Testing Log (Pillars of Society)

Here, I will track the progress of testing the game. Feed back is encouraged.

Alpha Test #1 (10/1/17)

First test of the game and it already has potential. This is super exciting! Lots of tweaking to do, but the base mechanic drives the game very well. Despite the decent amount of luck, there is a lot of room for strategy etc. It really feels like your are managing contracts at the will of those above you, but you decide which contracts to pursue and how hard to push for contract hits. Bellow are a few issues I have noticed.

Current Issues:

#1 You gain too many continuous contracts
#2 Not enough tension
#3 Number of contracts in your queue is not as much as I would want
#4 Pillar actions need to be polished

No solutions yet. Just need to keep testing and look for patterns!

Alpha Test #2 (10/9/17)

Attempting to return to the original state of the game. I need to not continue piling things on that don't need to be there.

Current Issues:

#1 You gain too many continuous contracts
#2 Not enough tension
#3 Number of contracts in your queue is not as much as I would want
#4 Pillar actions need to be polished
#5 Not enough broken contracts

Current Solutions:

#2/#5 Changing the die to show (1 Broken, 2 Broken, 1 Limited, 2 Limited, 1 Continuous, 2 Continuous)
#4 Each pillar has a base ability, standard ability, and special ability. (still polishing)
#1/#2/#3 Instead of only executing the leftmost card, you place hit tokens on the contracts ever turn and wait for one to execute.

These are the main changes so far:

Cutting back on the die to make it uniform and simple.

Each action now also has a base ability. This is an ability that you get throughout the entire game from the very beginning, but cannot make it better. Standard abilities can get better by gaining more populations, giving you more to work with. Special abilities are similar to standard abilities but they require excelled populations (upgraded).

The new execution mechanic has proved to be very interesting but definitely needs some tweaking. It gives the player control while also making a bit of a challenge to manage. This will hopefully bring some more tension and broken contracts into the game.