I played a round of Race last night with Adam and Steph. I chose very poorly on strategy, and also wasn’t able to get anything going with only developments in hand. Steph and Adam were both going strong military. Steph really ran away with it at the end, despite Adam an I having prestige. I enjoyed it despite losing terribly.
This game was ok, but not terribly fun. There was a decent amount of strategy to it, but the mechanics were really slow to develop and the game was quick to finish. Since there were so many people going between your turns there was very little control of the board, but at the same time a single piece might not move from the spot it was in before for several rounds of the table. I know a good number of things I’d do differently if I were to play again, but I don’t really want to. This was a roll and move, plus strategy; which didn’t do it for me.
I really like this game. It was a market heavy day, but the market simulation in Fish Cook was really enjoyable. The game went really well for me, even though I had 2 of my recipes stolen. The workings of the game are really cool, and I wouldn’t mind playing something with that kind of market simulation for a bit longer. The mitigated randomness was really nicely done.
We played another round of Glory to Rome today, and I really ran away with it. It was to the point that we didn’t even bother counting the points at the end of the game and everyone but Tina gave up about half way through. Everyone was a pretty good sport about it, and Steph did a move that would just end the game more quickly. Tina was about to be able to steal one of my buildings but I already had too much synergy going for it to matter significantly. I really like this game and how all the mechanics work well together. I also like that the game loop is spelled out on the game cards directly. It makes such a complex game much easier to understand and play.
This game was rather simple, but annoying to play. The game started with 30 gears (currency) per person with the one who got the most currency by the end of the game winning. The game ended with little more than 40 currency as the winner, and some people had lost money along the way. The mechanic of manipulating the market price was frustrating when playing with 4 people. The boosts weren’t very powerful, and usually caused more frustration. I won the first game with 44 points and Steph won the second with 36 points. Nick and Tina played along with us, and none of us enjoyed the game. The theme didn’t have much to do with the game, since it was a pure market simulation. There was nothing to do with Mars and little to do with Mechanics. The art was steam punk, but nothing beyond that was.
This round went really well. It was nice to have a lot of food and people so that I could do nearly anything I wanted. Tina still won in the end, with me in second, Adam in third, and Eliot in fourth. The game went really well as I sprinted for the food upgrade, then used it as much as I could to get the great amounts of food. I then used the food to place everyone on yellow several times to do whatever I wanted and get lots more food. I placed 2 skulls and got a great Monument. Tina placed 5 skulls and took it with that. I think I get this game now, and can really take it on next time.
I was in desperate shortage for food this game. That made me not able to place many of my units. I think the next game I play will be very food focused early on and then I’ll pivot to resources, buildings, and skulls. Adam wasn’t doing too well either, but he did much better than me. Then Tina did much better than Adam. Andrew did much better than all of us. No one was particularly close to the others when it came to final score.
This game was a lot of fun. I picked it up pretty quickly and figured out that the best way to go about playing is to specialise, and then use that speciality as much as possible. I started out with two upgrades on the food track and quickly picked up a building that game me the third. I used that to get a ton of food and then used the trading center to exchange the food for other resources. I didn’t use the aspects of paying to go back nearly enough, and I didn’t do as much picking up and replacing as much as I could have. I’d really like to play it again, as I think I could do much better. I played with Adam, Nick, and Brian. Adam ended up winning, but by only one point to my close second.
Today I spend most of the day meeting with people who knew a lot more about developing and coding than myself. I in turn gave them advice about product and marketing. The talks with Fadi were really good. I learned a lot from him when I was at Chegg, including everything I know about SQL and a lot of what I know about Node.js. We chatted about where he is going with his products, and about where I am going with my game. I’d love to work with him should things not pan out with the game.
I also met with the backend developer for a China/USA game team and asked a lot about what he uses for his databases, servers, API handling, etc. It was really useful information and gives me a great direction to look into. He recommended going with Node.js. It is good for me since I have the most experience with JavaScript and some experience with Node.js.
It's an Exciting World 