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