Pandora's Log, Stardate: 23020606
- Guntower Mike
- Jun 6, 2023
- 3 min read
He struggles from a deep, dark sleep with fractured images still swirling in his mind… Bugs, flames, ‘Abandon Ship!’… Something Nasty stirs in the shadows… Something small scuttles through the Aircon… A box unfolds to reveal a ship… which he runs through again and again and again…
And finally he remembers: UK Games Expo!
So we’re back and (just about) recovered from a really great UKGE.
The game went down a storm – helped enormously by the box, which proved a real draw. Who knew that a simple, practical solution to a gameplay problem would prove to be such a hit? For those who haven’t seen it yet, the box now does this…
The card & component insert doubles as the 3D Aircon system, which looks great and even more importantly helps speed setup & tear down. It proved such a hit that people were coming to see what the fuss was all about and then staying to enjoy the game. And we actually had reps from one of the manufacturing companies competing with one another for the chance to work on it ‘cos they thought it was so cool! 😂
Thanks to all of you who took the time to feed back on your experience of the game at UKGE. While most of you clearly had a good time, there is always room for improvement - and we really do listen! The big takeaways from the weekend were that the Action Economy needs to be a bit more forgiving and the Noise system is still too fiddly – and while a few of you didn’t like the 3D Aircon system, just as many of you absolutely loved it; and the buzz it created for the game was invaluable.
The Action Economy is easy – we were already experimenting with getting 3 cards back per Round by the end of the weekend and that seemed to solve most of the issues people were having with ‘lost’ turns.
Noise is more problematical. It is clearly still too fiddly to keep track of in its current iteration, but all the solutions people have suggested (Noise Tokens, Noise Trackers etc) have already been tried and proven even less effective than the system we currently have in place. Put simply: people keep forgetting to track their Noise and then it becomes even more cumbersome to try and remember what you’ve done.
So I’m going to do what I always do in situations like this and apply Occam’s Razor. I plan to pare Noise back to its basics and institute a much less granular system in which cards are either Silent, Quiet or Noisy. Silent cards are discarded face down: Quiet and Noisy Cards are discarded face up and have an icon in the bottom left corner that shows how Noisy they are. This should make looking through your face up discards and remembering how much Noise you made much, much simpler. It does mean that there will no longer be any difference between discharging a flamethrower, punching a bug or running down a corridor, but if the trade-off for that is much less fiddliness and confusion, I’ll take it – as long as it works!
But what do you guys think? Let me know in the Comments below. I'm really keen to hear your thoughts.
So where do we go from here? It will take a little while to implement the changes prompted by this weekend. After that, I’ll update our Tabletopia Mod and start creating the PnP files we are planning to use in an awareness-raising campaign in a month or so. I’ll let you know when the Tabletopia Mod is finally up and running. In the meantime, please leave a comment & maybe even a rating on our BGG Page if you think the game deserves it, and check out our You Tube and Instagram channels.
We also have a Discord channel where you can leave any suggestions you might have; but it won’t be fully active until after our TT Mod goes live.
And, of course, don’t back into any dark corners!
M€
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