Group 4 here! We observed a lot during our first playtest! A couple of observations we wanted to highlight include:
- Players accumulated a large amount of resources and often had more than required to survive each disaster. Eventually all our resource cards were depleted.
- Players hid their resources at the beginning but transitioned towards displaying all their resources.
- Resource collection phase was often quiet and lasted for too long.
- With each patron, players were able to focus only on building specific resources and ignore the others.
- Some confusion as to what each natural disaster resulted in/what resources were consumed.
- An interest in the specific theme of Greek mythology.
In addition to these observations, we were able to receive feedback. Players were interested in mechanics such as the ability to use resources for other items, to steal resources from other players, to barter between players, and a possible narrative component. Reflecting on this feedback, we decided that it would be helpful to solidify our learning goal and continue to develop the mechanics. And while we haven’t completely developed our ideas, a few things we would like to change after this first playtest are:
- Making our main learning goal to develop a working knowledge of Greek Gods
- Adding additional action cards that allow for player conflict
- Rolling to decide a disaster
- Reducing the amount of resources that a player has access to/reducing the
- Giving disasters more impact than just depleting resources
- Changing the power-up/effect of the Patrons to not completely nullify a disaster
