Back and Forth and On and On
We poured tremendous activity and energy into the Viceroy this week without much to show for it. I implemented systems that were just as quickly unimplemented and had too many ideas that fell apart after closer consideration with a spreadsheet or calculator. On the bright side, I've learned a lot about what shouldn't be implemented, and continued to get some amazing feedback from players of the game. Thanks for all of your comments! And as far as my activities this week, maybe a game is like a block of marble, not a question of what it is but what it isn't.
I had the opposite experience with After the Empire. I didn't spend nearly as much time on it, but had several successes because the way forward with it is so clear. Not much changed in it, mechanically, but everything changed feeling wise. With the addition of leader boards and minor but meaningful shifts in how players interact with various game mechanisms, the game gained a subtle feeling of velocity. The newfound desire to expand as quickly as possible for leader board placement let us discover (in the only major bug report of the week) that if more than fifteen of your Territories are threatened or besieged simultaneously due to the huge number of wars you're engaged in at the same time that the 'Click here to resume the tutorial.' message is hidden.
In the end, though, both games are going well enough that I am already looking forward to next week's update! See you then!
