I took advantage of the long Easter weekend to do some all-up playtesting of the expansion content I’m working on for Close Encounters. Of course I’ve tested all the bits of it before, in various combinations, but I hadn’t done an all-up test of everything at once. This testing cycle was also special because I was getting the perspective of some testers who haven’t seen any of the new content before, so it was a good opportunity to throw everything together and see how it went.
The results? Pretty good! I got some useful feedback and observations from all this, but most of it was in the form of tweaks to things rather than major changes. That may indicate the basis of it all is fairly solid – if true, that’s quite encouraging. Here’s a list of what got tested, and the results.
- Squad leaders and abilities. These worked well. Some need to be tweaked, to make them either more impressive or less overpowered, but these generally went fine.
- Heavy weapons. Again, solid performance here. I didn’t get to test one of them thoroughly, but everything else worked as expected. The decision about what to take and how to use it causes some interesting decisions for the troopers to make, which is definitely a success.
- Big bugs. Adding bigger bugs to the game causes some interesting changes. Firstly, they tend to dominate gameplay – bug players want to use them in preference to the smaller bugs, troopers get fixated on them and be less aware of the threat the smaller bugs still pose. Secondly, the way they block movement makes it more difficult for the troopers to cover ground. They need to bunch up more to deal with the threat, which changes how some missions play out. Unfortunately, the bigger bugs aren’t enough on their own to balance out the heavy weapons and squad leaders and abilities. That’s a shame, because those three things require the least additional cognitive burden for players, and I was hoping to be able to group them together. Still, there’s a few things which might make it work, so I’m not giving up yet.
- Equipment and tactics. Initially, I had thought these would tilt things too far in favour of the troopers. It turns out, though, that this didn’t happen: they made a difference, but it wasn’t excessive. I’m actually pretty pleased with how these worked.
- Map tiles and doors. I tried a total of 12 new map tiles, and gave the bug player the option of placing a limited number of doors. Some of them had a significant effect, others didn’t do much. Simply adding those extra tiles means the troopers have to explore further, though, which is another balancing measure. On balance I like how they worked.
- Mutations and events. These were bonuses which affected the bugs, and which I haven’t talked about before much. The events were generally good, I don’t feel a need to change them much at this point. The mutations were more of a mixed bag, however – some were overpoweringly good, some had no effect at all. And that isn’t just down to playstyle or mission requirements, either – the conditions for some of them to take effect very seldom occurred. These definitely need some rework, because while the overall concept is fine some of them are not performing according to spec.
As you can see, there’s a fairly extensive list of changes and new options and challenges. In fact, the list above actually understates the case: only about half of the new stuff I’m working on is in that list! The other half, however, is a bit different thematically and a lower development priority, so I’ve been leaving it out of the testing for this cycle.
There are two things which really jumped out at me as a result of this first round of all-up testing. Firstly, the game takes much longer to play. Using the base-game rules for Close Encounters, I would expect a game with three squads of troopers to take about an hour. Adding squad leaders, heavy weapons, and big bugs added a bit to that time, but not much. Adding more than that, however, caused the time per game to nearly double. In fact, one game lasted over for two hours and still wasn’t close to a resolution!
This isn’t necessarily a problem – in the long game described above, nobody noticed the time passing and players stayed engaged and focused during the whole time, which is a pretty good result. It also felt like both sides were under pressure but of different types, which again is something I’m pretty pleased about. Even after over two hours, the game still felt like it could go either way. All in all, I’m okay with this, but I will keep an eye on it and see what effects it has on players.
The second thing that was immediately noticeable was how much thought and planning the troopers were putting into each turn. Close Encounters has been described as a “pretty thinky” game anyway – if the troopers don’t pay attention to what they’re doing they’re bugfood, basically, so this isn’t a new aspect of the game. Giving them more things to pay attention to – even just heavy weapons and squad leaders, for example – significantly increases the number of factors that need to be considered, makes positioning of troopers and cooperation between players even more important, and makes it harder to decide what to do with each action. This is almost certainly why the play-time expanded so much.
Again, this isn’t necessarily a problem. Even in the more extreme cases none of the playtesters seemed to be suffering excessive cognitive load, and creating a game where people stay engaged and have lots of options feels like a success. However, it changes the feel of the game a bit: instead of a skirmish, it feels like a battle. I’ve mentioned this before, and the more new stuff gets introduced, the more that feeling of constant pressure increases. For now, this is still something I’m okay with. Nobody is reporting negative effects from this, so I’ll keep watching it but not take any drastic action yet.
All in all, I’m pretty pleased with how the expansion development is going. The content all works and plays nicely together; with some tweaks, I think I’ll be able to declare the mechanical design work complete on schedule. The real question, of course, is what to combine together and how much of it in an expansion pack. Time for me to go back and review my options there, I think…
Encounter Table Games 