Hello fellow co-conspirators!
These past few weeks I’ve been testing the game with other game designers around Vancouver. While watching them play I noticed something that bothered me….they all played the same way. As a strategy game, Puppetmaster should have different options for players to chose from. If several people are playing the exact same way, then we can assume there’s an optimal strategy; i.e. a single strategy that dominates all the rest. This is a problem because then you don’t have a game as much as a series of instructions. Follow the instructions and win.
After reviewing their play tests, I realized the issue stems from how players capture units. As a refresher, each unit in our game has three stats bravery, charm and resources. When a unit tries to convert another unit, one of these stats is involved; whoever has the highest stat wins. However, and this is the issue, it doesn’t matter what stat you use. There is no difference between bribing someone (which uses resources) or intimidating them (which uses bravery). This is a non-choice.
My solution is to tie each stat to a resource in the game. So for example, the amount of money you get each turn is tied to the resource stat of all units. This means that while the conversion of an enemy is the same, getting there is wildly different. If you need more money you will favor buffing resources, but this means that you are not able to use bravery or charm missions as effectively. In other words, your ability to convert units is now tied to your economic desicions… giving players more trade-offs to deal with.
I did need to reconfigure a lot of the economy and add a new resource Intel. Just as funds are used for missions, intel is now used for surveillance and connections. I did want to avoid it becoming just another version of money, so Intel decays, every turn it goes back to 0, which means players have to be careful on how to use it and plan a few turns into the future.
So now the economy looks like this:
- Resources gives Funds to go on missions.
- Bravery gives Intel to surveille and connect units
- Charm protects against exposure, giving players a few extra turns.
This week we need to test if it actually works.
Happy conspiring!