Oh boy, the last few have been a ride! I got engaged and got tons of work on games and at my day job. I had time to design but not write about it.
In between designing expansions for my first published game Edge of Humanity, I finished the design for Governor of Texas, including testing and all. Also, there should be 1-3 games of mine coming out during 2018.
The game is at its core - a drafting game. Each turn the player chooses to buy a card that gives them both some poker value and most cards also allow for playing the action on them (or they can just play a basic action instead of buying a card). After 3 turns the poker hands are evaluated and the best one wins this rounds reward. The actions and bonuses help the players expand their reach across towns in Texas by building and upgrading saloons. Saloons give income of money, votes and prestige (VP). The higher the level of the town and the level of the saloon - the better the income.
Every 2 poker hands (6 actions per player + any rewards won) an election is held and the players with higher vote counts get prestige. A total of 3 elections are held during a game. When the game ends, the player with most prestige wins.
You basically know the game now except what exactly are the actions and some nuances!
in the picture you can see the main board for the game. I love placing virtual slots for cards that are dealt to the board. It seems to help the players arrange the game more intuitively. Also, look at the election lines reminding players that every 2 rounds an election takes place, another player helper.
So I got all the parts together. This design has flown out of my mind and into the virtual paper like a rocket. This type of designs feel exceptionally good while designing but can also be very frustrating to "fix".
Usually, when I work on a certain design, it takes a lot of time and contemplation. Sometimes, even though my method is bring-it-to-the-table-ASAP it takes much longer than I want to get the first play running. On the other hand, since the game has been ground to a pulp and built back up in my head thanks to the long time of making it, I know all of its dark corners. On the other hand, games like Governor of Texas here was built in a very straight forward way. It even ran nicely on the first game, a bit unbalanced, but it was very easily fixable.
I got some positive feedback and good pointers even during blind tests and improved the rule book.
I'm not bragging. OK, maybe a bit. The truth is I am mainly surprised, since it is not a common occurrence.
I wish all of my readers such an experience :)
Pini!