Perhaps for the starvation death-loop, you could provide the player with the ability to ration food - let someone else starve to keep the Hunter-Guards alive until you return to equilibrium. Killing at random means I wound up, for example, rolling dead Hunter-Guards eight times until I wound up with none at all.
Archon's Court Games
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Things like explosive radii and movement speeds are mostly given to the GM in case that level of specificity is useful - "drones move twice as fast as humans" means they can move two rooms if one of their encounter groups is rolled to move, but more importantly it basically means "if you try to run away, they will catch you".
Similarly, explosive radiuses and timings are given in an exact distance for if it's important - does a person fit through this hole? What about a piece of machinery? Can you set the fuse and have it go off before something happens? Often, none of these things will be important - if your player is using a breaching charge to blow open a locked door while not under attack, for example, all you really need to do is say "you're blind for a fraction of a second as your helmet's glass darkens to protect your eyes, and then the door's open".
When I ran this game, I never measured exact distances during combat using 5 foot squares or similar tools, instead in a more abstract theater-of-the-mind method where relevant locations are things like "behind the doorway" or "on the other side of the room".
A 5 result on the dice-assembling step of the derelict generator (previously called "Breach") is also the result indicating an airlock.
I've just updated the file, clarifying that that result can also be an airlock (and that I added an airlock, by hand, to the Lowlands).
Thank you for your interest in the game, and for your feedback!
I've beaten this after a day or so of playing it too much. It's really cool! My favorite part is the board itself, and I definitely think you could do more with it - enemies that block slots of the board, Lonely Dice that need to not be next to anything else in order to work, alternate characters with different boards, upgrades to particular spaces on the board, who knows!
There also isn't that much... dice-like about the dice, I guess. Nothing rolls them, they're just static numbers. Maybe a Boost-like dice type that rerolls the things they're next to? (With some kind of cap, of course).
I also think the rarity system needs to be more obvious in-game; there were a lot of times I was confused about why my silver Block die was only worth 3 points.
I might be overthinking this, but I'm pretty sure rejecting the call at the end is actually the "good" ending. If you look through your inbox messages, your contact told you that they would be arriving at 10:50, and otherwise you should run. I think the message you get half-way through the game isn't actually from your contact - they've been intercepted, and someone else is in that car.
One thing after reading the PDF - the light version using icons has a different effect for Vision than the other two versions of the game. Is it supposed to give darkvision, or is it the attack range?
EDIT - it's just both, isn't it. You still might want to change the text, but I think I understand now.
Reminds me a lot of LOCAL 58's "Weather Service", especially the communication from home base. I love the layout, it's all really clean, and the location seems interesting.
I do have one question: what are the PCs supposed to do about this? I can't find anything called out as an escape route, or anything to time how long it takes for a rescue ship.
I really like your theme, and your extreme focus on one particular scenario - that's the best way to make ultralight games like this, in my opinion.
However, I do think that scenario's a bit underdeveloped. A set of locations provided through a table (or a depthcrawl, given that the only important movement is towards/away from the front) would help reinforce that focus, and make the game much faster to prep.
Also, I wish that instead of page 4's list of common items, you had a table (either to roll on for PCs during character creation, or just to generally use for rewards).
On Windows 10, game worked up until we started a match of Versus.
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############################################################################################
FATAL ERROR in
action number 1
of Draw Event
for object game:
Push :: Execution Error - Variable Index [0,2] out of range [1,2] - -1.strat_r(100196,2)
at gml_Object_game_Draw_73
############################################################################################
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
stack frame is
gml_Object_game_Draw_73 (line -1)
I think I'm missing some things with the combat system.
1. How do I tell when an opponent is blocking, versus when I can hit them?
2. What is the shove (LMB when blocking) for? I've tried it, but it doesn't seem to have an effect.
Otherwise, I really like this game! It's the first one I've bought from Sokpop, and it's certainly a good first impression. However, I do agree that a save system should be implemented as soon as possible.