Cartoona

Do you have kids?

Pick up a copy of my first game Cartoona, which is being released in September in coordination with Game Salute.

Three days left to pledge for a copy of the game or the first expansion on Kickstarter.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/478379924/cartoona-the-heads-on-tails-expansion

Soul Cards

I have made some changes to the soul cards.

1. They are now square - This allows for bigger text and icons and prevents art from being warped in order to fit
2. They now include the painting title, artist name and year painted
3. Reduced the number of steps needed to max out a soul from 8 to 7 - I felt it was a tad too hard to get new angel and devil cards, so this should help a great deal
4. Removed the spirals and replaced space #4 on the marker track with a star to better identify when a soul can be reaped
5. Added gray circles to clearly show that if reaped a soul goes to purgatory if on these spaces
6. Made the background 7.5% gray so that white tracks are more clearly visible for souls with Pride/Humility
7. Changed the hue for blue and for orange to help differentiate them better from purple and red

Below is an example, but please note, these have still not been through graphic design. I have no doubt our graphic designer will improve the look tenfold. But I think this layout is about right.

Card Game + Board Game

I have an idea for a full-blown Eurostyle worker placement game.

I may turn Battle For Souls into a package that includes the stand alone card game AND a board game that shares the theme.

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!