Into the Depths

fae-pdf 2025-04-10 16:21

Really really cool entry!! I love it!! What a piece of work, crafting a full-on little singleplayer campaign boardgame with a very nicely written narrative to go with it! So much work went into this!!! The rules are really good and clear, and full of very tasty narrative bits. I have to admit however that I did not play it to completion. First, because I'm exhausted and insomnia has been destroying me these past few days, but also, because after the first twelve games (I completed week 1 and week 2), the gameplay started to feel very repetitive for the amount of agency and decision making it provides, with evolution to the gameplay taking a little too long to come. I think the game could be very well served by: 1. Maybe providing a bit more moment-to-moment & long-term meaningful decision-making. I like how streamlined it is with the push your luck gameplay; and I really liked the added element of having to stop right after drawing a red to gain the bonus, and the way that intermingled with the reveal you gain from hearts!! But I think it could have benefited from a bit more crunch and player agency, both short term and long term. - Short term, stuff like choosing what to do with the red cards you draw (maybe choose whether you use it as a valuable, or to stifle black cards, or to spend it to reveal cards from top?) - Medium term, maybe make spending the gained relics/food an active decision (like some sort of consumables) instead of automatically spending them the next day - Long term, stuff like picking between a choice of perks? Stuff exactly like the relics/food but that you could somehow make permanent to create a sense of progression as you'd ramp up the difficulty. 2. Reducing setup time in-between games, maybe? I did play the rules as written, but I think I'd have burnt out on the gameplay slower without the setup it takes. Since it's random and the spatial element doesn't matter that much, you could have the same push your luck/blackjack-like experience by just drawing from the top of the deck (although it would be less immersive, I understand that, but it would have also made it feel like you're digging through the deck, which fits nicely with the theme!) without setting up the grid 3. Having the game be more condensed. Something like, you play one round, or two round (and a round would be = a week instead of = a day) per rules change, and how much money you've gained is basically just victory points? Get all Reiner Knizia up in here. (Sorry I love victory points). That way, you blast through the first chapter in two games instead of 5-6, then you're in chapter 2 and you've got a new mechanic with the card reveal, blam one game then you get the relics mechanic, blam one or two games then you're in chapter 3 and so on, keep the pace brisk when the game is v. simple to get to the tastier stuff ASAP, right? Also it's a shame if players get discouraged before seeing more of the super cool (and honestly well-written) story!

Anyways that's just how I'd go about it/my feelings. Also clearly not necessarily the kind of thing that it's easy to think of 1. without feedback and 2. over just the span of the jam, you did SUCH TREMENDOUS WORK, once again I'm blown away by how much you managed to do in just 72hrs and how high quality it all is. Incredible job, thanks for the game!!

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-10 17:28

Hi there @fae-pdf, and first of all, thanks so much for sharing all of these details! I definitely plan to put a lot more into this, so these notes are invaluable.

I TOTALLY understand not playing the whole thing! Especially when someone can easily play and rate a good 5-10 games in an hour, the idea of playing something for 2-3 hours (at least lol) is a huge undertaking even without the exhaustion and insomnia!

I'm also delighted to hear the rules made sense. I always worry about that, especially in a crowd that's often less familiar with tabletop games! 😅 Rules are easily honed with lots of people playtesting, but impossible when (almost) alone because obviously I know how to play, so I'd never notice gaps or issues... 🤣

For point one, I totally agree that the game is missing meaningful decisions, especially at the beginning. Heck, the first chapter, you don't even have the lantern or the effects of the cards, so you literally just choose which card to take (with zero information) and when to stop (which is often "I guess odds are bad now so I'll stop"). And you gave some great options here! I originally was going to include a shop where you upgrade yourself, but felt like that would be too much to think about and downtime between rounds. I do like even allowing people a choice of when to use their relics/food. It would also ensure people don't forget about them as often; when Angel and I played, we sometimes forgot we even had abilities until the round ended and then it was "Oh yeah, if I remembered that, it would've gone way better!"

