Tuesday 28 February 2012

2.05 finally gets a test....

And like a number of recent tests it's not got to the end....  This time it was more about a baby stopping play and a plane then "oh god it's all gone wrong....."

Overall it seemed to go ok - spent most of a flight writing down notes about what needs to be changed and stuff - as always needs to be changed.  We've swung back away from a rather pointless journey - things that have been removed might well be about to make a return - and generally there is some more smoothing of rough edges to be done.

However I've got to a bit of a cross roads.  I've had a large lump of time off - and one of things I wanted to do in that time off was get GSH to "finished" mode.  Tweaking - looking at production - that sort of thing.  But it's no where near that - because over the last two months I've done very little and play tested it even less....

Part of that is lack of enthusiasm - some from me and I think some from people I game with.  Most of them have limited amounts of time to game - there's lots of finished games they want to play - and they have played GSH before.  Where as me - I just don't want to be a bother.  And you know what - sometimes I have trouble remembering what the rules are - because I've got so many different version in head I'm not always sure what I decided in the end.  Although in fairness that's not always just me - the new improved simpler attack and defense cards confused the hell out of somebody who had played an earlier version and had got there head around how things had used to work.....

So it's decision time.....  Do I make 2.06 and drag it round with me - or do I start working on one of the other two projects I've got rough notes for?  At what point does one's equine collapse?  Given that the criticism somebody made "there's nothing new" was (and still is) reasonably true. 

Monday 13 February 2012

No real news

Basically I've got a new testable version of GSH - but I lack of forum to play test it - so no real progress is being made.

All I've played recently is a new game of Eclipse - which has once again convinced me that it's a) my favorite space conquest game b) badly flawed c)  Plasma Missile break the game quite badly.

Well at the SFX weekender I did get two games explained to me - and thus have my prejudice against tie in's confirmed....

The first was "the walking dead".  So your a zombie survival game - linked to a deep and detailed background.  And you've got roll a dice and move.  Really?  Roll a dice and move.  2012 and that's what you give us?  I admit I sort of turned off at that point but really it looks terrible.

The second was "penny arcade - gamers vs Evil".  Now I have a lot of time for penny arcade.  There basically nerds made good - and I find them commentary often very interesting.  And this game was clearly made by somebody who was paying attention to games made within the last 5 years - since it was a deck building game.  And it seemed a reasonable implementation of that - but nothing innovative or indeed anything that seemed to invoke the spirit of Penny Arcade.

 Of the two of them - the penny arcade was the only worth even looking at - but even that I'd generally avoid.