Everything is different, except for the stuff that stayed the same.
In our last update we shared that Spelldice: Sorcery Saloon was getting a rewrite. Today lets talk about why.
How can a game with 5 dice and some finger pointing be so complicated? It really all comes down to the order of resolution for each turn. In Spelldice players point their fingers with a dice in that hand, or hold the dice close to cast a spell. Each interaction of spell-shot to spell-defense creates a unique interaction that has to be resolved. So every shot has to functionally work against every defense and generate no ambiguities that confuse the players.
But wait, there’s more. Players in Spelldice can be targeted by more than one person on a turn. Maybe they have 2 blue loaded fingers pointed their way. Maybe a red and blue and black. Who goes first? How does the first interaction impact the next interactions. Does the Spur spell ruin everything? (typically, yes) What if an offensive shot changes the defenses of other players, how do we resolve that?
And if that wasn’t hard enough, this all needs to be unambiguously clear to the players using as few words as possible. If Spelldice was an epic 3-hour jaunt, we could lean on a 50 page rule book to define all of these interactions. But new players to Spelldice need to be making their first “Hot Shot” in under 2 minutes by our estimations. Every interaction needs to be meaningful, valuable, understandable while utilizing a minimum of text and as little space as possible.
That is why the game continues to get iterations. After release you only get one chance to make a positive first impression, and we really don’t want to mess up that impression.
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