Since the last post, I’ve been able to hold a few different playtest with some success. I think the changes made after the first playtest were positive, and took the game in the right direction. However, I do think that I’ve over-swun (which somehow, doesn’t surprise me) and now things tend to ramp up a little too quickly. This causes a few problems. One of these is readablility. It becomes hard to know exactly how many ingredients you have (pantry and hand) and wether or not you can afford a recipe with those ingredients. The other problem, is that once your pantry gets really stocked, ingredient cards become irrelevant - you can simply buy whatever recipe you want and the game becomes uninteresting.
I do think I need to take a step back and rethink some things. After the first playtest, ideas were quick and obvious - but I’m not 100% sure which route will be the best. Here’s a bulleted list of my notes from the playtest:
Some objectives are still kind of high - the ones like “Beef Brigade” which calls for 6 ingredients in the pantry feel especially high
After a while, your pantry gets so full that you can finish almost any recipe on your turn.
Costs/Payouts feel awkward - we’re constantly making change for transactions
Maybe there should be some sort of boon when you place a star on an objective card (take another action this turn, or take a level 3 upgrade, etc)
Everything scales really quickly, it gets hard to know what you’ve got in your pantry/hand and what you can/cannot afford
Objectives feel niche and hard to focus on.
Kitchen upgrades felt cool, but almost too wide/complex
From here, I think the process will be the same - some iteration and then another playtest. I do think that I’m going to try and mess with fewer systems between now and the next playtest. As a game designer, I’ve always said it’s best to turn one (or maybe two) knobs at a time - otherwise you’ll never know what made the difference.