Surrounded with a Shotgun - new weapons?

The decision has been made at VPG to treat all games like potential Kickstarter productions. That is to say, that in development we have to consider what kind of stretch goals may make sense with the game.

So now, I'm considering what can be added to Surrounded with a Shotgun as stretch goals. It is proving difficult, especially given that I personally really don't like the concept of gameplay exclusives.

Unfortunately, given the game's components, there aren't a lot of non-gameplay exclusive options that make sense. Which means any exclusive will likely have to include a gameplay element. So, I've been giving that some thought.

Surrounded, with a Shotgun (SwaSG)

This game started its life as a joke. A few years back, during an office Christmas party at Victory Point Games, we had a gift exchange. And not just a gift exchange, but a white elephant gift exchange. For us, that meant humorous gifts primarily. My entry into the exchange was a completely untested, and as a result very broken game called Nate's of Siege. Nate's of Siege was basically a zombie game in which the player was trapped in the VPG office and being attacked from all sides, but instead of zombies the player was being attacked by hordes of Nates. It was a Natepocalypse.

General Update

So, it has been a while since I've written a blog entry. Which is mostly unacceptable. Yes, life happens sometimes, but that is kind of a shallow excuse. In any case, I'm going to try to correct that going forward by doing updates in a more scheduled fashion. For now, let's say every Monday at noon pacific. Because that's my day off. We'll see how I do with that.

To start this new schedule off I'm going to give a general overview of a selection of the games I am currently working on. This is as seen from space kind of overview, so details will be a little scarce but should give an idea of the games I'm working on at the moment. In the coming weeks, I will try to do a more thorough write-up for each of these games.

Federation of Sol

A couple of weeks ago VPG officially assigned a developer for my science fiction "States of Siege" game, Federation of Sol. And I've been going back and forth with him and the game has moved forward by leaps and bounds.

Surrounded, with a Shotgun - Playtesting report

This week VPG put the playtest call out for Surrounded with a Shotgun. I've decided to experiment with digital playtesting and so far it has been a huge success.

Previously when I've done play testing, I've sent out physical kits. These kits take time and money to produce, so there is always an imposed cap on the number of testers. Then they have to be mailed to the tester, which takes time. When all is said and done the tester doesn't see the game for 2 weeks to a month after agreeing to be a tester. In that time the game stalls. I can't make changes because then the testers will be testing the wrong version. And about half of physical kit testers aren't going to provide feedback at all, which I assume is because something new has caught their attention in the last 2-4 weeks since they said they were interested.

Using a pure digital kit approach, I had actionable feedback before I could finish replying to all the testers to send them the link. Granted, this is at least partially because SwaSG is a short game, but it's also there was an immediate ability for the testers to test while they were / are at peak interest. And so far I've had about 60-70% of the testers provide feedback. I'm used to only having maybe 20% of the kits I send out result in actionable feedback.

So, as of right now I see no reason to go back to physical kits for play testing unless I'm working on a game with a dexterity element or a component that I can't emulate digitally.

This is awesome!

Surrounded with a Shotgun

The above is the prototype for Surrounded with a Shotgun. It's a State of Siege game I'm working on for Victory Point Games. It's 1 to 4 players and uses a different map for each player count. The above picture shows a 3 player game. 

The theme is still fairly loose, but think john carpenter's assault on precinct 13. The players are trapped in a building that is being besieged on all sides.

The mechanics are very simple. Draw a card, place new cubes, move cubes,  move/shoot.

Where you can shoot is determined by where you are in the building. I.e. If you are in the green room you can only shoot cubes in spaces with a green border. You can also shoot into a room that shares a door with the room you are in. When you shoot you roll a number of dice equal to the number of cubes in the space to a max of 5. Each result of 4 or above will have an effect:

• 4 pushes the cubes one space away from the building (if possible)
• 5 returns a cube to the cube pool
• 6 takes a cube out of the game / returns it to the box
• A number of spaces have -1 drms (dice roll modifiers) and affect results accordingly

You win by either returning all cubes to the box, or by surviving until the last card is resolved. You lose if there is ever a cube in the building at the end of the turn.

The balance seems tweaked about right. There is about a 75% loss rate on internal testing. So, I think I may be able to move to external testing and graphic development soon.