As I wrote about last week (in a regular blog post), as a game evolves through the development process the goals of your playtests, as well as the target playtest audience will change.
We’re now at the point for Froggy Bazaar where I need to broaden our play tester base (beyond my immediate circle), and so have a few important questions to answer.
What is the medium of playtesting?
Who is playtesting?
What are our goals for playtesting?
Playtesting Medium
We enlisted the help of Tabletop Simulator wizard Alexei Menardo to script our Froggy Bazaar mod. Alexei is great at getting TTS to do what you want including what could otherwise be fiddly set up [if you’d like to commission Alexei to build a mod for your game, you can reach him at pixelandboard@gmail.com].
As such, most of our playtesting in the near term will be online through Tabletop Simulator. That said, if you’d like to print out your own version of Froggy Bazaar, we have PNP materials here, and very rough written rules here.
Playtesters
Since we’ve been through this process a couple of times, I am fortunate to have an audience of Pine Island Insiders who are excited to play our upcoming games. Over time I’ll be reaching out on the various forums to source an even broader audience.
If you are looking for playtesters for your game, check out last week’s article Playtesting & Playtesters.
Playtesting Goals
These first rounds of playtesting are aimed at tightening up the game mechanically, finding pain points, and making sure every inch of the game is fun. Since this series focuses on a specific game, I’m going to go into a little more detail of my primary goals for this round of playtesting
Make sure that the BIG HOP action is balanced.
Figure out if we have the best end of game trigger (a player filling their rucksack).
Balancing group bugjectives & figuring out whether we should separate them into separate color and number bugjectives.
You can check out my full playtesting feedback form here. What I also love about these early rounds is that I run the playtesting, so can talk with players in real time about how they feel about different aspects of the gameplay.
While I think each playtest should have a focus, it’s always helpful to have some level of consistency in what you are asking your play testers. JT Smith over at The Game Crafter put together a pretty decent starting point for a playtesting form. You can download a free pdf or buy printed booklets of it here.
The Game Crafter Playtest Form
I prefer to come up with my own forms rather than use a template, as the specifics of the playtest and game will determine the kinds of questions that are relevant. But, JT’s form is definitely a good starting point for inspiration.
The ability can only trigger once on each of your turns.
The actual text of the ability on Alesha is
At the beginning of your end step, if you attacked this turn, return target creature card with mana value less than or equal to Alesha’s power from your graveyard to the battlefield.
In order to understand this ability, you can divide it into three parts: the trigger event, the condition, and the effect. The trigger event is “At the beginning of your end step”. The condition is “if you attacked this turn”. And the effect is “return target creature card with mana value less than or equal to Alesha’s power from your graveyard to the battlefield”. The beginning of your end step happens once during each of your turns, so the ability triggers once in each of your turns. The condition means that if you didn’t attack, the ability doesn’t trigger at all. If you did attack, and you have a valid target, the ability triggers and resolves that one time, and the effect happens.
Star Citizen has taken on almost mythic proportions over the years. Its creator, eager to outdo the visions of outer space offered by games like Eve Online, No Man’s Sky, and Starfield, has been working on fleshing out a wildly ambitious MMO simulation for more than a decade now, even as other projects in its wheelhouse come and go. Given how long the game has been in active production, though, it can be hard for interested players to know when to give Star Citizen a shot. Luckily, there’s no better time than now, since a current ‘free fly’ event makes it easier than ever to give the game a look.
Star Citizen can be a bit daunting to approach, especially given how dense its take on the space game genre has become over time. The ideal way to dip into it is through one of its free trial events, which not only provide missions for new players to situate themselves in its sprawling world, but don’t cost anything to try.
The current free fly event allows anyone to check out Star Citizen by signing up for an account and downloading the game for free. After completing its introductory missions, players can sample some of the activities available in the massively multiplayer space sim, piloting a roster of six different ships or heading out on foot to explore the game’s far future setting. It’s a great opportunity for anyone curious to see what the space sim is all about, or to check in on how it’s been coming along over the many years it’s been available to the public.
Star Citizen’s current free event runs until next Monday April 28. You can sign up to take part in it at the official website right here.
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Once upon a time (well, in September 2022, actually), to celebrate The Treehouse’s fifth birthday, we had our first go at running a Megagame. You can find out all about what happened during our first run of Watch the Skies, and get an overview of what on Earth (and off Earth) it actually is, in our previous blog post here.
