Healing Blade: Defenders of Soma

New Year's Update
over 8 years ago – Wed, Jan 06, 2016 at 08:29:08 PM

Hi everyone, welcome to 2016!

We're in the final phase of design work on the rulebook for Defenders of Soma, but we're not quite finished yet... we've pretty much got the rules part finished, but since the playtesters back in October demanded a gameplay example we've added several pages to give readers a walkthrough of a sample game, and laying out all those images is more time consuming than anticipated. I expect we'll have the layout for the booklet finished at the end of January, and spend February doing packaging design (the general look is already designed, but we need to prep the files for the printer and make some decisions about how to compartmentalize the inside of the box.)

There have also been some new developments. Some subtle changes to the card design. Our playtesters noticed that our naming system was a little inconsistent. Now we have a third plaque for some cards that really need a third "disease name."

1. Game Name (something easy to pronounce)
2. Scientific name / names (Shigella has several, but the other cards just have one scientific name)
3. Disease name

Lords of Pestilence that mutate into tougher "mutants" list the mutant name vertically along the upper left of the card. 

We also honed our flavor text for cards that weren't using the bar in the center for any other relevant information.

And notice that the borders are now uniformly gray for the Lords of Pestilence - this really helps the colors of the banners stand out. Before, Provokers, Opportunists, and Mutants all had different colored borders, but since there are already 9 different possible colors in the banner info this was creating too much visual soup. This simpler design is easier on the eyes. 

For the Apothecary cards, we got rid of the bar graph data (playtesters were confused by the bar graphs) and instead added percentages along the bottom of the card. We also gave the Apothecary cards flavor text.

And, I've added back special powers on some of the Apothecary cards, we're calling them "occupation skills." There are now Mercenaries, Teachers, Researchers, and Guardians, mixed in alongside the other Apothecary Healers. Mercenaries are drugs that can occasionally be expensive (like Linezolid), or in the case of drug pairs, a waste of money (in some situations the drug pair is not actually needed but still gets used.) 

Although the Mercenary occupation is a drawback, those drugs never cause resistance (in our game, at least) so it's a fair trade-off. The other occupation skills help add value to the "bad" cards, cards with a lower probability of helping you defeat a random attacker. (Aztreonam is not useful very often in this game, so it's kind of a bad card, but Levofloxacin has a very high probability of being useful in the game, it's one of the best cards you could keep in your hand, so no need to add extra abilities to Levofloxacin.)

We've also got the new villager cards done. As you may recall, originally I proposed meeples for the people we are defending in the game, but during the Kickstarter it was suggested that there would be more emotional empathy for actual people... so instead of meeples we designed cards that flip over when wounded, revealing a villager.

And I spent a lot of time making solitaire mode playable. It's a pretty fun challenge to play in solitaire-mode, and also, you can even choose to cover up part of the Pestilence cards when you play, leaving you with no info suggesting which drugs to use, if you really want to test your memory.

That's all for now. Thanks again for your patience and support. I'll post again when next there's news!

- Brandon

The Final Hurdle: The Rulebook
over 8 years ago – Wed, Nov 04, 2015 at 02:53:44 PM

We just finished our first round of playtests and got some really detailed, super useful feedback and critiques. Kickstarter is an amazing resource, I'm really impressed. Rulebooks from Kickstarted games are often terrible, because people underestimate how hard it is to convey something you already intuitively understand to lots of different sorts of people without being able to directly talk to them. It's tricky! So we sent out a Print N Play version to backers who promised to playtest and read our rulebook, and got a lot of actionable feedback to help us improve the game and improve the rulebook.

One thing I tried to do that failed was create a simplified version of the game for the first time experience. This was a resounding failure! Pretty much everybody didn't like having to learn one set of rules, then when they were ready, learn a new set of rules. They preferred to just figure out the advanced version from the start, maybe get some things wrong, but keep improving their understanding of the game rather than try to compartmentalize the game into two different rule sets. My approach was ADDING confusion, rather than simplifying things. Okay! In that case, we'll just work on explaining the game better.

The rules of the game have been getting tweaks as well. All along there has been a flaw in the game, which is that if the Apothecary starting hand is full of overspecialized drugs that can't be used very often, they can have no way to defend on the first turn. Also, if Pestilence comes out guns a'blazing with THIEF cards and ASSASSIN cards, it reduces the number of cards Apothecary has in their hand, which sets that player back for the next several turns if they can only draw one card per turn to try and recover.

I'm experimenting with new rules that will dramatically reduce how often this happens. I won't get into all the rules changes right now, but once we have a new version that we are ready to share, I'll post it for the whole community to examine before we commit it to stone.

Many people also forgot to use the Apothecary "special powers" because that is only mentioned in the rules, so I'm trying to add these powers to the cards themselves which should remind players that they have those options.

We currently plan to post a new Print N Play and rulebook in December. At that time, if you have free time, you are welcome to give the game a spin and tell us what you think.

Thank you playtesters!

Brandon

Playtesters: taking attendance
over 8 years ago – Thu, Oct 01, 2015 at 10:42:00 PM

If you are a playtester or rulebook critic for Defenders of Soma please add a comment to this update so I know who is on board and who I need to keep reminding... something like

Mort Vanderpants, present!

Also, it doesn't do us much good if you playtest the game two months from now, so please give us your responses by November 2nd!

DEADLINE: NOV. 2

MISSING FILE. Please download the playtest again (sorry!)
over 8 years ago – Thu, Oct 01, 2015 at 02:08:29 PM

Sorry playtesters, I forgot to include the resistance cards PDF. If you already downloaded, you'll have to try again (same link as before):

https://gum.co/OTMxa/playtester

- Brandon

Time to Playtest! Download the prototype...
over 8 years ago – Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 10:01:30 PM

When you backed Defenders of Soma you promised to help playtest, so we can continue to improve the game and also catch any errors we may have made. Well, now it's time! Download the zipped file and get cracking. You'll need several hours to assemble everything, scrutinize the rules, play the game several times, and then send me copious notes. You'll also need an opponent!

Here's the link:

https://gumroad.com/l/OTMxa/playtester

If you have any questions, just email me at 

[email protected]

And thank you in advance!