Hello!
Without going too in depth with the mechanics for the game, it is a potion themed game with unique player powers, as each character has unique skills they can use to help them score. Players compete indirectly by trying to assemble more potions than anyone else: each potion yields Coins (victory points) and Experience (spendable resource for abilities) according to its difficulty (right now divided into three tiers of potions).
So, the question is in the way potions are completed currently. Right now, there are 3 tiers of potions, Lvl 1, lvl 2, and lvl 3. Each tier has different recipes for what will be a successful combination of resource cards. Here is the recipe costs currently:
Lvl 1:
3 of a kind
2 Pair
Lvl 2:
4 of a kind
Full House (Pair and a 3 of a Kind)
Lvl 3:
5 of a Kind
Triplets (2 different '3 of a Kinds')
This abstracts the potion recipes into simple to grok hands of cards; does the player choose to cash in their 3 of a kind now for a few coins/experience and a unique potion power (each potion currently has potion effects you get by completing it)? Or build towards a bigger hand and get more points and a more powerful ability? This is the strategy of the lighthearted game.
The Question/Issue:
Assembling a hand feels very not-potiony to me. Especially with the current use of pairs/multiples. It isn't intuitive that you can bash 4 Newt's Eyes together to make a complex potion without other steps/ingredients in my mind. The mechanic is fun enough, but I would love to represent potion making in a better way. There are other games I don't want to copy either; this is supposed to be lighthearted pickup game with variable powers for replayability.
But it is also much less rewarding to have unique recipes on each potion card as the randomness of the game becomes much greater. The earliest iteration of this had unique potion recipes for each potion, which was very thematic and intuitive but very random in game terms (it isn't enough to have matching cards, you now need to have the right potion available to complete that matches so its double random).
Hopefully I explained the predicament enough! Without giving more details (which I am happy to do if need be) I'd like to see what you all think. What does a potion game need to have thematically? Do I even need to have unique potions at all, instead going with a simple division of 3 types of generic potions? Essentially abstract the theme away somewhat. In my opinion unique potion effects is a really important aspect of potions and alchemy, but I don't know.
Thanks in advance for any input!
Jesse
@questCCG
Thanks! Appreciate the links. I don't know about the component idea, where players assemble various snippets into a longer ability. "At the start of your turn" + "Draw a card" etc. It seems very limited in scope and hard to balance. Bespoke/discreet abilities allow me to have more flexibility and theme, at the cost of the creative element. Not sure but thanks for the suggestion!
@Kyle
Not sure I exactly followed, but your ideas were pretty helpful! I can further describe the ingredient deck, so you know what I'm working with. It is a deck of 64 cards, broken into 8 different ingredients. Each ingredient then also has one of 8 different qualities, and each ingredient/quality combo is in the deck exactly once. So a player is looking for pairs currently, either of ingredient cards or of quality cards. As I said, this feels way to matchy (as thats whats going on after all). I had toyed with the idea of numbering the deck and allowing straights to be assembled, but I didn't know how to thematically do it but your example was super helpful: using categories to sort the deck into.
A current hand is something like:4 cards: Beewing/hot : Dragontooth/superior : Beewing/Rancid : Giant toenail/Rancid
This player has a two pair represented with only 3 cards, thus is somewhat efficient and allows strategy of working to assemble strategically