roadrunner cartoons. I want the Puddlejumper player to feel like while the Entity is warping gravity and reality in space, they can use that very strength against this god-like creature. When the Coyote paints a false tunnel in the mountainside to trick the Roadrunner into smashing into solid stone, I want the Roadrunner—or Puddlejumper—to be able to magically run straight through the painted tunnel, only for a perplexed Coyote to follow suit and instead bust their nose.

Right now, the deck building element is straightforward with direct damage doing things and faster ship moving things. I’m going to look into the future at ways to add neat elements like warp, cloak, decoy ships, and more to the mix to give the Puddlejumper player the feeling that they are more agile and better able to outfox the Entity.

Finally, I’m going to lean into a design aspect of this deck-building experience that differs from most, there’s no way to destroy cards you no longer want. Instead, you’ll want to allocate cards into your “shields” stack to treat them as damage absorbers. I’m going to turn that mechanic up and give you more things to allocate to. This is a fun element that does a similar thing to destroying a card, except those unwanted cards might still eventually end up in your deck over time. A card from your shields that has absorbed damage goes to your discard pile and eventually becomes recycled back into your deck. This is an interesting take on a normal destroy mechanic other deck-builders offer. We’ll see how it plays out over time.

All right, I’m done gabbing about Escape the Entity. Time to work on a new build and playtest some more.

Until next time, Otherworldly Beings…

Mutant Pizza