I also totally agree with point two here. In fact, thematically, I really like the idea of just drawing from the deck. It takes away some of the agency in an even more obvious way (choosing a space on a grid FEELS like more of a choice, even if it isn't). In fact, even making the game play out like that for a chapter or two before opening up into a grid would make sense, since that'd let people ease into the concept of the game even more. I never considered altering the actual way you play through the mine, but that's brilliant!

LOL okay this is what I get for writing this as I read it, because I also totally agree with the third point. I could've just said I agree with em all upfront 😅 And clearly you know tabletop games, omg! I do like that idea: it felt like a lot of effort to get into the "main" game here. And it would even give new options for how the game works, like... your overall score determines your battle against greed. The end of the game, since you didn't get there, is a split between either earning a ridiculous amount of $ and giving into greed or purposely losing, resisting the temptation. Having your score affect that from the beginning of the game sounds really interesting, I like that!

Finally, thank you so much! You might even be someone who frequents like unpub or online playtesting events, because you have the perfect blend of "this is great, but what if..." along with solid, specific, useful details. And that's exactly what we need as creators: insight for what can be better in a kind way like this 🧡 Thank YOU for taking all of this time to play it AND give feedback!

fae-pdf 2025-04-10 18:22

Oh, you're adorable! Thank you so so much for your very nice comments. I love designing boardgames, and I've worked as a game designer for strategy games in the video game industry, so I'm really happy you found my feedback valuable! I love giving feedback, esp. to brilliant designers whose work I enjoy!

But yeah, good luck with getting reviews and comments with a boardgame (especially a longer one) for Ludum Dare, it's not really the audience sadly - but I hope your game gets seen.

- I don't have a problem with long games per se! I play a LOT of boardgames, and baseline for me is 3-4 hours (and I really like Twilight Imperium so like... 14 hours lmao), although I do have a harder time with specifically **solo** boardgames (I bounce off of them/have a harder time staying engaged) - so that might be more of the issue with me, which makes me not necessarily representative of the solo boardgamer crowd! (So not necessarily your target audience here) - I'm not a good metric for rule clarity either for the same reason (because of the sheer amount of rulebooks I've had to decypher), but it also means I've got a lot of points of comparison! I liked the way the rules were written, I felt like you struck a good balance between narrative elements & rule text. - The beginning is probably fine, again there's beauty in the simplicity of the push your luck/blackjack, very simple, very clean design, especially to ease the players into the game :thinking: Once again it can be really a matter of taste, my thing is engine building/synergies/decision making, but for the people who love stuff like Quacks of Quedlinburgs or any push your luck, very streamlined stuff, this could also be the perfect amount of decision making. I know I'm contradicting myself, but I'm very biased as a designer by what I love as a player, and it can not always be for the better, pulling games towards a direction they don't necessarily "want" to go towards? I don't know if I make sense. What I mean is, you're the best judge of what you want to make and what your game wants to be, and simplicity is not a bad thing (it's also focus), so big grain of salt for all my comments/suggestions! - Oh yeah for the abilities, tracking them in your head as a player is always going to be hard, because of the cognitive load it represents :< Ideas for solution/how I'd try to solve that: - Maybe you could have a sheet that the players have to print, with like... When you gain a relic, you outline the circle in front of its effect, and then you can use it whenever, and when you do you check/fill-in that circle? So then you can only gain each relic as many times as you have circles to outline in front of them. (I don't know if that's very understandable written like this.) - Or you make the players set aside the card for the next game to mark it as a relic they can use? But that would mess with the content of the deck a bit, and be kind of punitive for high value diamonds/hearts - it feels already pretty bad to lose the diamond money when you make it into a relic, and that would make the players feel doubly punished. So maybe the player can get the money, and the relic next game, and you remove it and keep it aside until you use it? IDK - I did read the entire game! So I saw the endings! It's really cool!! Albeit maybe a little drawn out (if I had had to play through it)? I think you maybe could cut one or two steps in both ending paths to avoid too much repetition, just keep the best bits/distillate it a little (I'll maybe finish the campaign like this week-end, with some of those homebrew modifications I outlined, because I still really liked the game!!)