We came away from the previous experience exhausted, exhilarated, and bubbling with ideas for what we wanted to do ‘next time’. Perhaps, in retrospect, we had TOO MANY ideas for tweaks and changes, because it then took us over a year to get our ducks into anything resembling a row and announce the next game. But finally, the day dawned… our second run of Watch the Skies took place on Friday 26th January, and once again, it was a TOTAL BLAST.
This time, a reasonable proportion of those in attendance had played the game before, but no problem! We had plenty of plot twists and new mechanics the keep things fresh, not to mention some nifty new game components, and even a brand new type of team in the mix. Read on for some of the headline changes in this year’s game, some actual news headlines from the in-game newspaper, and lots of pictures to give you a feel for what went down.
The combination of Amalia and an indestructible Wildgrowth Walker always draws the game with an infinite loop once a creature explores, no matter what card is on top of the library.
For reference, Amalia has the text
Whenever you gain life, Amalia Benavides Aguirre explores. Then destroy all other creatures if its power is exactly 20.
and Wildgrowth Walker has the text
Whenever a creature you control explores, put a +1/+1 counter on this creature and you gain 3 life.
The keyword action “explore” and the event “explores” are defined in rules 701.40a-b:
701.40a. Certain abilities instruct a permanent to explore. To do so, that permanent’s controller reveals the top card of their library. If a land card is revealed this way, that player puts that card into their hand. Otherwise, that player puts a +1/+1 counter on the exploring permanent and may put the revealed card into their graveyard.
701.40b. A permanent “explores” after the process described in rule 701.40a is complete, even if some or all of those actions were impossible.
So, if a player controls Amalia and a Wildgrowth Walker, and a creature explores, then Wildgrowth Walker’s ability triggers, which causes the player to gain life, so Amalia’s ability triggers, and she explores, which triggers Wildgrowth Walker’s ability again, in a loop. The only choice any player makes during that process is what to do with the card on top of the library, if it is not a land.
However, because of the last part of rule 701.40b, the exploration happens no matter what card is on top of the library, and even if there is no card on top of the library at all. This means that the loop always continues, no matter what choice the player makes while exploring. Therefore, the loop is mandatory, so the game is a draw.
We have a sponsor for this episode! We are eternally grateful for Tursiops Studios, who you may remember as the creators of the awesome “wreck ’em up” The Day We Fought Space a few years ago, for sponsoring our podcast this week. Their new game is called Primrows, it’s one we’ve talked about before, and it’s available now on mobile and desktop. I give some of my early impressions about the game about halfway through this week’s show, but the game is free to play with a one-time premium unlock so there’s really no reason not to just go try it out for yourself. Head over to the game’s website using this link here to learn more and find links to all platforms. Oh, and here’s the trailer. Primrows is such a lovely little game, thanks again Tursiops Studios!
As for this week’s show, well, it was a hectic one. Internet issues caused us to split the recording into two parts with the first half recorded yesterday and the second half recorded today. It all worked out in the end, though. Topics include the Nintendo Switch 2, the Mario Kart Direct from yesterday, the PlayDate Season 2 announcement, retro handheld stuff, and much more. Oh, and we finally catch up on listener emails going all the way back to January.
Don’t forget to shoot us emails with any questions, feedback, or anything else relevant or irrelevant to [email protected]. We read ’em all, and love decoding messages written entirely in emoji. As always, you can listen to us with the links below… And if you like what you hear, please subscribe and/or drop us a review in iTunes. Much appreciated!
As a companion to this audio podcast, we also do a video version of the same show that is exclusive to Patreon which allows you to see us playing the games we’re talking about. Backers can view the most recent video episodes of the TouchArcade show by clicking here. Be sure you’re logged in to see the latest content. For everyone else who is curious, you can check out our public patreon posts to see older episodes of the video podcast. If you like what you see, consider becoming a TouchArcade Patreon backer.
Note: All of the images depicting game components in this article show early concept or playtest art.
A Time to Plant.
It was 18(!!) years ago that Chad and I started talking about designing a Combat Commander: Vietnam game together. Of course, Chad was the master crafter of Combat Commander and knew the CC design a bazillion times better than I did, but he didn’t really know anything about Vietnam. I probably know more about that war/period than I know about any other in military history, and I love Combat Commander, so a co-design with Chad and myself seemed like a good fit. But we both were really busy with other projects, so we decided to work on CC: Vietnam in the margins, not caring if it took even a decade to get to our game tables in finished form.
