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[Yxven]

The Story:
What if corporations keep buying politicians and keep getting bigger? Will they control the world entirely? If so, what happens to the people? This is that future. There are only 3 corporations left: the descendants of the tech industry, religion, and organized crime.

Children begin working at the age of six in order to pay off their family’s debts. Those who can’t pay become slaves, who handle toxic waste. They do not live long. All jobs are assigned by computers, and the computers have chosen you to become an assassin. Assassins typically disrupt the competition by killing key personnel, but they are also called to “end” disputes within the company. Your job is to kill who the computer tells you to kill. You don’t know why (you’re not in a position to ask), but you know the consequence of failure.

Because of past success, you’re given higher priority targets: other assassins. This is more challenging, as your targets fight back. Luckily, you won’t be alone; you have a slush fund to hire your own team of mercenaries.

Other Info:

• http://bloodygreed.com/
• https://www.facebook.com/BloodyGreed
• http://bloody-greed.tumblr.com/

[Yxven]

I've been keeping a developer log on tumblr, but since I don't know anything about social media, I think I have 1 person reading it. I'm going to start mirroring my posts here to try to gather some interest. I hope that's alright.

This is my latest post:

I hope to release a version for feedback soon.

This week, I plan on licensing the card art, fixing some bugs, fixing registration, and start cropping and massaging the art work. Next week, I have to finish cropping and create some sort of demo video. After that, I hope that people other than me will be playing the game.

Initially, I’m going to get feedback from close friends and family to make sure there aren’t any show-stopping bugs, but soon after, it’ll be posted to reddit under r/gamedev and r/tabletopgamedesign.

If people don’t like the game, I’ll probably open source the project before getting a job. If people do like it, I’ll recruit the people needed to professionalize the game.

Also, I know last week I claimed I wouldn’t be limiting the number of copies of a card in a deck, but after thinking about it, I think deck design would be more interesting with a limit of 3-4. I’m going to try 3, and we’ll see how it goes.

[Yxven]

Some feedback I’ve received and a screenshot.
I apparently forgot to post a blog last week. My bad. I’m blaming Labor Day.

I’m still working on getting the site online, but I figured I’d go over some feedback I’ve already gotten.

One person has told me that the theme might be too dark. This could be a valid complaint. I recently read that roughly half of Magic the Gathering’s players are 13 years old or less. My intention has always been to make the game PG-13. I wanted a dark theme, but no images that would make anyone grimace. However, after researching what qualifies a movie for which rating. I think my game would firmly be in the R category because of drug use. Now, I’m not promoting drug use. My drugs usually end up killing the person using them, but since drugs are bad and the MPAA consists of crotchety old white men, this is firmly in R territory.



In any case, I like the theme and don’t want to change it, so unless a lot more people express the same opinion, the theme is probably not going to change.

Roughly half the people I’ve talked to don’t like the name “Bloody Greed.” It’s hard to interpret feedback like this because names grow on you. Do you think the founders of Facebook, Twitter, and Google got encouraging feedback on the names they chose? Now, they sound natural and reasonable, but initially, I bet their friends thought they were nuts.

That said, I want the game name to be appealing to most people upon first impression, so I’ve always planned on changing the name. It should, also, be noted that the name doesn’t fit particularly well right now. Originally, the game was solely about mega corporations, but the theme changed when I was separating powers among the 3 factions. There weren’t any natural delineations between 3 imaginary mega-corporations, so the factions gradually evolved into different sources of power – information, religion, and drugs.

The other feedback I’ve received is that the teaser page isn’t presenting a unified artistic vision. The logo looks 80s slasher film, the picture looks like a guy in a tunnel instead of a guy falling down a hole, and nothing looks as corporate as the lore. I say guilty as charged. The teaser page is based off a template I bought and modified instead of something solely created for my game. I hope to replace this page within a week with an alpha version of the website that I think looks much better.

Also, I have all the art now, so here’s the first screen shot of the game:

[Yxven]

I apologize for my time estimates.

I hope no one is getting upset because I never meet them. If you’ve never programmed a project like this before, it’s kind of like exiting a thick jungle. You can start to see the clearing. It’s only 50 feet away. You just need to hack your way through with your trusty machete. How hard can that be? Surely, this will take less than a week.

Then you realize how much work it is to swing your machete. Worse than that, you weren’t expecting to have to cross a trench. Your bug bite looks serious. It probably needs to be dealt with before proceeding further. How exactly does one pass an alligator?

