Board Game: Slay the Oly Dragon Printed Prototype

I received the first professionally printed version of the game, and it looks fantastic!

I've been doing a LOT of play testing with it. With my family, friends, and even showing it at the local game store to strangers. Going to the game store for feedback was kind of a bust; since this is a family game it just wasn't the right audience. I've been getting great feedback from friends with families though.

Added some clarification to rules. Many changes to the artwork - shades of colors tweaked, fixed graphic artifacts, and added more detail. But the most time spent has been on balancing. I found the game to be too easy, so I bumped up the attack requirements for nearly every monster. It feels pretty good now, but it requires so many playthroughs to build up the confidence to say it's solid.

My computer RPG is on a very brief hold, but I will return to it!

Board Game: Slay the Oly Dragon Printing

First professionally printed version of "Slay the Oly Dragon" has been ordered! I'm a little behind schedule of where I wanted to be, but I should have the physical game in early March to begin play testing. I'll make adjustments if necessary from the play testing then post the game officially for sale.

The box front...

The box back...

RPG: Externalized Events

Latest change in the RPG has been externalizing both events and items into files that are loaded at startup. Now it's far easier for me to make complex events of when <X> happens then trigger <Y>. (And those can be compounded such that <X> and <Y> must happen to do <Z>.)

Every character and item in the game can have a tag. And events can be triggered based on the state of objects with a certain tag.

Here is the tutorial externalized...

And here is the first quest externalized...

The tags are assigned in the character list loaded at startup...

And here is the item list...

So that's what it looks like in the data files; what does it look like in the game?

Board Game: Slay the Oly Dragon Artwork

The game mechanics for Slay the Oly Dragon have been firmed up and the new artwork is well underway. There was no chance it'd be done by Christmas, but a releasable product should be available in a few months. If I consider the prototype as version 1, then this first professionally printed game with actual artwork will be version 2. I'll do play tests with friends & family for awhile, make some adjustments, then hopefully have my purchasable version 3 as "final".

Teasers for the artwork...

Experimenting with using real world photos...

And finally a monster... (I actually have much better monster images made by a much more talented artist, but until everything is finalized I won't post them publicly.)

My goal is to have all artwork completed & printed game ordered by the end of January with friends & family play tests in February.

(Game images within this post are Copyright 2018 by Clinton Kam.)

RPG: Tactics 2

In theory, all tactics are now in! I've already made and discarded a couple tactics I found lacking - so there could always be more adjustment in the future, but these are pretty solid.

The idea was to have 20 very distinct types of tactics a player can choose between. There are some similarities between a few of them, but really the goal is to offer several very different options for a player in a given scenario. Need to steal something that's being guarded? You could kill the person guarding it, charm them into liking you, go invisible and sneak past them, teleport in and out before they can react, or throw up vines to slow them down so you can run past.

They still need balancing, but here they are:

Row #1: General

Abilities that are non-magical.

Search

Search the ground for hidden items. After using, invisible items will suddenly appear.

Attack

Use your wielded weapon - sword or ranged weapon, or fists if unarmed.

Lock Pick

Pick the lock of a chest. (Unlocked chests can be opened with single left click. Locked chests must either be hit many times with a weapon or be lock picked.)

Repair

Repairs a broken item. Does not bring once living things back to life.

Charm

Attempts to convince a target creature to be friendly to you, if only temporary. Also improves your overall reputation with the target creature's allegiance.

Row #2: Arcane Spells (Wizard)

Abilities that come from the power within the person.

Light

Temporarily increases the vision range of the player.

Teleport

Instantly jump to somewhere else that you have vision on.

Fireball

Send a flaming projectile in a given direction. It explodes upon impact and causes damage to anything nearby.

Directed Energy

Send an energy beam in a given direction. Beam energy passes through creatures to continue damaging those behind.

Invisibility

Temporarily causes the player to be invisible - enemy creatures won't be able to see and attack the player.

Row #3: Divine Spells (Cleric)

Abilities that came from the power of a deity.

Heal

Heal yourself or a target character.

Protection

Create a protective ring around yourself or a target character.

Presence

Show the relative alignment of nearby characters.

Holy Bolt

Request a bolt of lightning to come down on a target character.

Resurrect

Bring a target person/creature back to life.

Row #4: Nature Spells (Druid)

Abilities that came from the Earth.

Regenerate

Cause a target plant to regrow.

Entangle

Creates vines out of the ground to slow down all creatures within an area for a short period of time.

Flame Wall

Create a ring of fire that causes continuous damage to anyone within it for a short period of time.

Blizzard

Create a snow storm that both damages and slows down anyone within it for a short period of time.

Summon Golem

Create an Earth Golem that fights your enemies for a short period of time.