So we went slowly but had a ton of great conversations as we crafted the project—and I learned even MORE about the genius of Chad Jensen when he sent me his master CC spreadsheets to adapt for CC: Vietnam. Wow. Over time, we honed the design document, unit spreadsheets, and scenario scope, and I finally put together a very ugly test CC: Vietnam map that we used to maneuver and “fight” our imaginary battles. Here you can see both that original map and Chad’s enormously better version of that map at right, which depicts mountainous jungle terrain that we envisioned as a base map for an “Assault on a US Fire Base” scenario, Marine defenses of a hilltop position, and US assaults (mini-Hamburger Hills) on dug in NVA/PLF forces.
Gene’s playtest map (left) vs. Chad’s playtest map (right). Yeah, I know… 😊
As most of you know, Chad’s design plate was continually busy during those years. There wasn’t a time I can remember when Chad didn’t have a couple games on our P500 list and a few more in his head. Here’s an ad we did back around 2015 that showed just a few of the Family Games that Chad had completed or in the works:
So Chad was busy. And starting around 2014, I got into serious development and testing on the game I’d wanted to do forever, Mr. President. So both of our design time for CC: Vietnam was minimal, but we kept honing the design document and both thought it was coming together and that we’d do it “someday.”
A Time to Weep.
Sadly, we were wrong. Even 5 ½ years later, I still have trouble thinking and talking about that incredibly heart-wrenching period of Chad’s sickness and passing. I lost a good friend, Kai lost the love of her life, and the gaming world lost an absolute rock star designer. So gaming-wise inside GMT, everything Chad-related just stopped while we all grieved his passing.
A Time to Build Up.
Probably a year later, allowing some time to pass and the hard edges of grief to soften a bit so we could get through a phone conversation without crying, Kai and I began to talk about finishing Chad’s unfinished or unpublished designs. And he had a bunch of them. Honestly, I didn’t think at that point that CC: Vietnam would be one of them because, frankly, I didn’t want to design it without Chad (and there was STILL Mr. President dominating my design time). And so we did other games instead—games that either Kai or I had a team in place or recruited to finish. Of all those games we talked about and have worked on, I’m especially happy that John Butterfield volunteered to finish Downfall with Kai. And it won the CSR Game of the Year last year! What a tribute to Chad, and to John, a forever friend to Chad and Kai.
In 2022, Kai and I began to seriously discuss the Combat Commander series and agreed to create an Anniversary Edition of the CC: Europe/CC: Med. games which was packaged as Chad originally intended, in one big box. And we had designers ask us about taking the CC game to other theatres and periods. But no movement for CC: Vietnam. Until there WAS!!!
A Time to Seek.
Two of our newer GMT designers whose work I’m really excited about are Non-Breaking Space (NB) and Stephen Rangazas. NB created Cross Bronx Expressway(nearing heading to the printer now) and Stephen designed The British Way. Both have other designs on P500 now and also on the design table. Well, in the fall of 2023, NB came to our Weekend at the Warehouse and showed a couple games to Jason, Kai, Rachel, Mike Bertucelli, and me. I liked his games, but more importantly, I liked HIM. After the weekend, we were all excited about working with NB—I heard several “he fits with us” comments (and he DOES!)—on various projects. And Stephen’s The British Way and The Guerrilla Generation demonstrated both his design skill and the depth of research that he puts into game design. I was particularly impressed with the way he engages with customers online: he communicates clearly and humbly and is open to feedback and other interpretations while being committed to making the best product that he can.
So, at that warehouse meeting, being really impressed with NB, I mentioned in passing that I’d really love to find a team to get the Combat Commander: Vietnam project moving forward. NB surprised us with “I need to make a phone call.” That call was to Stephen (they often work together in a design partnership). NB has since told me that it was Stephen’s background in Vietnam research that prompted the call. Stephen’s design of Sovereign of Discord, the expansion to our hit COIN game Fire in the Lake, already benefited from his depth of knowledge (and I would note here that your work has to be pretty impressive to get Mark and Volko to sign off on doing an expansion for one of their best-selling games!). After the call, NB told us something along the lines of “We’re interested, but it’s a divergence from the path we are on right now. So we need to take some time to think about it and discuss it in depth before we give you an answer.”
Fast forward to January of 2024. NB contacted me and Jason and let us know that he and Stephen were definitely interested in working on a Combat Commander: Vietnam game! We had an online meeting a week later where they walked us through a slide show of how they intended to move forward with the design, assuming we approved it. Here are a few of the slides from that meeting:
Stephen and NB’s scoping of the Factions that they proposed including in the game.NB and Stephen’s early overview of Faction Deck Force Composition and Timelines
It was a really good meeting. We had a lot of questions, and NB and Stephen answered them with skill, honesty, and transparency and were not shy to share what their research showed. I liked that when they hadn’t figured something out yet, they said so. It was clear to me that they had the chops to research, design, and deliver a new Combat Commander: Vietnam that aligned with Chad’s and my vision for the game but was not limited by it. I left that meeting IMPRESSED. And we gave them the go ahead to push forward into the “create the physical game” stage, which they proposed to have to show us by the Fall 2024 Weekend at the Warehouse.
