Playtesting Discoveries Resulting In Changes

So we have have about 10 play test sessions under our belt now and we've made changes to a bunch of thing to improve the game.

Many of the changes have to do with the power of individual cards as we hone each side to ensure balance.

Some changes include:

Holy Relic - Key Of St. Peter - This card allowed an player to free a soul from purgatory for the side of heaven twice per game. This combined with other "free point" cards was just too much. We trimmed it to once per game.

Holy Relic - Selaphiel's Thurible - This card used to add points to a virtue only if Sepaphiel was in play. This made the card not very useful as Angel and Devil cards are hard to acquire. The ability has been updated to "Reset a soul with 1 unholy point to neutral" We found during playtesting that being able to recover from the other player getting a head start on souls is a good thing. This card helps with this.

Holy Relic - Assumption Robe - This card allowed a player to reap a soul to heaven as long as it had a single holy point 3 times per game. This essentially handed the player 9 points. We have changed the requirement to be 3 holy points. So it reduces the amount needed by 1.

Intercession - St. George - This card prevented one holy point each game. It was too weak. This card now allows a player to destroy 1 unholy relic per game.

Two pair rule - Players could get multiple hands of two pairs in a row by acquiring an extra color card after drawing an Intercession/Sin. Although fun for the player who gets lucky, it's a bummer for the other side. I think it will be best to allow two  pair to be played only once per turn. We will play test this way and see if it is better.

Holy/Unholy track - It's very difficult to get new angels/devils by maxing out the holy/unholy track. I will reduce it by 1 on each side and see how that changes the game.

Finally, the angel and devil cards have special abilities in addition to providing a +1 bonus every turn to souls of the same color. This was just too much. Players could become confused with so much to think about. I have removed the special ability from angels and devils and the game runs MUCH faster now.

Here is a new angel card. Please note that I am NOT a graphic designer, the game will have PROFESSIONAL graphic design and icons. But I want to show the new card elements. Special ability text can be replaced with flavor text. Also included is the art credit and the name of the heavenly virtue the angel affects. I will add text with all color cards for the benefit of colorblind players.

Prototype Ver. 3 Video Walkthrough

Battle For Souls - Walkthrough with prototype Ver. 3

Better quality video here: https://vimeo.com/41298806

This may be a bit too powerful. May lower it to once per game.

Playtesting Report

Playtesting went really well last night! In fact, it went much better that I expected!

In the first game the players did not purchase any relics and few intercession/sin cards. This concerned me, so in the second game I dropped the cost of these cards by 1 holy/unholy point. However, this created a situation where a player could run away with the game once they had control of all three souls in play (which seems to be a hard thing to do) and could purchase relics every turn while the other player was essentially shut out.

We changed the cost back for these card in the third game and the balance was excellent. The players were not purchasing relic and sin/intercession cards in the first game simply because they did not understand the advantages of doing so. And there are clearly advantages.

No one purchased single victory point cards, but the last game was determined by a single point, so if just two victory point cards were purchased the outcome would have been different. I think further playtesting will reveal that these cards can be an important element for the game.

Being able to draw a free intercession/sin card with two pair made for a really exciting and interesting dynamic and a few times a player had more than one hand with two pairs in a row on the same turn! This never created a runaway leader situation though, and to the contrary, it seems to be a path for getting out of a sticky situation by working to build a hand of two pairs.

Angel/devil cards are more difficult to gain then I thought they would be, but I'm not convinced this is a bad thing. They should be the most difficult thing to earn and when a player is able to earn one it brings with it a nice sense of accomplishment.

Order of play will be important, so I will need to include action order hint cards.

We also got a good sense of which special abilities were good and which were not so good, so I will be changing some of the card abilities for cards that did not make the grade, like Selaphiel's Thurible and a few others.

Now that I have a better sense of how gameplay actually unfolds, I can tweak card abilities to really accentuate the gameplay.

I am very excited about Battle For Souls after last night!

Michael The Archangel

First Playtest Results

I have the first prototype copies in and the first few games of Battle For Souls have actually gone better than expected.

We did not see the "runaway leader" problem that I was worried about and in each game the winner was only ahead by 3 to 5 points.

I have updated some of the devil powers. Some of the text was just too much and caused some confusion, so I will be working on simplifying the cards as much as possible without "dumbing down" the game.