Anyways, the pleasure is mine! I really like the games the both of you put out ever since I played that one game about making waffles (years ago I think) lmao, so I'm always taking a look at your new games! (even when i don't have the time to play them)

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-10 19:13

@fae-pdf Our games in the past have been smaller, and in fact it's funny because my #1 rule for Ludum Dare is "make it quick, easy-to-learn, and only using a deck of cards or a couple of dice or both." And then I break that rule every frickin time 🤣

I used to stress so much over getting ratings, but the more of these I do, the more I'm just really happy to make something and push myself.

Also omg the comments about our work are so frickin sweet! I dunno if you struggle with the same issue, but it feels like we can get sales and downloads but not comments. Not like... "hey, I liked this" or even "I like libraries and you made a game about books!" Angel and I were discussing that earlier today, actually. So to hear anything at all means SO much!!! 🧡 Also I played your entry and loved it, and went to search for you on Itch only to discover I was already following you. I'm not sure what got me to follow you, but I was blown away by the work you've created.

And it's funny, you mentioned the struggle specifically with solo games and... yeah. I don't know any long solo games, now that you mention it. I remember Rahdo doing a solo roll-and-write game (like "Hadrian's Crawl" or something?) and it was a much bigger, longer thing but even at an hour, it was considered long.

So yeah, I think going forward with this, I want it to be shorter, tighter, and more replayable. Capturing the "replayable" is gonna be the tough part with this core mechanic, but I have more than a weekend to figure it out now 🤣 Heck, writing this game took 60% of my time: it was ALL of Sunday and Monday for me to write the first draft, then convert it to Canva and add the art there and such. 😅

And yes, as you're actually a tabletop gamer, you're far more used to these types of rules and running analog things yourself vs people who never play them. LOL that's very fair. But still, someone who plays a lot of tabletop stuff would be familiar with major flaws in the rules, so I still take it as a win 🥳

It's funny you mention the printed sheets; Angel mentioned it as the first post-LD addition. Like a sheet where you write your scores, it shows you the # of days and what your special abilities are that chapter, etc. And her first idea was to pull the card from the deck! In fact, it was really cool doing that because if, say, you pull a valuable diamond as a relic and hold onto it, you can't draw it again, and the odds of good cards goes down.

And I totally get that contradiction too. I LOVE engine-building games, but I also love super quick, push-your-luck stuff like Can't Stop. We generally play light/medium games, like... Gizmos is great, the Fallout Shelter game is far better than expected (and I LOVE Fallout), etc. We've played some Gloomhaven, so we can handle heavy, but it's such a chore to set up and dedicate time (we live with her fam and get interrupted a lot lol).

PLEASE let me know any ideas you might have with your ideas if you try the game out! I'll gladly credit you on the game too if we do stuff with your ideas. I do absolutely agree, all around though, on taking all of this and squishing it down into something tighter, smaller, and quicker.

I think when I was making this in Canva, I went thoroughly through and changed the beginning and a lot of the like... first few chapters around. The original story had literally nothing about the customers, and I was like "but you're a SHOPKEEPER?!?!" But as I went, time got tighter and tighter, and I changed nothing with the later parts. In fact, the "give into temptation" ending went WAY off the rails and kinda defeats the whole narrative I ended up with: that all of this was about you. There are no other shadow creatures, the shadow was just your conscience, and over time it turns into an encouragement. Like the angel and demon on your shoulders, but they look identical clad in darkness. It tries to scare you away to keep you from the temptation. Having a whole cadre of the seven deadly sins around you is SUCH a departure from that and it's the #1 thing I'm changing when I work on t

fae-pdf 2025-04-10 21:50

Tell me about it, trying to go simple and that, just... going out of the window, every! time! :rofl:

I don't struggle with the same issue because I get neither sales nor comments :laughing: (I mean, I don't sell my stuff. But yeah the gap between clicks/downloads and actual comments is insane.)

