❖ Version History ❖

I suppose it is always when you think things are going well that you discover that there is a fresh catastrophe to deal with!

17th of March, 2021:
Today I learn something very interesting about The Great Chase: one of my core mechanics in the game design is too complex for a new player to grasp. Up to this point in time in the game, there are basically three steps to a turn:

1. Set up a mission (place flight cards to solve all around the world)
2. Navigate Players (use the same deck of flight cards to determine movement options)
3. Solve flight cards & missions (improve your score throughout the game)

It doesn’t seem that complicated in theory… but the amount of math that must go on in calculating your turn can become a lot to keep track of. Each player controls a character with statistics that affect movement and solving options, each mission can alter these numbers, and so can the flight cards. This triangulation of data seems to be one step too far for someone to handle when they first look at the game, and it makes the experience uninteresting and easy to give up on (because it is inevitably too frustrating).

This major issue was discovered during an interesting play test series that I had set up. Essentially, my goal was simple: I needed very clean blind play testing data. I wanted two people who are intentionally not regular board game players to try The Great Chase, playing with the current prototype and rule book exactly as it is without my assistance (or as little as possible) in getting it set up or played. I wanted to witness what happened and take notes on this experience in the hopes of making the game better. Ironically, that is exactly the result I got… but unfortunately it came at the cost of some huge fixes that needed to take place.

The most notable and hilarious comments of the night:

“The Rule book tells me what all the cards are… but I don’t understand what they do…”

“Okay. I think I’ve set it up correctly…but after reading the rule book forward and backward… I can’t figure out what to do with the dice… why are there dice?”

“So it would seem that I have beaten the ‘easy mode’… but I’ve got to be totally honest… that was so hard that I would never even consider trying the hard mode.”

Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me.

I had not thought that the game had been so poorly organized, but after what I had witnessed this evening, it was apparent that many things were going to need to change:
-The game needed an easier mode, for it is too much to handle at first glance.
-The game needed simpler rules… and possibly less mechanics?
-The game needed a more concise rule book… possibly an entire concept rewrite.
-The rule book needed more visual examples and less words.
-The triangulation of data needed one less point to pay attention to.

Of course, I immediately call up Ben and get to discussing how we might tackle these issues. We talk back and fourth over several phone calls for nearly two days straight before we complete our list of ideas and fixes. As a snippet of our discussing, here is the initial look at my rule book corrections:

Time to talk to Matt.