Making Radica

I had my first tryout at the lazer yesterday and made some test-cuts. First I experimented with a 4mm MDF and a 1mm plywood. First cuts.  What became apparent was that I had to change my design, so that the player could distinguish between cosmetic texture and important play-fields and lines. The texture did not convey the desert-errosion-feeling I was hoping for and the depth of the cuts was not enough to cerate the 3D terrain I wanted. I experimented with another pattern which I liked better, but making the whole playboard with an all-covering design would take a lot of time and money. Some pattern experiments.  A possible way to proceed would be different layers like in this picture I took at the Zoo.  3D Map I saw at the local Zoo. Quite nice.

Well, that was hard. I had my first playtest a couple days back and it didn't go exactly as planned. The mechanics I designed so carefully, did not work as intended and even though the game was playable (for the most part) it had some serious issues. Overall I just wasn't satisfied with how it played. Issues were: No incentive to deploy the 2nd and 3rd Radical Tedious pressure-counting ("somebody open up a spreadsheet!") No choices in the first ring. Everybody loots the Mech-pile Not much playboard-interaction (ring-turning) Unbalanced Cards. Pressure-Dice-Mechanic was way too complicated Combat was too easy Pressure was too abundant No real incentive to fight other players My first instinct is to jump right into it and start the whole design-process all over again. However I will continue play-testing with v1 just to get a more detailed feedback and also continue to make the few remaining game-objects like pressure-counter and health-meter. Looks

Today I finally get to show off my new card-designs. They are only for testing, but still I put some effort into them, thinking about what information I wanted to display and trying to make them at least a little bit visually attractive. Anyhow, I probably spend way too much time on them. Still it looked nice to finally place them on the board. Sorting out the cards

Warhammer-Figurines, Pen&Paper Dice do fine for prototyping In this post I will go a little deeper into the mechanics of Radica and try to outline what the actual gameplay might look like. Goal: Reach the Forgotten City Mechanics in order of priority: - Micromanage your pressure - Scavenge for loot - Fight off the Lost during the Night - Manipulate the board to reach the Forgotten City first In the beginning I also had a Network-building-mechanics, kind of like in Settler of Catan, where you could build streets and outposts - but I decided to cut this mechanic for now. I chose these mechanics because 1: I enjoyed these mechanics in other games and 2: They fit the narrative. I wanted to simulate by way of mechanics what the daily life of a Radical might look like - always worrying about pressure, always worrying about the night and the possibility of an attack, always searching for some tech that will give you the upper hand, if just for a short amount of time. T

So here it is. The second cardboard-prototype is finally finished. It took way longer than anticipated, since finding a big piece of cardboard is apparently super hard. Anyway... ....once I finally had it all it took me about two evenings to cut and draw. My template was the Inkscape-File and this time I decided not to use water paint, but only graphite pencils, so I could make some changes after play-testing. This prototype should last me a while and help me refine the gameplay to the point where I can have full matches.  Keep you posted. 2nd cardboard-prototype with layout. Added scavenge-sites.

It is done! Thank god. For the past two weeks I have been juggling around with the card-metrics, balancing this, balancing and asking myself a million questions. And to be fair I have no idea if it will work. So let me break this down for you. I had a couple of objectives when designing this: Each ring has a number of these scavenging-sites: mechanical, special and danger The idea is to hide more valuable cards at higher rings. Risk-Reward. But also to mix a certain number of high-level cards into the ring-specific pile to give players an incentive to loot much and quick.  Also the total number of cards should still be manageable. I'm now at 130 cards, which is ok for now.  I know more after play-testing. 

In September I had a crash-course in the digital-lab of my University and it gave me a ton of ideas for making this Boardgame. #1: I want to make at least a DIY-version, that can build using only the printer and laser. This way people can make the game themselves if they wish. #2: I want to go all out on the laser-cutting-part and create a beautiful playboard out of wood or some other high-quality material. Luckily I managed to pitch this project as my specialization this semester, so I can spend a decent amount of time working on it and using the University-Laser.  Still I think that it will take until the end of November until I have the first laser-prototype.  Anyway: Having said all this I know have to make a vector-grafik of my laser-job. I started using Inkscape, since I have some experience with it, but it's taking more time than I thought. One upside is that I can now turn the rings directly in Inkscape.  1st Inkscape-Grafik with new layout.