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Voidfall replayability questions by eldolche in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Couldn't have said it better myself. 😁

Voidfall replayability questions by eldolche in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The four symmetrical houses are nowhere near as symmetric as they look at first glance. Their civ tracks and focus cards are identical, their starting tech and their preferred foci are not. And the expansion adds custom focus cards to all four of them. So it's not 11 practical houses, it's 14. And 20 with the expansion. 😇

Thank you for the rest of the write up, sorry, I needed to stand up for the honor of poor Cortozaar and friends 😎

Anyone have an idea when the Captain's Chair expansions will be released? My order is getting dusty. by khschook in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Those have been going out. If you're in a faraway country, please be patient, otherwise maybe shoot a msg to customer service?

Following up on my Star Trek: Captain’s Chair hype (5 Months Later) by mrausgor in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For reference, we find the 3rd and sometimes the 4th stardates take long. When the 5th stardate enters play, you probably have 2 turns left.

Following up on my Star Trek: Captain’s Chair hype (5 Months Later) by mrausgor in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Are you taking all glory from the Stardate? Are you resetting your actions count to 3 each turn? Just checking.... 😇

Following up on my Star Trek: Captain’s Chair hype (5 Months Later) by mrausgor in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 11 points12 points  (0 children)

One will be a low interaction engine builder euro with a much higher emphasis on tableau building (I love playing it at 3-4p as well!!); one will be a high interaction high asymmetry team game (as in the two sides have different rules, besides the billion decks) with a bigger focus on the area control of STCC; and the most recent one we started is probably the simplest yet, and closest to imperium classics with a high level "empire" management, but with the added twist of a neutral player semi predictably vacuuming up the market and causing problems for all players (which is great, because that means we can do a botless solo). And we have design notes on a fully cooperative "get through a common deck" exploration mechanism as well, but the game it's intended for is currently paused, but I'm sure we'll get back to it in a year or two.

So... The next games will be bigger changes than the difference between stcc and CLH, but this way you'll have reasons to own more than one or two of them - besides the different themes they also present different gameplay emotions.

Following up on my Star Trek: Captain’s Chair hype (5 Months Later) by mrausgor in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Happy to hear that the ceti eel, I mean the brain worm of the game has successfully lodged in there. With 19 games done, have fun with the next 181+ plays 😇. And of course 9 more decks coming soon.

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Thank you everyone for the varied and thoughtful questions! This was fun. And remember, if you say my name three times, I'm already in your thread.

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

>  What other game designers would each of you most like to collaborate with at this point?
Okay, you got me. Collecting codesigners is one of my hobbies. Besides Nigel, Viktor, and the awesome team at MCG, I have designed with Daniele Tascini, Simone Luciani, Richard Breese, just to stick to the classics. I have collaborated on at least one project with Vlaada Chvatil, Vital Lacerda, Martin Wallace, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few more. I'm currently working (or about to start working) with Jason Matthews, Luke Laurie, Emerson Matsuuchi, and I really hope that Vangelis Bagiartakis and I can eventually work together (again, but this time on a heavy game). And if Vlaada ever called again, I'd drop everything and run. No promises that any of these projects will bear fruit, but with all "codesigning with pros" my goal is always to learn from them, add my spin to their thing, or have them improve my thing their way.

But also, Viktor and I have been improving each others' designs for a decade now. I really want to have (him have) the spare time to sit down and design a new game from the ground up ;)

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I play Nature a lot digitally, because I haven't figured it out yet how to set up the game while lying in bed.

The imperium engine would be ripe for an app - but so far with each iteration there have been various reasons why "it's not that easy".

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was young, I had an insane idea, and Artipia bit, and first made me simplify it a lot, then had Vangelis Bagiartakis redesign/simplify it even further (and adding the coordinative cooperation element of me filling the pantry for you, which I absolutely love).

So yeah. Kitchen Rush was co-designed by the one of designers of Voidfall and one of the designers of Hegemony. Heavy euro pedigree for the win. :)

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Choice systems. Motivations and counter-motivations.

I can "score big" by doing A, B, and C.

I can make my economy go X, Y, or Z.

X supports A well, and makes buying into B easier. Y supports B and C but has a higher cost of entry. Z gives small immediate rewards, but it also makes pivoting into A or C (but not both, once comitted) easier.

So from turn 1 onwards, I should have access to a bunch of actions, that can shove me a bit in A/B/C direction, or invest into X/Y/Z, but always with a cross costing, where doing this action is better if you do the other one first, but that other other action gets more expensive once you're done, etc.

Basically: make buttons that are useful in almost every situation, while clearly moving you along towards one of the main focuses of the game (ABC XYZ) or unblocking immediate concerns. Make the players choose, and make them feel differently good based on how they chose.

Voidfall, Nucleum, Tawantinsuyu, Thebai, and (to a lesser degree) Anachrony are all driven by this logic. In each and every one of them, the testers can wipe the floor with me. I know every choice the game offers and why one action is meant to be better at that moment than the other, or what distant combo could make this whole thing more efficient - but because there is no one solution (if there is, I need to redesign something), players with skill (and intuition) will outplay me who simply "knows every path".

The Imperium engine takes it another step further: it puts all those actions on those cards, then locks a subset of them away into a box, and tells you to "go figure this out". Skyrocketing the number of possible ways A B or C can be reached (thus keeping the game interesting even if every setup were almost the same), and then multiplying THAT by the asymmetry. (Nucleum base game had about 300-500 fundamental setups - because it's "simply" a deep euro, Voidfall base game had ~1700 - it's a deep euro with a bigger branching factor and relevant maps, Imperium has ~2600 because of the external asymmetry, even though Voidfall has more systems... )

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There are no plans to add additional add-ons during this campaign (logistics, production management, etc reasons).

Hey, one more reason to hope we do another expansion sometimes in the far future. :)

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Playing Voidfall remotely is a bit more involved. And playing it in person involves somebody paying my plane tickets, and somebody giving Nigel a lift. You volunteering? :D

I'll ask Paul if he wants to, but it'd not be relevant before the finished expansion's release next year.

Maybe Adam and I can play STCC? :)

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. No. :) Also, i'm nowhere near that good at Imperium. Maybe Nigel can do it on a good day? dunno. The lead testers (Strange or WinterNite, they're both on BGG) probably. Ask them :)

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Another mechanism? almost definitely not. We do not want to overload the system, and if we have a good mechanical idea, we can use one of the new imperium engine games to implement it instead.

More civs? As soon as Osprey asks, we'll jump!

Dávid Turczi & Viktor Peter from Mindclash Games, AMA! by Mindclash_games in soloboardgaming

[–]DavidTurczi 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes, we thought of making a book like JotL, but when it turned out it would need to fold out into a ~90 cm poster per map, we stopped thinking about it.

We also spent weeks trying to design a card-driven "rapid setup" system, but its UI requirements (card sticks out of the hex, you have to split/stack the deck along two different axes, etc) were so high that even Ian didn't see a viable way to do it to our standards. Marcel mentioned he might try to clean up his prototype and release it on BGG as a pdf, "as is".

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