After the playtest, I’ve been working on ideas to help players feel like they’re able to start engaging with the game’s systems more quickly. One of the biggest issues from the playtest seemed to be tempo, overall. I think turns feel quick and snappy, but players aren’t really engaging until we’ve already made several trips around the table. I’ve created a new system I’m calling the pantry and redesigned the recipe cards to try and counter the slow start.
The most notable change here is the added pantry ingredient to the top of the card. This does not alter the ingredient cost of the recipe. After completing a recipe, players will now tuck the completed recipe at the top of their player boards - leaving the top row ingredient showing. That ingredient is now considered part of that player’s pantry. Pantry ingredients give players a permanent ingredient that can be used on their turn (and subsequent turns) to complete a single recipe. The aim here is to make players feel like their kitchen becomes more powerful as the game goes on - more pantry ingredients, mean more completed recipes, which means more money, more upgrades, and more completed objectives.
You’ll also noticed that I’ve made all recipe cards the same grey color. Before I had them colored by rarity, but it just seemed confusing - all of the kitchen and objective cards were all the same color, and it felt very orderly. I’m hoping that it’ll be easy enough to tell that the cards are more/less rare/valuable at a quick glance based upon the ingredients/payout listed.
I’ve also done a little bit of a redesign on the player’s boards. You can see that I’ve allocated spots along the top of the kitchen to tuck pantry ingredients. This should help players to keep their boards organized. I’ve also given each player four different starting pantry ingredients. I had toyed with the idea of giving players a starting hand of ingredients, but I opted (for now) to start players with pantry ingredients as they are permanent, and feel like they’ll make a more impactful start. I also think each player having a different set of starting pantry ingredients opens up some interesting choices on which recipes players will need to decide to work towards initially.
You’ll also notice that I’ve added a spot for objective star storage, and that there are now only 3 kitchen upgrades. I won’t get into it right now, but I’ll explain my plans for the upgrade adjustments in the next post!