Mutant Pizza

It’s been a while, Otherworldly Beings—

Apologies for being silent for so long. Since the last update, Escape the Entity has undergone many transformations while attempting to keep its core tensions. In this entry, let’s talk about where the game currently is and what the current design goals are.

Let’s jump right into it, shall we?

Finding balance in asymmetry

Escape the Entity is an asymmetric game. The Entity is an area control player that spews space hazards on the board. The Ship is a deck-builder player that avoids, destroys, and outwits the Entity to make secure deliveries to star systems on the board.

Simply finding the “baseline” for this game has been a fun challenge. To get to the awesome abilities for both players (wormholes and teleportation, space lasers, Kraken arms and beaks, etc), the foundation of the game must be solid. There needs to be a feeling that both players have enough firepower to win if they have the right strategy. The flow of the game needs to feel like that fun tug-o-war between two players of different form.

Escape the Entity is two different games smashed together, to some degree. There’s high interaction between both players. Whatever the Entity does, the Ship must react. This, combined with designing both a deck builder and an area control game, means a lot of searching for the right mechanics and systems until finding something that feels right, albeit a bit boring at the moment. Boring but working is good in the early stages of game development.

That balance is still being honed through rapid prototyping and rigorous playtesting. It’s close, but still not quite there.

Perceived agency with deck building

Deck builders and, well, most modern strategic card games provide players with a lot of agency. Playtesters who played the Ship—or deck-building side of the game—sometimes had feedback centered around a lack of agency or the perception of such.

At first, that seemed like an odd piece of feedback, as each card provides two options for players: Either play it to gain some energy to use for other actions (for example, buying other cards from the market [called the ‘Synthesis Network’ at the moment]), or play it for its core based on the suit (moving, shooting, or shielding against damage).

The realization from this feedback was that maybe players only think there is a lack of agency. In prior iterations, the energy a card can provide was relegated to a small area under the suit in the upper-left corner of the card. Now, energy values are a core component, under the other option for play.

This new design has yet to be tested. If it turns out that the song of “little decision space for cards” continues to be played on repeat, these cards will be revisited with more options.

Speaking of card redesigns…

Instead of simply paying energy to move, the Ship must play a Nav card. As is visible in the image above, that movement pattern is specific. It’s also exact.

Using the image above as an example, the Ship must move exactly two spaces left, right, or center (their choice) exactly three times. This is also relative to the direction the ship is facing, meaning if the Ship player chooses to move two spaces center, they are moving two spaces forward based on the direction the nose of the ship is currently in. Players can pay some energy to change their heading before a step in their “burst,” with each step separated by a comma.

The Ship player must move exactly the amount of spaces; however, they can pay energy to increase or decrease the number of spaces they must move between each step in their burst.

Reaching a Star System is important for the Ship player. It’s where they make deliveries, which gives them victory points. Who doesn’t love victory points? To reach a System, the Ship player must move the exact number of spaces required. For example, if a System is two spaces away and they play a card that requires them to move five spaces, they’ll need to pay three energy to decrease their burst enough to reach it. This has made for a fun puzzle for the Ship player, on top of what they already need to do (avoid Entity damage and build a powerful deck).

One small surprise discovered through playtesting was that the “high end” movement cards that granted the Ship more movement choices actually were worse for the player than the ones that had them move much smaller distances. So in a future build, these cards will be reversed, with “bad” movement cards forcing the player to move vast distances.

Sounds great, right?

Well, it’s kinda boring at the moment.

The Ship has six main things they can do on their turn: change their heading, move, shoot, add to their shields, buy cards, or turn cards in for points. There’s no “outfoxing” to be had for the Ship in this current build of the game. The Ship can’t do neat things like make a decoy or teleport or anything like that. And that’s okay, for now.

Again, the point of balancing the Ship player is to find a good flow with movement, point collecting, and deck building. Once that’s established, the wormholes and explosive decoy drones and such will be added.

This journal entry quickly grew long…

Wow, that’s a lot of board game design info. And we haven’t even gotten to the Entity changes yet! Looks like this needs to be two posts.

Stay tuned, Otherworldly Beings…