For example, Beelzebub has a completely new power that simply allows the player to draw up to 6 cards into their hand each turn instead of 5. This is simple, desirable and worked better. I am using tape on the face of the cards to make changes as we play test to see what works the best.

I have changed the card  set rules and was happy with the set-building mechanic. It made for a lot of great decision points. Here are the new set-building rules. There are a lot of them, but shipping the game with a cheat sheet will alleviate any confusion for players until they memorize the rules.

• Pair: Allows a player to take a victory point card for each pair played, but they must be placed in the player’s discard pile
• Two Pair: Allows a player to take a Sin/Intercession card, draw up to a full hand and take another turn 
• Set of 3 different colors:  Allows the player to add 1 holy/unholy point to a soul with a spiritual strength/mortal weakness of the same color as any one of the cards played
• Set of 4 different colors: Allows the player to add 2 holy/unholy points to a soul with a spiritual strength/mortal weakness of the same color as any one of the cards played
• Set of 5 different colors: Allows the player to add 3 holy/unholy points to a soul with a spiritual strength/mortal weakness of the same color as any one of the cards played
• 3 of a kind: Allows the player to add 3 holy/unholy points to a soul with a spiritual strength/mortal weakness of the same color
• Full house (3 of a kind and 1 pair):  Allows the player to add 3 holy/unholy points to a soul with a spiritual strength/mortal weakness of the same color as one of the cards played, AND/OR gain a free holy/unholy relic card
• 4 of a kind:  Allows the player to add 4 holy/unholy points to a soul with a spiritual strength/mortal weakness of the same color, AND/OR gain a free holy/unholy relic card
• 5 of a kind: Allows the player to add 5 holy/unholy points to ANY soul, AND/OR gain a free holy/unholy relic card

Some of the above are new as we found that the Sin/Intercession and Relic cards were not being bought that often. Players went for souls and angels only, so the two pair and full house rewards were added to get these cards in the game more. I am looking forward to seeing how this works out. Another option is to lower the cost to buy the cards to pull them into the game more. Sets of different cards were the most prevailing, although we did see a bunch of 3 of a kind hands and a few full houses. But we did not really explore building our hands much, mostly players played what they could every turn, but discarding instead of playing may be a viable strategy to build better hands. We will see how this plays and maybe increase the rewards for 3 of a kind and above if the balance isn't there.

We also found people did not buy victory point cards, but I am not convinced they won't be part of a solid strategy. The close nature of the games we played means that incorporating the purchase of victory points cards into a strategy could have resulted in a different winner.

An interesting part of the game is that once you can get a single holy/unholy point on a soul it's easier to gain more points on that soul since there are more ways to add points than take them away. So any time the other side gets a point on a soul tensions rise to remove that point, or counter by getting a point on a remaining neutral soul. I have a thought that maybe we should make relic cards be what helps subtract points from the opposition?  

The mechanic does make for the feeling of a "battle" and fits the theme well. Also, when the other player does max out, or reap a soul, it did not seem to tilt the balance since when your opponent does this a new soul comes into play and you have first crack at it. Reap cards were also used to reset souls, which I though added a good balance mechanic. For example, if the soul draw favors your opponent because the colors needed match the angel/demon cards they have in play you can play reap to send the souls to purgatory and get fresh souls that you may have a better crack at. To eliminate a constant refreshing I incorporated a rule that to reap, the souls must have a minimum of 5 holy/unholy points in total in any combination. This seemed to work very well and I expect it will become a final rule.

The game seemed complex to some and there was a lot to think about once a player got a bunch of angel/devil cards down, and will become even more complex when multiple relic cards are in play as well. There are just a lot of abilities to keep track of, and if the complexity turns out to be too much, or if it causes too much analysis paralysis I will need to work on simplifying the game. 

One thought is to completely remove special abilities from angel and devil cards. Their natural ability to move a matching color on a soul's track once per turn, and the 3 victory points they are worth may be quite enough. This would also make Sin/Intercession and relic cards more interesting. This is a main point of focus for me right now as play speed will be important. I hope to do some videos soon so you can see more of what it is like, please share!

Sin Card Back Art

"Hell" by Dieric Bouts the Elder, Circa 1470

(click to enlarge)