Building a Board Game 2
So after the first playtest, the game has undergone a few rules revisions and some thoughts on improving the game a bit.
Here's our revised map
Again red dots are the path, green is the island and yellow dots are treasure points.
dark blue line = my ship
purple line = wife's ship
pink X = Kraken
Here's what we tried on the next playtest:
Adjusted rules
What are the coloured squiggles on the island? Those are my poor Photoshop attempts at drawing numbers as to how much treasure is on each of those islands. The vertical blue line is 1, the pale blue squiggle is a 2 and the purple on the middle island is 3. There is no randomness in where the treasure is, no cards, no map. You just move to the yellow connecting point, collect your treasure and next turn move on.
This time the islands closest to the players start locations only have 1 piece of treasure maximum, those slightly more in have 2 and the central island 3. Even with 5 points to win players will need to move outside their quarter to win, forcing some conflict.
Every island but the centre has a limited amount of treasure, once taken the island is empty. The central island is infinite but each ship can only carry 3 pieces of treasure maximum, so in a longer game the players will be fighting over that central island and trying to get the treasure.
As there's only the two of us we kept the Kraken moving on the roll of a 6. I kept this in place because if the Kraken moved at the end of each player's turn then as there's just the two of us it would move back and forth and not go anywhere. I did however restrict his movement to a D6 just like the ships. We also tried that the Kraken sinks underwater when it's not his move so he can't block paths or treasure points.
The Kraken can also never go to the outer path, the square of dots that surrounds all the islands the Kraken can never move to. So it's a safe zone, this is to stop unscrupulous players from camping a player's start tile with the Kraken.
Result
The Dots
Firstly we absolutely need to draw lines between the points. More than once we've been uncertain as to which point is the next that can be taken. So the real board 'will' have dotted white lines connecting the dots showing clearly the path to be taken.
The Kraken
Only I rolled 6's this game, and only 2 of them so the Kraken moved twice. The first time he ate Laura's ship, the second time I rolled too low for his movement so he sat in a pathway which Laura sailed happily over on her next turn.
D6 movement may have worked fine on the smaller map, but this map is bigger so the full 6 spaces may come back into effect.
Sinking underwater would also have been ok when you're forced to a certain treasure point due to drawing that card, but when you can move to any island to get any treasure the Kraken's threat is diminished way too much.
So next time he stays on the surface blocking paths.
Whether his movement will change will depend on how he's controlled. If I choose for every play controlling him every turn, they'll roll a D6 for his movement, if he moves on the roll of a 6 then he'll get the full 6 spaces of movement.
The treasure
I like this idea more as it forces players to move to the central island. This should spark more conflict between the players and have some ship to ship combat going.
Unfortunately the loss of the cards would be saddening as having little maps really adds to the flavour of the game. More thinking needed on this.
2 players sucks
No I mean it really sucks. We played from opposite corners and never once came close to passing or fighting each other. I think with 4 it'd be better, but if it's not fun with 2 I can't see how it's going to be fun with 4.
Other thoughts
I'm considering a massive overhaul of the map. Currently the players are in opposite corners. But what if the map was longer than it is wide and all the players started on one of the narrow sides?
Something like this
Black vertical lines = Start locations
Black K = Kraken
Yellow spots = Treasure
What provoked this line of thought was looking at my current map. It's far too focused on one central space. All 4 players trying to reach there would just spark a bloody battle, add the Kraken in and it's even worse. I want some conflict yeah, but I think that's a bit 'too' much. But with this design there's no other location thats equally distant from all players as well as including the Kraken. On top of this having 2 players isn't interesting at all. Never fighting, never coming near each other. But if we started closer and has the same destination? It's quite likely we'd pass one another or fight more.
This alternate map would be a rat race. Get from your base, to the treasure island, get the treasure, get back to base and survive. You have to pass the Kraken's lair to do it too.
I'll give this more thought and maybe playtest this map to see if it's more fun.
Here's our revised map
Again red dots are the path, green is the island and yellow dots are treasure points.
dark blue line = my ship
purple line = wife's ship
pink X = Kraken
Here's what we tried on the next playtest:
Adjusted rules
What are the coloured squiggles on the island? Those are my poor Photoshop attempts at drawing numbers as to how much treasure is on each of those islands. The vertical blue line is 1, the pale blue squiggle is a 2 and the purple on the middle island is 3. There is no randomness in where the treasure is, no cards, no map. You just move to the yellow connecting point, collect your treasure and next turn move on.
This time the islands closest to the players start locations only have 1 piece of treasure maximum, those slightly more in have 2 and the central island 3. Even with 5 points to win players will need to move outside their quarter to win, forcing some conflict.
Every island but the centre has a limited amount of treasure, once taken the island is empty. The central island is infinite but each ship can only carry 3 pieces of treasure maximum, so in a longer game the players will be fighting over that central island and trying to get the treasure.
As there's only the two of us we kept the Kraken moving on the roll of a 6. I kept this in place because if the Kraken moved at the end of each player's turn then as there's just the two of us it would move back and forth and not go anywhere. I did however restrict his movement to a D6 just like the ships. We also tried that the Kraken sinks underwater when it's not his move so he can't block paths or treasure points.
The Kraken can also never go to the outer path, the square of dots that surrounds all the islands the Kraken can never move to. So it's a safe zone, this is to stop unscrupulous players from camping a player's start tile with the Kraken.
Result
The Dots
Firstly we absolutely need to draw lines between the points. More than once we've been uncertain as to which point is the next that can be taken. So the real board 'will' have dotted white lines connecting the dots showing clearly the path to be taken.
The Kraken
Only I rolled 6's this game, and only 2 of them so the Kraken moved twice. The first time he ate Laura's ship, the second time I rolled too low for his movement so he sat in a pathway which Laura sailed happily over on her next turn.
D6 movement may have worked fine on the smaller map, but this map is bigger so the full 6 spaces may come back into effect.
Sinking underwater would also have been ok when you're forced to a certain treasure point due to drawing that card, but when you can move to any island to get any treasure the Kraken's threat is diminished way too much.
So next time he stays on the surface blocking paths.
Whether his movement will change will depend on how he's controlled. If I choose for every play controlling him every turn, they'll roll a D6 for his movement, if he moves on the roll of a 6 then he'll get the full 6 spaces of movement.
The treasure
I like this idea more as it forces players to move to the central island. This should spark more conflict between the players and have some ship to ship combat going.
Unfortunately the loss of the cards would be saddening as having little maps really adds to the flavour of the game. More thinking needed on this.
2 players sucks
No I mean it really sucks. We played from opposite corners and never once came close to passing or fighting each other. I think with 4 it'd be better, but if it's not fun with 2 I can't see how it's going to be fun with 4.
Other thoughts
I'm considering a massive overhaul of the map. Currently the players are in opposite corners. But what if the map was longer than it is wide and all the players started on one of the narrow sides?
Something like this
Black vertical lines = Start locations
Black K = Kraken
Yellow spots = Treasure
What provoked this line of thought was looking at my current map. It's far too focused on one central space. All 4 players trying to reach there would just spark a bloody battle, add the Kraken in and it's even worse. I want some conflict yeah, but I think that's a bit 'too' much. But with this design there's no other location thats equally distant from all players as well as including the Kraken. On top of this having 2 players isn't interesting at all. Never fighting, never coming near each other. But if we started closer and has the same destination? It's quite likely we'd pass one another or fight more.
This alternate map would be a rat race. Get from your base, to the treasure island, get the treasure, get back to base and survive. You have to pass the Kraken's lair to do it too.
I'll give this more thought and maybe playtest this map to see if it's more fun.