I REALLY get what you mean, every positive comment on anything I make makes me SO happy, it's so meaningful. That's like, the entire reason I make games, it's to share things, to connect with people, to create meaning, right? To make something, that someone else might find meaningful to *them*, touching, resonant. That's also why when I have the energy, I like to show the designers that I like (and who don't get a lot of actual comments/active engagement) that I appreciate their work, that they are seen, you know?

It can be so lonely, you make something; for dozens of hours you toil away, you always put a piece of yourself in it, and then you drop it into the void and you can't even hear when it hits the bottom of the well. So every moment of connection about these games, when it's like that, just self-publishing online, to me that's part of the reason I make anything. My first Ludum Dare was almost life changing because of that. So many people validating my work, and it really came at a moment of crisis for me and pulled me out of that hole a bit.

Hadrian's Wall!!! I love it, it's SO good, right up my design alley!! But even that I can't play it solo (although I'm sure it works just as well)! I *have* to play it with other people. Likewise, the Slay the Spire board game can be played solo and clocks easily at 6-9 hours for the 3 acts (so there's that for long solo games), but I play it with other people as well.

But yeah, for sure, short games is a good idea for solo offering, because I think me time is "harder to justify", in a way? Like, the designs can be wonderful, the experiences can be fully engrossing, but it's SOOOO tough for me to just sit down and actually play it if I don't have like, other people to "anchor me" into actually doing it and help me stay focused? (As well as the social element giving another dimension/justifying the game in a weird way?) But also I lose my focus so easily unless I'm in hyperfocus so, you know.

I think the game you made does something very precious though, because it kind of blends together a really simple, streamlined solo game, and a narrative campaign with a lot of very nicely crafted, literary text content. And writing this much and editing, it takes a lot of work, which is also part of why your entry is so impressive I think. (And I really hope some other people can see what you did, because it's really cool and special I think for a ludum dare project, it reminded me a little bit of some sort of more narrative My City? And I absolutely loved My City, and I think you might love it too.) As a campaign, it might not need to be replayable, right? But you can also craft it as a sort of replayable campaign game, where the overarching campaign structure and planning is part of the experience, and that can be incredibly enjoyable as well. But I think that's like, two very different directions that you can take the game towards - 1. a one-shot campaign with a stronger narrative component, like it is now, or 2. a replayable game with a cool narrative, but the narrative might leave the spotlight to the gameplay - esp. on playthroughs after the first. And I don't think you necessarily approach the design for either the same way, right?

Ah gosh yeah Gloomhaven... I love that game but girl, the setup for that... I can't lmao, I play it with my ex-roomy exclusively as a videogame :rofl: (even though we had the box... I think we used it like twice before going fully digital, also because of not living together which... makes sense)

It's so interesting to read about your process, thank you so much for taking the time to have a conversation with me! You're just adorable! Also, yes, I see what you mean about the narrative, it's really interesting this conflict in the game's direction!

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-11 15:37

You nailed it so perfectly, goodness, that's exactly what design feels like... dropping it into a void and not even hearing it hit the bottom of the well. IS there a bottom of the well? Did it get stuck to the side somewhere? There's no way to know...

I'm so glad that the first Ludum Dare was like that for you!!!! I've always found the community here to be so lovely too, even as a tabletop creator people are so encouraging and kind. Heck, the fact that anyone plays my stuff means people are going way out of their way to do it 🧡 And those down moments... goodness... I'm bipolar and after transitioning as a woman, I REALLY had to face the depression. It almost took me out a few times over a couple of years... I'm out of that now, cautiously monitoring for signs, but what I mean is that I can relate to that and I'm so glad that you got out of it too!

