Design Diaries -- Panic the Bad SciFi Move Game
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- Category: Blog
- Created: Monday, 20 August 2018 15:13
- Published: Monday, 20 August 2018 15:13
- Written by Super User
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The First Redesign of Panic Has Started
So had the first live play test of Panic. It went very well! We had a 3rd grader and 2 other adults playing 1 of the Doctor roles and 3 military roles. I won the game with 75 minutes of screen time as a phantom player. Second place went to the third grader with 55.
The game is a sabotage your neighbor game. Each player is trying to complete scenes, get screen time and be the star of the movie. Other Players play cards to try and stop others from completing a scene; keeping their screen time low. The game played well for a first time run, players found some issues and I saw a few myself. Overall they enjoyed the game and would play again, so I am very happy with a first play through.
So What did the players see?
1) Board setup was silly and had no effect on the game.
2) card text was not clear and the inevitable spelling issues
3) Special rules, Sea POD cannot be used for 2 turns, were not clear at the start.
4) Combat was not clear. It seemed different for failures than successes.
5) They really enjoyed the tactical feel of when to play cards, just the board movement and the scene tokens seemed to prevent play some times.
6) There needs to be a natural limit as to how many cards can be played to sabotage a scene
7) The character skills are kinda the same value, not clear when to use what or why.
Things I saw
1) The pile on nature combined with amazingly bad rolls made the game run long, as scenes kept recycling back to the deck.
2) People stopped taking props once they had 3. People did not try to get more as it would take away from their actions.
3) There are a lot of rules that could be redesigned or even dropped, left over from the full tactical nature of the game.
4) The board had no effect at all on the game, again could have been a card game.
5) Player motivations need to be clearer.
6) SFX cards needs more copies of each so there are more drawn (template Issue)
7) The board is a perfect place to fix a bunch of these issues.
8) Cleanup combat for failed scenes versus successful ones.
Fix Ideas
1) Remove scene and prop tokens.
2)Players all have 3 actions, with an option to roll for an additional action.
3) Add scene locations with a card limit, so where you are on the board has an effect on the scene
4) Play a Scene Draw a Prop, keep or discard
5) Check the templates, add cards and typos
6) Clarify the motivations and character Skills
7) add a Skill on each Scene, use that or take a penalty to use another
8) Add skills to Line and SFX cards as well?
9) Character Speed has a direct impact on how many attacks you get to gain viruses or attack characters.
So the picture above shows the first steps to implementing these changes, initial tests of these changes is really positive. More card changes need to be done to help with skill use, but I don't want to cripple a player doing a scene. hence more play testing; but a great first test.
