XCraft is a board game
about two to four powers fighting for control over an ancient artifact. Players
represent and control the forces involved in this war. They can gather
resources, build their armies, fight their opponents and capture control points
around the artifacts. The ultimate goal of this game is to take control of all
6 control points around the ancient artifact. Only one player can become a
winner.
This game has gone through
three stages of development with one play session per each stage. When the
first version of game was built, there were some uncertainties about what
values should be used for resource gathering, producing workers and warriors
and limits to players' actions per turn. Since there were only two players
available for the first play test, the game board was drawn for just two
players(see Pic. 1). In the first version of the game the game's pace was extremely
slow. Due to the game objective being too difficult to achieve and some balance
issues with resources' conversion rates, it became almost impossible for players
to finish the game. There were 16 control points for players to capture to
finish the game. It would've taken a lot of time to capture all 16 control
points, but the game can only be won if a single player captures all of those
points which, under constant pressure and fierce attacks from the second player
proved to be impossible.
Pic. 1. First version of the game board
Because the first version
failed as a winnable game, there were changes made to the number of control
points around the objective making it 6 instead of 16 and the resource
gathering amounts as well as cost of units. The second version of the game
introduced limits to how many actions players can take each turn making it 2
actions per turn with certain rules for how those actions can be utilized. The
speed at which players could build their armies increased, which made fights
between the players to occur earlier in the game and more often throughout the
game ovrall. These changes significantly sped up the game's pace; however, they
were not enough to make the game's goal achievable within reasonable time frame.
In other words, the game still took too long to finish. The major problems with
the second version were that there were too many fields that players' armies
had to cover in order to get to the objective. On top of that, the number of
fields around the board was bit chaotic and unbalanced favoring some players
over the other(see Pic. 2).
Pic. 2. Second version of the game board(graphical representation)
Changes made in the third
version of the game were mostly focused on the game board's layout. The 6 core
control points around the objective were numbered from 1 to 6 and each player,
when rolling a die, could choose to instantly move his/her warrior unit to one
of the six control points depending on the number rolled. This meant that all
players could get to the objective without having to cover big distances and
instantly occupy a control point. If a control point is occupied then another
player who also wants to jump to that spot would have to fight the player in
control of the point. In addition, the paths leading to the control points were
rearranged making it easier for players to reach the objective. The more
players play the game, the longer it takes to finish it, but, at the very
least, after two iterations of changes to the game, it became winnable.
Here are some shots from
the final play session(game's version #3) with 4 players(see Pic. 3 and Pic. 4).
There are still some issues with the balance of the game in terms of layout of
the board and the location of control points, but the third version of the game
is much better than the last two.
Pic. 3. Third version of the game(1st turn)
Pic. 4. Third version of the game(nth turn)
