Devlog #4

Last week, we iterated on some of the ideas we took away from all the feedback we got observing and talking to play testers. One of the major observations on our end from the first playtest was that the game was simply too easy, or at least not as difficult as we hoped it would be. The big conflict in the game for players, from a mechanic perspective, should be this feeling of not being able to be everywhere at once, as well as not having enough resources to deal with a massive problem propping up all over the Great Lakes. In our playtests, this pressure was never truly felt. Players were able to deal with the problems as they arose and were able to move around much of the board without making hard, strategic decisions. The other major feedback we got was a want to just have more mechanics and content to the game, more unique things the players could do, be it specific player roles or new abilities. 

The new iteration attempted to address this feedback. We added 2 Rounds to the game; 12 rounds total to represnt 12 months in a year. 

We split the lakes into more spaces so there was more ground to cover and more places lampreys could spawn. 

We created new "whammy" cards in the Spawn Deck that gave the lampreys special properties: population booms that added lampreys when there was more than one in a space, lampreys spawn in Lake Ontario, they Lake they originally migrated too. The cards shook up the play state in a way that added suspense for players as they drew these cards, which is a feeling we're really hoping for during this phase of the turn. Some of the cards were more effective than others, the cards "whiffed" a few times and might not to be hashed out a bit more so they always cause some kind of effect, even if the original effect's conditions aren't met.

We also added a new deck of Special Player Action cards that added more options for mobility, action point management, as well as ones that augmented existing Player Actions such as Preserve and Remove. This addition also got positive feedback from our players, but we noticed an interesting difference between the two play testers. One tester held on to their cards most of the game and didn't even use all of them. The conclusion that we came to was that this might happen due to the players constantly getting these cards, as they draw them every turn.

This next week we plan on furthering these additions, adding more unique cards, as well as addressing some of the other constructive feedback we got. On of the major issues had to do with map clarity. We printed in black and white last week, and it was difficult to make out the spaces and where the borders of the Lakes were, so that will be fixed for the next playtest.  Another major problem we want to solve is for players to feel pressure when they let a native species go extinct. So far players were fine with it happening because there was no repercussion until they hit the Lose condition of 3 species dying, so the first species was always a calculated, strategic lose. This is counterintuitive to our goal as designers, seeing as the loss of native species is the greatest tragedy of our topic that we want to bring attention to. Because of that, the next playtest will have a new rule for when a native species goes extinct. When this happens, the lampreys that occupy and continue to spawn in that spot will begin migrating to the closest, connected lake zone, searching for new prey. We are hoping to make more changes that lead players toward the kind of transformation we're hoping for, where the problem feels urgent and not something that can be shrugged off.