Packing for Dracobeach: the Limited Space Conundrum

just-a-cat 2023-10-18 03:40

Took a while to set up but overall really fun! The art is absolutely amazing and I loved how many possible strategies there were! P.S I got either 87 or 95 points, depends how you count it

kanity 2023-10-18 20:46

It's impressive how much effort went into this game! Printed the sheets today and sat down with tea and my mom to play together. Reading through the rules, slowly realized it was probably meant for 1 player. Moreover, we only had 2 dice (FINALLY I got to use these as I always carry them with all my essentials but don't get to use for anything! xD) and we struggled to grasp the rules from the get-go (I generally try to digest the rules while playing already!)

So, we maybe changed the intended way of playing a bit, to play together and make do with 2 dice. We each took one and chose a dragon at the start of each round (would be fun to randomize a dragon too ofc but oh well) and then rolled our dice and went to the caves. We did our best placing items according to rules, but as we mostly had 2 dragons going to caves each day, I wasn't sure if I should subtract empty spaces in the end. I filled in the score we got (40) and then counted empty spaces and gave us -1 for each instead of 3, thus optionally bringing the score to 19 (I am not good at math so mom did the counting)

I hope you don't mind we tweaked it a bit, I did my best to mostly adhere to the rules, and my mom's English is not very good so I was the only one reading the rules and relaying it to her.

Overall, it was fun and I love the visuals, everything looks so professional and cute!! And you made a cool system, really thought out - I put the papers away for now and will try them again after I have more time to delve into the rules bit more and maybe play with a friend who knows English too ^^ I like how you implemented the theme of limited space as well. And a concept overall seems very unique to me. That was a delight, thank you for the game! <3

photo_2023-10-18_23-33-51.jpg

alchemic 2023-10-21 07:21

Hey, sorry to see you didn't get a lot of ratings.

This game is VERY GOOD.

I played this with my wife, in a head-to-head format. We didn't change the rules, we both printed out a sheet and played solo, and then compared our scores at the end (93 and 113 btw).

Firstly: The presentation is EXCELLENT. The judicious usage of vibrant colors and solid black lines made the prints come out looking phenomenal. Seriously, this feels very professionally designed. I love the cute artwork!

The rules are well-written, and for the most part, everything is super clear and unambiguous.

There are just a few places I'd improve things for clarity:

- We didn't read the scoring section until after we were done playing. We missed the line, "Touching means all eight squares around an item," and we had assumed "touching" to mean only the 4 spots directly adjacent to the item. I would clarify the meaning of "touching" much earlier in the rules.

- The exact ordering of when to use cavern abilities vs item bonus effects is a little confusing. I would make 2 changes here: A) move the "gaining the item's bonus effects" section to follow the "fitting an item" section, since I believe this is logically when it occurs during the turn, and B) I would have liked a clearly numbered sequence of actions to perform on each day, ideally on the first page. Copying this numbered sequence onto the player sheet would also help remember exactly what to do.

- I think the cavern abilities sections on pages 3 and 4 could be condensed into just one page. This would be good to use as a reference sheet while playing the game without having to flip back and forth (we printed double-sided). The newly empty space on page 4 could be used solely for examples and further clarifications.

- I would clarify the phrasing around "temp die", since that makes them seem different from "non-temp" die. I would focus on the word "motivate" for this. You could say that at the start of each day, you automatically "motivate 3 dragons", and then instead of saying "roll a temp die", you could say "motivate a dragon" or simply "motivate".

- Because the "player sheet" and the "cavern board" are two pages in the same PDF file, we printed them double-sided on accident, so we had to print some extras when we read how they were used. I would split these into two separate PDFs, to make it clear how to print them.

Now, regarding the actual gameplay:

This is a very fun "dice placement" game. Having played many similar games before, it still managed to give me a unique experience.

- The "add or subtract 1 to any unspent die" maana ability needs to be described in the actual rules, not only on the player sheet. I don't know how, but we both missed it entirely. The elemental scoring rules are similarly missing from the rules, although at least for those the rulebook does point you towards the cavern board.

- The potion icon is a little hard to draw, it ends up looking like a weird burrito or pencil eraser.

2+ player variant idea:

- Ideally, each player would be given differently colored dice.

- At game start, roll for first player, they get a token. After each day, the "first player" token rotates clockwise.

- At day start, all players roll their dice. Starting with the first player, take turns placing a single die (or pass).

- Instead of placing dice on the cavern die slot, the dice are placed on the item they were used for. As with the current rules, each player may still only use one die per cavern in a day, but multiple players can all visit the same cavern.

- For 1 or 2 players, each cavern item can only hold a single die, for 3 or 4 players items can hold 2 die.

Overall this was a very nice friday night board game experience. Seriously, the quality is insane. We enjoyed this much more than many of the mass produced board games in our collection.

EXCEPTIONAL. VERY CUTE!!