Devlog #3

Last week, we playtested our first iteration of the game with two groups of players. 

Starter Rules:

Win condition: Survive 10 rounds. Lose condition is 3 species going extinct. 

Players start in Lake Huron. Each Great Lake has 1 native species with 5 health counters. When the health counters reach 0, that species goes extinct. Each player has 2 Actions per turn. At the start of each turn, draw one card to spawn sea lampreys, and then take actions. At the end of each round, each sea lamprey deals one damage to its current region.

Player Actions: 

• Move: Player may move once to an adjacent space.
• Preserve: Player may add 1 Health Counter to a native species in the space they occupy. 
• Remove: Player may remove 1 Sea Lamprey from the space they occupy. 
• Inspect: Player may block additional Sea Lampreys from spawning in their space until the beginning of their next turn.

Game Board - Starting Position

Game Board - Round 7 (Lake Michigan overrun with lampreys)

Playtest Highlights

Round 1 - 2 Players, 5 spaces, 2 actions

• We need to give players more background info on species
• “I don’t know if I should move or stay/repair… that’ll die in one turn”
• “Better if we’re not in the same place”
  • Players showed motivation to complete goals, and collaborative strategizing, which was great
• Questions about player character(s) and the real system of how lamprey sightings are reported and dealt with
• Lake Michigan was lost early on, but players won with 3 lakes left at round 10
• Players did not use Inspect action
  • No guarantee of lamprey spawning where Inspect was used, this discouraged players from trying it

After round 1, we realized that having only 5 regions meant that players could camp out in certain locations and sacrifice others, so we decided to encourage player movement by adding more regions. The three largest lakes were split in half to create 8 total regions. In addition, players were given a free move action that did not count towards the 2 actions per turn.

Round 2 - 2 Players, 8 spaces, 1 free move action + 2 additional actions 

• Need to clarify player instructions - last minute rule changes caused some confusion, we can assume this will not be an issue when cards are balanced
  • Players lost track of what round they were on
• Players expressed minor frustration with inability to move to the desired location in one turn and frequency of lamprey spawning - we will have to test more to know if this is an appropriate level of frustration to induce player transformation
• Inspect action was used, no effect (lampreys spawned elsewhere), player did not use Inspect again
• Ontario was lost by round 6, players won after 10 rounds

After 2 rounds of playtesting, we feel confident that we are on the right path with the gameplay mechanics. Players picked up the rules quickly and were motivated to win. In terms of rules changes, we are considering modifying the lose condition or the native species starting health depending on the number of players. In addition, we are exploring additional ways to motivate players to use the Inspect action (perhaps by increasing its duration) and not to give up on entire regions (perhaps by having increased lamprey effects when native species are gone). In terms of transformational goals, players definitely did not empathize with the lampreys, which was an initial design concern of ours. However, more work is needed to ensure that players come away with specific knowledge about these invasive species and steps taken to remove them.