Building a Game - V

As we have established last time, a basic structure for the game has been created. 

Last time we spoke about the general structurem this time we take a look at both the endgame, the calculation necessary to define that and how we do that.

First among those, I had a bit of time to think about the general structure and made a few changes, but not too much. New structure should look something like this:

1. Start of Turn Phase

2. Event Phase

a. Sleep

b. Draw Cards

c. Actions or Event

3. Status Phase

a. Visitors

b. Satisfaction

c. Events

c. Unforeseeable Consequences

4. End of Round Phase

a. Clean Up

b. Turn Advance

Also, I think a good thing would be to up the number of cards to 72 with an AA,BBB and AB table for Unforeseen Consequences to expand upon them. Because bad things are part of life. And it´s part of the difficulty curve adaptation.

Now, what about the Endgame?

Basically, it goes like this. Currently, the game has two different tracks players need to balance to work out their victory. That is Visitor Satisfaction and Treasury. As you might have noticed,  that isn´t necessarily easy. And that´s the funny thing, it´s not supposed to be. Now, what does that mean?

First of all, the game starts with a set number of Satisfaction and a Treasury value. We get these by using the numbers of players participating. As such, we get three possible win conditions, a draw and three possible lose conditions for the endgame. One for Losing with negative Treasury, negative Satisfaction and if both are negative, the opposite for the positive win conditions and the Draw condition if neither are negative nor higher than the starting value.

Do we need to calculate something for this? Or use some counter to establish this? Not really. By establishing the number of players as the pivotal starting number, we have taken all we need to make this part easy for the players. And with a single track that goes both into the negative and the positive for two counters a single line of victory becomes clear.

More on this next time, on Building a Game...