Smoothie Shootout

development history:

• Number of playtests: 5

Version 1

this was The first playtest was in Spring 2022. It was funny .

emotions:

Lessons learned version 1

• The ring at the center of the board was bad
  • I would stay on one side of the ring, my opponent would occupy the other side of the ring
  • Instead of supplements, I had character abilities like vampire. Too many of these

Changes I made because of that

• I filled in the center void. The game finally got violent, as I desired!

Failing at 2 things is often better than failing at 1: Success is something you can't tangibly quantify or fantasize about

Having the hole in the center of the board interfered with the most fun aspect of the game: player interaction.

But it exposed something greater: The cards I fantasized to work out were overcomplicated. here are a few examples

...And I was really pissed off

So much so, that I scrapped a month of work

and that was the best thing that ever happened to the game

I decided to go back to the basics and made supplement cards that were simple and stayed the theme of the game

Here is the Charcoal Card

Here is the Caffeine card

And everyone's favorite: the Laxatives card

I dislike most board games, and I have played a lot of them. I get bored very easily, hate down time, and hate the accounting aspect that many of the heavier boardgames incorporate. For example,some people orgasm at the thought of tech trees, I could care less.

But accounting doesn't only involve in-game currency. As my game was largely geometric, I thought I was immune to this: resolving Range can be annoying as fuck. I had a brief warhammer 40k fad, and I loved pulling out the tape measure. But I wanted my game to be different- and visually complex

here is an example of how overly involved it gets-yes this is for only ONE movement type you can choose (this was developed at the time of a later verison)

For this version, however, here are some examples of cards I made that involved range

Playtest #3

I went up to NYC in early august 2022 to playtest with one of my best friends. We go way back- I remember I chewed on a glowstick at his house when I was 7 or so, and his mom almost called poison control.

Anyways, Throughout middle and high school, we would play boardgames on a weekly basis. It's fair to say he likes playing boardgames more than me haha. He is very detail-oriented gets excited to help in any way:

• he brought out his phone to track how long each turn took
• he suggested that the OP token would strengthen steroids, but weaken laxatives. very interesting!

I thought this is a potentially excellent rules update to thest out, as this can balance out the powers. There was often a tendency to mindlessly charcoal characters in certain locations.From every playtest I had, Laxatives were so powerful it made the game less skillful

both of us noticed that the, so we decided to roll with a point-based system

Playtest #4

I played with a classmate in late august 2022. I was trying to implement ashwin's OP changes before playing, but I had too many options for rules changes and didn't change much.

• The game was too friendly... not mean enough The laxatives were too powerful and balanced out the game
• Towards the end of the game, she proposed a rules change where you can move through your own pieces but not your opponents pieces
  • This might work really really well on a 3, 4 or 6 player game, where the board can be much more crowded
  • It made me think: what about each player having their own unique poop colors?
    what if the darker shaded characters can go through dark shaded poop and the lighter shaded characters go through light shaded poop?

Playtest #5

I played with Sean in early January 2023 with Sean (co-designer of Climate cursus) We played a few rounds.

• You realize when you take a break from your game for a few months, you forget the rules (sort of) and have other people.
  • You realize Your game could be more simple when a friend reminds you that you broke a rule
• Other interesting things of note: