The feedback during LinCon and the changes afterwards led to a better game. In particular, I really liked the new mechanic for the energy engine where each Food card can hold one energy die. However I still had a few critical problems left to deal with:
- The Temple is fun in theory but not when actually playing the game. The mechanics does not feel unique and is not tied thematically to the idea of a temple. There is no strong incentive to try to keep control of the Temple.
- Too easy to generate a lot of energy.
- The actions on each Stance is difficult to understand for new players. The text and icons is also too small and unclear.
- There is not that much fighting going on, even though I want it to be a vital part of the game experience.
- The Food cards are quite similar. They are not enough differentiated when it comes to cost and benefits. I want the choices in the game to be more affected by what Items you own.
- There is only one way to collect Materials (choose the Gather stance). This puts a limit on how fast the leading player can fill their Burrow and end the game. It is not enough to just generate a lot of energy, you also need to get the Materials. This is a good thing. However, it also forces players into a very limited set of choices if they want to fill their Burrow. You must choose Gather, nothing else matters. This makes gameplay less interesting.
I have worked intensely to address all of these problems. I have made some great progress in the past weeks. Now I want to share some of the biggest changes and the reasoning behind them.
Change #1: Remove the Starting Energy Die
This change seems so obvious in hindsight. It solves both the problem with too much energy and also encourages more fighting, since there is now fewer dice available. The starting Food card can still hold an energy die of any color, but you need to fight to get one.
Change #2: Simplified Stance Cards
I have added five Stance cards, replacing the Stance “selector” on the player mat. I am very happy with the result. It allows for much bigger symbols and more clear layout. It is also easier for new player to understand. At the same time, the main benefit of the stance mechanic is still there – the cards offer a visual overview of all actions that are available to you and they help connect the actions to the theme.
You play two Stance cards each turn and choose one action on each card. If you choose the Rise card you only play that card. You must play all cards before you can return them to your hand and play them again. It takes three turns to cycle all your Stance cards. You may use Protein to return the cards to hand before you have played all.
Change #3: No Cost to Defend a Die
Another small change to encourage more fights between the players’ hamsters. If it costs nothing to defend then you might as well try. The attacking player wins ties, as an incentive to actually attack.
Change #4: More Ways to Collect Materials
Now you can get materials also as an instant effect on some Food and Items. You can also get it if you stay a few turns in the Temple. The Materials is still a necessary requirement to be able to expand your Burrow, separate from your energy generation, but there is now some flexibility in how you get them.
Change #6: More Unique Food and Items
Item costs now range from 2-7 energy (2-5 energy before). Each Item also have a unique end game scoring criteria.
Food costs now range from 2-6 energy (2-5 energy before) and Heat values range from 2-7 (3-5 before). There are also more instant one-time effects that activates when you get a Food. There are some Food cards that will give you a huge +2 energy bonus if you also collect a specific energy die. This bonus is a great incentive to chase a specific die which adds strategic depth.
Change #7: New Temple Mechanic
The Temple now offers special Temple Actions. These are only available if you manage to defeat the Temple cat. When defeated, the cat flees and start roaming the other territories. You may choose to stay in the Temple for as many turns as possible, until you run out of Protein or until you get kicked out by someone else.
For each turn you stay you will ascend one step closer to Enlightenment. Each step give greater rewards but you will also get exhausted and lose Strength, making it easier to defeat you. There are some extra spicy bonuses available for the first player to enter the Temple. This creates a mini-race to defeat the cat first, in addition to the bigger over-arching race to collect Food and Heat before winter arrives.
It is very hard to reach all the way to Enlightenment, but if you do the reward is the greatest possible – you win immediately! This brings a unique and thematic mechanic to the Temple that I really enjoy. It also helps create the tension and feeling of urgency that is an important design goal for this game.
Change #8: Energy Can’t Be Stored
I’ve changed my mind several times during the years of development of the game. Should you be able to store energy from one turn to the next? Or not? Now I have decided that it is best for energy to be transient. For me, it works better thematically for energy to fade quickly after it has been generated. It also makes it a bit easier to control the pacing of the engine building aspect.
Change #9: Remove Heat Tokens
In the beginning of the game’s development Heat/Victory points were distributed only at game-end. Over time, I added Heat tokens that could be obtained during the game. Mainly as a way to create incentives for the players to choose certain actions to control the game pace or to balance the value of the different actions. I also think it feels “clean” somehow to not have a Heat scoring track. The cards and components itself will tell you how much Heat you have.
And after a while, I also added the possibility to convert Heat tokens to energy. This was a convenient way to give players more options when they might be short just one energy for a very valuable action. However, it was never an ideal solution: 1) It is difficult to decide how many tokens are “enough” for a game. Some strategies accumulated a lot of tokens. I wanted to allow those kind of strategies, but it would require a lot of tokens = a lot of cardboard components. 2) It only made sense to convent Heat to Energy for very valuable actions. Often it didn’t even make sense to do this to place a fourth Food in the Burrow.
Finally I gave in and added a scoring track. Now that I have it I actually think it will be kind of nice with a the scoring track as a frame around the game board. I get rid of a lot of cardboard components. Also, now you can convert Protein to Energy instead, which works better both thematically and for the gameplay.
Change #10: Bye Bye Focus, Welcome Protein!
Focus is now called Protein instead. There are several reasons for the change: 1) I wanted a more interesting and strategic mechanism for gaining Focus (now Protein). I came up with a mechanism with protein combination tiles. Different combinations of Food types will give you Protein and some Heat. This mechanic works well thematically for Protein.Not so well with Focus. Protein is made up of amino acids. High-grade protein requires several different amino acids from different food sources. It is reasonable to imagine that these combinations also may change depending on the season. 2) It works well thematically to convert Protein to Energy. It is also easy to accept that energy is transient while Protein is something you can store from one turn to the next. 3) I needed a clean symbol that is distinct from the other symbols. The Focus symbol were quite easy to confuse with either the Strength or the Heat symbol.
Summary
It is a good thing when I manage to improve the gameplay by remove something from the game.
A good example is the changes to the Temple. The new rules required some new graphics on the game board and a few tokens. At the same time this allowed me to remove a lot of special Temple dice (expensive to produce and takes up a lot of space in the game box), the Shield token and all of the Blessed food cards. The end results is a more unique Temple mechanic with fewer components and more streamlines rules.
Hamster Valley now have more interesting choices with less components! More strategic depth and player interaction with less complex rules! This is exactly where I want to end up after a big revision.
Please let me know what you think about these latest changes and the game in general! What makes you intrigued to know more? What aspect are you most sceptical to? I would also love to get more playtesters for my recently updated game on Tabletop Simulator. Do you wanna try?? 🙂
Components added:
+ Protein combination cards
+ Heat tracker
+ Stance cards
+ Temple reward tokens
Components removed:
– Heat tokens
– Stance marker
– Special Temple dice
– Starting dice
– Shield token for the Temple cat
– Blessed Food cards
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