Development – Page 2 – Encounter Table Games

View From the Tabletop: Equipment

I’ve taken a break from the higher-priority expansion work and switched focus to equipment. Partly this is so that I can leave the other stuff for my subconscious to go over, partly it’s so that I can see if adding equipment will break anything I’ve already done. Mostly, though, it’s so that I don’t burn out by focusing on one topic for too long. Burnout is a real thing, and I find changing the task I’m doing can help with preventing it. I also thought it might be interesting to get a sort of snapshot view of part of the playtesting process.

The Playtesting Conflict

Getting the most value out of playtests is a problem when designing a game. Here’s how the problem presents itself to me, and how I’m trying to deal with it.

Work in Progress – October 2021

Development work has slowed a bit recently, but that’s because it’s getting harder to make improvements. All the easy fixes have been done, and what’s left is more a matter of refining. Here’s the state of things this month.

Work in Progress – August 2021

The figure conversions are still in progress, and managed to splash some more paint on them in the weekend. In the meantime, here’s where the development focus is for this month.

Mechanics vs. Themes

Sometimes, it’s the assumptions we make which block us from moving forward. Becoming aware of what they are, and questioning them, can show us new ways to achieve our goals. In my day job, this is something I do with clients early on, but it’s easy to forget about in this context for some reason. Here’s an example of how using this technique solved a development problem for me.

Work in Progress – June 2021

I just looked at the list of blog posts and realised that it’s been months since I gave a general status update. While I wait for paint to dry on the figure conversions , here’s what I’m working on these days.

Deconstructing a Bloodbath

In my last post, I talked about how the first mech playtest was a complete bloodbath. It’s worth digging into that a bit more, in an effort to understand how it turned out that way, so here’s how it went down.

First Playtest: Mechs

One of the expansions I’ve been working on for Close Encounters is based around big robots that accompany the troopers to add some extra firepower (and perhaps other abilities too). I just got to the point where I could playtest this content for the first time… and it was a bloodbath.

Gradients in Practice

During playtesting in the weekend, I realised that cognitive load is a big problem for some players. This isn’t exactly news, of course – right from the start I’ve been trying to minimise it, especially for expansion content. But it’s one thing to be aware of this idea, and another to see it demonstrated in front of you. Fortunately, there’s a way to cope with this.

Content Modularity

We’re back in the world of Close Encounters for this post, and specifically the expansion pack content I’ve been working on for it. As you’ll know from previous posts on the subject, I have plenty of content for expansions, and testing and tweaking isn’t a huge obstacle – the issue is figuring out how to group all the content together. I still haven’t made a final decision about that, but I do have an interim plan.