Lesson 08.03.11

A quick run through: Post it notes, hex board paper and card, colour coded to make it accessible and less confusing when picking a sabotage card. We divided the board up roughly in order to place all players equidistance from the centre – the destination, but found that wouldn’t be fair on the pedestrian and bicycle, so shifted the train and car to corners that were slightly further away.

This time, instead of switching modes of transport after every game so everyone gets to play each type, we stuck with our respective ones, this way we had  a control varible, our mode, and we changed how we played according to different strategies we would attempt in order to win. Some included the cyclist completely ignoring all sabotage cards, this meant no detours were necessary so they finished first. One play through presented an issue where the car could jump from one sabotage star to another all the while getting closer to the finish. This happened often, so we then shifted the stars until it caused the car nuisance to get to them, although it still felt unfairly overpowered.

This blog frequently mentions our difficulty in not making the train the ultimate mode of transport – a dominant strategy, to always pick the train! We began the playtesting with these rules on how many spaces the players can move and whether they could change directions in their singular movements.

Train – 4, linear, can not turn

Car – 3, non linear, can turn

Cycle – 2, non linear, can turn

Person – 1

Here, the car and train were very close to winning, the car because it had sabotaged the train and the train because it traveled there the quickest. Another time showed that that cycle won by sprinting through, forgotten among the revenge matches plotted by the car and train, although, not once did the pedestrian win. One square at a time didn’t bring them nearer the finish and the player didn’t detour to the stars simply because they wouldn’t be able to get to the finish before the others.

Next we changed the rules for the train to: Train – 3, linear, can not turn

Keeping the linear movement retricts the player, now it felt fairer, however other players were not winning because they were underpowered, the pedestrain laid down a few cards but still did not manage to win.

Still we hadn’t catered for the pedestrian and since both car and train could move 3 spots, we upgraded the person to 2 grids non linear movement, but now we had 2 of the exact same modes of transport because the cycle had these features too. Now the cyclist has to travel in 2 spots in a linear format. The player won once, due to the player’s strategy, downing the train and being agile enough to go around traps laid by others.

We decided to add a feature that we just thought of: The pedestrian can hitch a ride! Another player can gain a sabotage card if they give the pedestrian a ride for one turn to where they want to go, in essence the pedestrian commandeers their vehicle. We felt this was quite interesting as it directly interacted with other players. Playing with this feature in mind, the pedestrian was never able to jump on the same grid as another because they all zoomed away, until they were very close to the finish, where there was a sabotage infestation. This feature needs more work but we really liked how the pedestrian was made a little bit formidable, adding to that sense that anyone can win this race.

Each mode had the same number of sabotage cards so therefore the same number of sabotage experiences, 4 each. Although we had a curveball card for the pedestrian; having to go all the way back to their start position because they’d left something important at home, not instilling over-confidence in the player who can control others.

Next, we wanted to address the issue of the area around the finish becoming jam packed with sabotage cards. This was the case with every game and we ran through a few possible solutions, like a rule forbidding placing them in a one block radius around the finishing grid.