HADRIAN'S WALL, that's it! And oooohhhhh I forgot they made a tabletop version of Slay the Spire, too! I really need to get that, I was a huge fan of the video game and playing it with Angel would be awesome! Plus, it's "research," ya know? 🤣 That's another great point too, though: campaign games often have solid "break points." Like... you can set the game aside and come back to it later, you've completed something meaningful in this sitting.

YES!!! My City was great! We played that on Board Game Arena with another friend and, yeah, the small touches that change the game each chapter (3 games?) are really cool. Also another great model for this, as My City is such a quick game (especially when playing digitally lol).

For Gloomhaven, we bought one of those sets of inserts, it cost more than the game (and Gloomhaven is PRICY! It was like $250 for both!). It took us hours to assemble it and, yeah, it was a necessity but ouch... We played maybe 1/2 of the campaign and haven't finished because it's SUCH an obligation to pull everything out, set it up, play a chapter, and then "well, it'd suck to stop after one because it was so much work getting this out, so I guess we play another?"

You're adorable too! :D 🙌 It's absolutely my pleasure, no question. Each Ludum Dare, we write a postmortem and I went into even more depth than usual this time. I'll be putting that out on Tuesday (our blog has a lot of posts right now and we're doing one every 2 days so we don't overwhelm people lol) and I'll tag you here with a link in case you're curious!

It really is/has been a delight to meet you, Fae(.exe). Thanks again for reaching out with your comments and insights, and opening up!

eeldam 2025-04-11 23:55

Very cool entry, I wasn't expecting to come across any physical games so this was a real treat. I've made it through the first couple of days and plan to come back and finish the rest when I have more time. I'm impressed how well it captures the same sort of experience that I get from doing something like going into the mines in Stardew Valley, while also being really simple and quick to play. Really nice work! I think this will be a fun game to play through with my kids as well!

whysguy52 2025-04-12 16:57

Woah a IRL card game! cool! never seen that and never thought I would for a jam!

bjornstenlund 2025-04-14 17:13

This is such a cool game jam idea, just phenomenal! I haven't played it yet though because of the playtime, but I've saved the link and hopefully I'll get around to play it before the jam ends! I guess, if I may be so bold to leave some feedback before even playing the game, I think my pain threshold is about 45 min (unless it's great, but that hard to know before playing) so I think it would be great if it could be a bit shorter. I just want to say that I was gonna start playing and read through the beginning, but when I started placing the cards my cats go too interested so I had to postpone.

I am super intrigued though, and I'll write a new comment when I get around to test it!

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-14 19:42

Well thank you so much @eeldam, I never even considered it like the mining in Stardew Valley (my favorite part of that game btw, aside from the general-awesomeness-of-that-game lol). I hope you and your kids enjoy it, although depending on how old they are, I have to warn you the game gets dark. It never gets vulgar or anything, but it does take on some semi-scary, dark tones and vibes, an evil shadow, etc.

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-14 19:43

Thanks so much @whysguy52!!! That's so kind of you to say :D I keep hoping more tabletop creators will take part, Ludum Dare is such an amazing experience!

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-14 19:45

That is TOTALLY understandable about 45 minutes, especially since most Ludum Dare games take like... 5-15 mins to fully play through, often repeatedly! I always tell myself I'm gonna make a short, replayable game THIS TIME and then never do 😅

I appreciate you commenting! And hey, maybe you can get your cats to rate the game then 🤣 I think it's so adorable thinking about the cats joining in, as destructive as they are 😅

eugenik 2025-04-15 10:58

Fun game.

