0.2.3 - From Rounds To Not

To start, I need to be more outgoing about my game, and blogposting on /agdg/ is cringe, so I'm going to be doing these devlogs as a way to go over the thought processes behind Planets For Sale.

The initial playtest went great! Thanks to all 3 of my friends who gave feedback. I was glad that everyone was engaging with the gameplay- the few who played my last game (Atlantean Puzzlebox) were confused on how it even worked, so I'm glad this one is more approachable.

That said, one of the most interesting comments I got was that the game played itself, which is true- you'd draw 5 resources, use whatever buildings you wanted to, and then repeat. While one could argue that the decision-making was at a higher level when you'd be able to select what buildings you had, the core gameplay itself was not meaningful. I also planned on adding different effects to different planets, but that's still a later thing and any vanilla planet would have this issue. It became a challenge to figure out how exactly to make the base gameplay more engaging without going down those paths.

My first attempt was removing multiple rounds. This added some more wrinkles:

• Players aren't given more resources automatically. They will have to obtain more.
• Buildings also aren't guaranteed. To repeatedly use them requires more and more power.
• Deposits and Stability were mechanics that were originally going to be more flavor than basic mechanics but they fit as a way to get more resources.
• Stability also has the added benefit of forcing the player to react. As a planet gets more destabilized, resources in play will start getting destroyed. Do you hope that 2-star Steel will stick around long enough to upgrade, or do you sell it now?
• With increasing costs for both power and deposits, there needed to be a way to end the game early. Forcing the player to keep going would have created situations where they could lose everything in a few actions. This adds another push-your-luck mechanic.

Hopefully, the core planetary gameplay is better with these changes. Looking forward to hearing feedback!