#8 The first cut is the deepest

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.

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#4: The 2nd cardboard

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.

#7: Playtest-Cringe

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

#1 First Cardboard-Prototype

Here it is. My first cardboard-prototype of Radica. I even managed to play it a few times, although not for long, because I ran out of cards. I now know what I want to change though: Redesign the paths, so each ring has a unique character (fast-ring, etc.) Make the rings turn and stack them like terraces, to make the game more 3 dimensional and also to include a new mechanic of laying and blocking a path Build the whole game with the Laser-Cutter 1st cardboard-prototype

Making Radica

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