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-15 19:44

Thank you so much, @eugenik! :D

tokto 2025-04-16 17:07

I just made a board game) I love board games, I'm waiting for you to start selling

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-16 22:58

Aaawwwwwwww thank you so much @tokto!! I definitely plan on pursuing this game a lot more in the future, my goal is to finish it before the next Ludum Dare 🧡

inavtr 2025-04-17 05:55

Unfortunately I don't have the time to play it at the moment, but I've at least read a bit about it. I was also surprised to find an analog card game here, but I think it's totally cool! I'm excited to see what delights await me there when I set out with my half-good pickaxe! Much appreciation for your work and a big thank you for the game! :smiley:

kristinamay 2025-04-17 18:42

Haven't played this yet but I wanted to save it for later. I just wanted to drop in and say the production value on your PDF is very high, it looks great and is clear and easy to read. Attention to detail like that is really appreciate for a jam game, and I really like that it's played with an existing card deck. Thanks for making a physical game, so cool!

atoxigner 2025-04-18 07:36

Really impressive design. It starts simple, with some light resource management and card play, but gradually evolves into a much deeper and darker narrative about greed and obsession. The mechanics reflect the story really well, and each chapter adds meaningful twists without overwhelming the core gameplay.

ditam 2025-04-18 18:03

*Does one person have to name hundreds of towns a day? I wonder.*

On the meta-level, I really dig the concept of taking a simple accessory and mechanic (drawing cards from a standard deck in this case), and weaving an experience around it with the power of words and some illustrations. And boy, does this rulebook shine with polish! I did feel there was a bit of a mismatch between the art style of certain illustrations though. How much of the art was curated, and how much of it is original? You mention in the description that you had the chance to lean into graphics a lot more, but at the same time you've opted out of the graphics ratings, so I'm just curious.

I didn't find the time to actually play through this, but I read the rulebook with great interest. I was a bit confused by the stages of the throne: are you supposed to keep going back to chapters 3 and 4 until you've gathered enough money, or (if you failed the minimum requirement once) just keep doing dailies without the joker until you can go to chapter 6?

I liked how the mood turned darker as the game went on, fitting the theme both literally and figuratively. Also how the gameplay mechanics kept evolving as part of the story. A very unique entry, well done!

dock-frankenstein 2025-04-19 13:51

It's always interesting to see non-digital games get submitted and as a first time player of these, it was quite fun... almost. It takes quite a while to play through a single chapter. I know that this is in part a limitation of the card game medium itself, but it doesn't change the fact that I've managed to only get through the first chapter.

This is also probably why I thought the game was too simple. There was no strategy, only flipping cards one after one. I can see that this changes later and I will probably come back to this after the jam concludes, but it doesn't change the fact that it takes a while before the game becomes a game. I understand the first chapter was supposed to be an introduction, but it doesn't do much to make me engaged.

In terms of the atmosphere, the document is really well put together. I'm not sure why you opted out of the art category, as it still takes effort to design pages like these, even if the assets aren't yours. It's also fun to see lore and actual progression instead of just the hard rules.

I feel terrible for leaving a review even though I didn't get through most of the game and I can see you put a lot of effort in it, but I also think you can understand where I'm coming from. I tried keeping my scores high though :sweat_smile:

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-22 15:53

Thank you so much @inavtr! If you do play it or read more, I'd love to hear your thoughts :D And the same for you @kristinamay, thanks so much for the compliment on the PDF :D Normally I struggle to do anything more than just a plain PDF with a few lil images throughout, but I dove into making this one special 🧡

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-22 15:54

OMG thank you @atoxigner!!! I'm hoping to streamline that even more in the post-jam edition, but I'm delighted to hear that it isn't overwhelming :D And the gradual evolution is EXACTLY what I was going for! It, too, needs some streamlining but I'm so glad my intentions came through! 🥳🧡

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-22 15:58

@ditam Literally none of the art is my own, I use Canva, which has lots of premade stuff. I did fiddle with it more than usual (adjusting colors, saturations, etc, and layering images upon other images) but I created literally none of the images myself. I wanted to go with a "happy, cheerful art turning into darker visions throughout" but lacked time toward the end and, yeah... lol.