I’m sure someone with more server experience could have got my game running in a week, but I fumble around in the dark tripping over everything I have forgotten.

In any case, I finally have it on my staging server and am in the process of pestering my friends to schedule play tests. In the coming weeks, I hope to do a lot of polishing, figure out how to make screencast demo, make the demo, and get feedback from people who haven’t played before.

[Inanimate]

It's very late right now, so I can't check out the rest of your links... but consider me interested. This seems very neat!

I'll write more tomorrow. (:

[Yxven]

I'm glad you see something you like. I feel like I've been talking to myself for weeks.

[Yxven]

First Feedback

First of all, I’d like to say that the Bloody Greed interface is the most intuitive interface I have ever used. I know how to make it do everything it can do, and while admittedly unfinished, I thought it’d be hard to improve upon.

I can say all this because I designed it. My testers, however, were completely blindsided. I didn’t even tell them anything about the game. I released them upon it like one would release a child into a toy store you bought as a gift, and they could not get through the front door.

Well, it wasn’t that bad. The front door only needed to be jostled a bit, but why did the toys seem imprisoned? Surely, I didn’t need to explain my genius packaging. I figured they would just struggle a little before realizing their mistake, laugh, and begin basking in my greatness.

That fantasy never happened. Despite their ample intelligences, they couldn’t figure out how to play a card. I eventually had to tell them. It was quite shameful. My interface did not attempt to help them at all. It is not remotely as intuitive as I thought it was, and I wish that were the only problem.

I apparently need to spend a great deal more time working on basic usability. My interface works great if you already know how to play, but as a bran-new player, it’s basically impossible.

I’ll have to delay the alpha release of my game further. I’m sorry. Please don’t hire thugs to beat me. I’ll try harder.

[Yxven]

How to play Bloody Greed

I realized I’ve never actually explained how to play Bloody Greed.

You are an assassin, and your mission is to kill who you’re told to kill. For the sake of the game, your target is always your opponent’s assassin. You win when their assassin dies, and you lose if your assassin dies. You can also lose if you run out of cards in your deck.

Whoever goes first is determined randomly, and the first thing you do is place your assassin anywhere on the hex board.

Turns are divided into 3 phases (in order): refresh, income, and action. When one phase is over, it advanced to the next phase. During the refresh phase, all units are able to act again. In the income phase, you draw a card, and gain the resources specified on your cards on the battlefield. Your assassin is your main unit that generates resources, but some other cards can also generate income.



The rest of the turn is spent in the action phase. Players alternate taking actions until both players pass consecutively. Actions are things like: play a card from your hand by paying for it, moving a unit, attacking with a unit, or using a unit’s special ability. Units can only act once per turn normally.

The deck construction rules are you can have up to 100 cards. You may only have 3 copies of one card, and you must have one and only one assassin.

That’s it for rules.Everything else is explained on the cards.

Hopefully, it’s obvious that I tried to keep the rules as simple as possible. Next week, I’ll explain some of the tactical decisions you have to make that aren’t entirely obvious from a first reading of the rules.

(By the way, the icons I used on the cards, and the play area were made by Lorc. They are are available at http://game-icons.net/)

[Yxven]

To pass or not to pass

Last week, I mentioned I’d talk about some tactical decisions that aren’t obvious from a first reading of the rules, but since I rarely know what to talk about, I think I’ll spread it out across multiple weeks.

Bloody Greed spends most of it’s time in the action phase. Every unit may take one action (unless exceptional circumstances make it take more or less). Playing cards from your hand is an action as is passing. When both players pass consequentially, the action phase is over and the game advances to the next turn. A player who passes only passes the action and is not forced to keep passing the rest of the phase.

What isn’t obvious about passing is that when to pass is frequently an important decision because whoever passes first goes first next turn. If you play a unit, and your opponent responds by playing the same unit; which unit will die if they duel to the death with no interference? If both players always immediately pass after their unit attacks, your unit will win because you’ve always had the initiative. Your unit’s attack is always first, so your unit will win within an inch of his life.

However, in a real game, whoever has the initiative changes. If your opponent starts the turn and takes 3 actions while you take 2 before you both pass, you’ll start the next turn, so your unit can take the first shot in a tight battle.

Is the first shot important enough to skip other actions? How many actions can you risk taking before you should pass for the first shot? If I start passing, will my opponent be baited into moving his units out of position?

I hope this post illustrates that while passing is a simple rule, it adds a lot of depth to the game.