A Time to Dance.
We didn’t hear much from Stephen and NB from January to September. We just left them alone, knowing that what they were creating was a huge task. Occasionally they’d have a question, but mostly they just worked away on their own, sculpting what we all hoped would become a masterpiece.
Then, just before the Weekend at the Warehouse, NB sent us the image below and told us he’d have the playtest kit ready for the Weekend. We were so excited!
At the Weekend, we were all really happy about where the design was and ready to move forward to getting it ready for P500. I was thinking it might be ready to go on the P500 list in a year. Then NB said, “Please give us a deadline. We work better that way.” So I said, “April 2025.” NB didn’t blink, so that was our target date.
Then, in January, Stephen and NB informed us that they had EIGHT maps (pictured below) they were now testing on and anticipated they’d double that within a month.
They also included a Map of Vietnam with a Scenario and Reference guide for all the planned Battles (below).
And then they COMPLETELY blew me away. They built a campaign system! WHAT??!!??
Campaign Scenario Generator (left) and the CC: V scenario it generated (right)
They then noted that they thought they’d be ready for a MARCH P500 addition instead of April. Looking at the quality and completeness of their work (I’ve shown just a fraction here), I had no problem giving them the March slot. So here we are, with Combat Commander: Vietnam hitting the P500 list with this week’s customer newsletter. I hope you’ll order yours now!
I hope this article gives you all some insight into how Combat Commander: Vietnam has come to exist. What a long journey this has been. I am HUGELY excited about what NB and Stephen have created and how they’ve taken Chad’s system and our vision and combined it with their own research and added so much that we probably wouldn’t ever have thought of. I still can’t believe we’re going to have a Campaign System for CC: Vietnam!!!!!!
I believe (and hope) that the Combat Commander community will be blown away by how cool this game is and by the amount of value they’re going to get in this big box of Combat Commander love. And I know Chad would be SO happy to see this game that we planted the seeds for finally come to fruition. As with everything in the Combat Commander world, every time I play this, I’ll be thinking of Chad. And I’ll always be thankful that NB and Stephen took up this challenge and have honored Chad with the care, attention to detail, and general awesomeness that they’ve created for us to enjoy as we play Combat Commander: Vietnam.
In Battlestar Galactica can a character use actions from cards while in the brig or is the sole action available to the character, during his turn, is to try to get out? Also can other action cards that have effects on rolling, crisis resolution, etc. be used? Thanks in advance for the help!
Helo can do anything other than move or take actions while stranded, i.e. he skips the Movement Step and the Action Step during his turn. He still does the Receive Skills and Crisis steps. He still participates in skill checks, can use his once per game ability, etc. Other than skipping Movement and Action, he can do anything any other player can do.
More than a decade ago, Assassin’s Creed 3 came out, serving as the follow-up to a trio of well-received games featuring fan favorite character Ezio Auditore da Firenze. Set during the American Revolution and featuring a more stoic protagonist, far removed from the previous games’ roguish Ezio, AC3 garnered a reputation among many players for being a series misstep. Approached with fresh eyes and many years of hindsight, though, it’s easier to see that Assassin’s Creed 3 is perhaps the strongest AC to date thanks to its unique world design and strong story. Now, anyone looking for a cheaper alternative to the more recent Assassin’s Creed Shadows is in luck as AC3 is currently available at a steep discount.
Assassin’s Creed 3 takes the series’ stealth game design out of the European cities of the AC2 trilogy and into the forests, waters, and less densely constructed settlements of North America. Because of this choice, players spend as much time clambering between tree limbs as they do scaling towers, and, in one of the smartest expansions to the AC formula, take part in naval battles.
Aside from the change in setting, Assassin’s Creed 3 stands out for an engaging exploration of its time period, which follows the birth of the United States from the perspective of a protagonist whose parents are Mohawk and British and whose personal journey across the game reflects the chaos of the era. The ‘present day’ plot line is as drab as most of the series and the game is still plagued by the repetition and bloat of many Assassin’s Creed entries, but, for those willing to overlook its flaws, there’s plenty to appreciate.
Assassin’s Creed 3 Remastered is currently available with a 75% discount, bringing its price down to $9.99 USD / £8.49. Grab a copy on Steam right here.
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