For the throne, there is no failure: you merely continue playing until reaching one of the two endings. I definitely should've clarified that, especially since it's so against the rules of the other chapters.

I really appreciate this in-depth response to the game, it means a lot, and helps me know what to fix and where to focus on the final version I'll be making later this year! And I really appreciate the compliments here too, Ludum Dare is often a growth experiment for me and this time a lot of that was around mood and story. I rarely craft either of those, and it was so fun here!

Also yeah LOL, I envisioned that a cartographer had put off naming things until the last day and was stuck naming a lot of stuff all at once 🤣 "Mountainy mountains? Yeah sure, that works, done"

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-22 16:03

@dock-frankenstein That's totally fair and valid, I definitely made each chapter too long, especially the first one where it was all about learning the system. Another person recommended making this 2-3 days rather than 7 and I totally agree: just enough to give you a grasp of the mechanics, not enough to make you play for an hour 😅

And hey, giving scores without experiencing it all is totally valid; I learned that when I did video game reviews for a while. People said that it as wild to imagine everyone play through hundreds of hours of games each month and so you should just play enough to get a grasp of the game. In a tabletop game, a lot of times you can even just READ it and get a feel for it. And I really appreciate the high scores!!!! 🧡

As for the art, thank you so much for saying so! I'm still quite new to fiddling with art assets beyond like "here, this fits!" I opted out because I didn't want anyone to give me points based on art I didn't make, even if it did take a lot of time to put it in place and make it work. A lot of people here make their own (or have an artist) and those people deserve the credit for what they created 🧡🥳

Thanks so much for your thoughts and taking the time to write all of this out, I really appreciated it! It'll help a lot for the final post-LD version :D

cataclysmicknight 2025-04-22 16:04

@fae-pdf I wrote a postmortem for this game. If you're interested, you can check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/126374625

No pressure of course :D

perrin 2025-04-25 12:33

Hey I know judging is nearly over but I finally grabbed a deck of cards and had a play through of this. I sadly didn't play it through to the end due to the long play time, especially for a solo board game so I read through the rest of the book. This is great work overall with lots of interesting ideas and I love the way the mechanics evolve.

The big blockes for me is setup vs play time seems really off, it takes so long to randomise my deck thoroughly each day and lay out the board and then I can dig through it so fast I feel like I'm spending more time doing admin than playing the game. A week is also a very long time in this game, setting up the board 7 times feels like quite a lot of work. Especially because the way you collect cards together you're undoing the randomness on each day so I really have to thoroughly shuffle to get a good board each day.

I think week 1 in particular isn't exciting enough considering how many interesting twists and turns you start to lay on after that. I understand that's about pacing but it's a lot of manual work to ask of a prologue.

However despite that criticism I think this game does really cool and interesting stuff. I hope you develop it more and perhaps find some ways to adjust the playtime vs admin.

papabirb 2025-04-26 01:07

I wish my time management skills had been good enough to play this with more than 15 minutes remaining to rate games lol - but to be fair after reading through the first several pages of the PDF, my desk isn't big enough to actually play anyway, oops. I'm gonna have to print out that PDF in the future and find a big open table to play along.

But one thing I wanted to say - this PDF is BEAUTIFUL! The font is very friendly and looks like it might be dyslexia-friendly, the art is beautiful, and the premise of the story is cute and silly. I really like the overall vibes even if I haven't technically played it yet - and if you'd opted into graphics I would have given it 5 stars there for sure! Absolutely beautiful PDF. Maybe a bit confusing to have the chapters in-between information bits like how to play or what the suits mean (particularly confusing to read that you should only use cards A-7, then see that the reference page goes up to 10 well before the page that says when you can add those cards back in!), but I'll re-evaluate my confusion when I have time to read all 40 pages slowly and in-depth lol.

Anyway, don't be surprised if I comment on this again in like a month when nobody's even hanging out on this website in the LD Downtime lol!