Hey I tried out a bit of the game (V1.5) I think there's a really good concept and I love the theming! What I found when playing was the following:
The game was fairly easy the first couple times I tried it, to the point where I was worried that I had misread a rule (and I very well might have!). I might also have gotten lucky with initial setups; trying it with one specific Finch card I seemed to always use face-down did seem to make things tougher. I was able to win every game I played with anywhere from 8-10 Finches.
Games are quick, well within the 10 minute estimated time. I think most of my games were around 5 minutes, but they started longer and got faster the more I played.
I found that the majority of the time the only abilities I was using were the ones that either flip Cat cards back to Finch cards or the abilities that return Finches from the sky to a card. Ming does a pretty good job of herding the Finches into a big group herself, so the abilities that move a Finch or 2 didn't seem too necessary. The ability that returns 2 Finches from the sky and the ability that flips any Cat card back to Finch were my mainstays.
One rule I wasn't sure of is when moving Ming to flip a Finch card if you needed to then perform one of the Cat abilities on that card. I did end up playing that way because it seemed too plannable if there were no Cat abilities happening, but it did raise the question of if Ming moves to another Finch card because of one of the Cat abilities, would that cause you to have to choose another Cat ability to use on the newly flipped card in the same round? In later games I played it that way but I wasn't sure if that was the intended way to play.
I tried a couple games with some extra additional rules that made things MUCH trickier, though I don't know if these rules would make the game so constrained as to be too often impossible.
If Ming can move to more than one Finch card, she will always pick the one with the most Finches on it.
After you build the garden during setup, randomly determine which space has the Mulberry Bush. That is the space you need to bring all the Finches in the garden to (and at least 8).
I didn't end up ever having Ming leave the garden. I'm not really sure how that would happen, unless it's when you use an ability that flips a Cat card back to a Finch card while she's on it? When I played my assumption was that you couldn't flip the space that she was on, but I don't know if there's any other way to make her leave.
One ability I never used because I wasn't sure how it would work exactly was the Finch ability that moves Finches away from the Cat marker. Specifically "away" kind of tripped me up, since I wasn't sure if perpendicular moves to Ming counted? I am probably overthinking that to be honest.
I do play a fair number of puzzle games, so I wouldn't take my experience with the game's difficulty to be too representative of most players, but maybe a base version with a tougher mode/variant would make for more replayability and/or provide a broader range for different players?
Thanks so much for playing my game and your amazing feedback.
My scores so far are around win/lose = 50/50 so i am impressed that youve won every game!
Im not sure how you only used the 2 actions mentioned though. At the start of the game there are only 2 finches in the sky, the other 10 are on finch cards. When finches scatter, they move to an adjacent finch card, not the sky.
How are you getting all the finches to the sky quickly? Most actions just send a single finch to the sky.
You are supposed to set up the garden randonly and not pick which card starts as Ming or place the finches in any specific order.
The rule about there being no cat cards in the garden is for if you flip the cat card that the Ming marker is on, back to finch.
This has been updated in v1.6. There is a rule that says Ming goes back inside. If this card is flipped when there are other cat cards in the garden then ming goes to another cat card.
The action that moves a finch 1 space is just one space, i may change that action because i havent used it yet myself.
I will update the rules again to mention that when you move to another cat card you do not complete that action, just scatter the finches.
I look forward to any further feedback, thanks again.
I only played 4-5 games iirc, so my 100% record sounds more impressive than it actually is! I also wouldn't be surprised if I played incorrectly, it sounds like I played the cat card abilities wrong so I suspect that I might have misplayed some other rule too.
As far as the actions, sorry my language wasn't too clear! I don't mean I was only using those actions, but most of the time I would prioritize flipping cat cards and once there were maybe four or more finches in the sky I would use the one action to return two at a time, which felt very efficient and still let me do other things without feeling like having birds flee to the sky was all that scary. I still definitely used the finch actions that move finches between garden spaces, but it just felt like those actions weren't nearly as important to winning as just keeping the cat cards managed and keeping on top of having enough birds in the garden. The main way I moved finches together was just having Ming move in a spiral pattern, having the finches she scatter move to the next space in the spiral and gradually get collected together.
For all but one of my games I did randomly select which card starts as a cat card, but for my third game I specifically experimented with having that one card as the starting cat card because it felt like it was kind of a safety net that made it so I wasn't too worried about what action I picked, so I wanted to see what it was like not having it available at the start of the game.
Your comments have been really helpful. I thought about changing some cards actions, especially the bring 2 finches from the sky and the card that sends all the finches to the sky. these can be good and bad things to happen depending on the outcome your looking for. but i thought that before i do that I will finish and add the difficulty variants page to the rules V1.8. I havent tried these out yet, theyre still just ideas.
I hope you can try them out and let me know your thoughts. I may use one of them as the base game if it turns out to be better than the current set up.
oh wow, that's some quick iteration! I think you probably would benefit from having other people besides me give their feedback; I still have the feeling that there is something I'm missing that is making the games not play as expected. I'll see about printing out the latest version and maybe having some of my friends try it out just from being provided the rules and cards without any explanation/advice from me. Hopefully that will help give a wider range of feedback both for rules interpretation and for puzzle difficulty. I made some logic puzzles for a local LARP recently and I WAY overshot on how difficult they were to solve, so I would be particularly wary about my recommendations regarding difficulty!
Thankyou, It's not just you, i recieved some feedback via FB and have played several more games myself. This is a work in progress so things are bound to change. i am often guilty of making changes available before really checking everything. It's impatience on my part. I have a terrible urge to complete things. So files get changed a lot. That is what the playtesting stage is about really anyway.
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Hey I tried out a bit of the game (V1.5) I think there's a really good concept and I love the theming! What I found when playing was the following:
I do play a fair number of puzzle games, so I wouldn't take my experience with the game's difficulty to be too representative of most players, but maybe a base version with a tougher mode/variant would make for more replayability and/or provide a broader range for different players?
Thanks so much for playing my game and your amazing feedback.
My scores so far are around win/lose = 50/50 so i am impressed that youve won every game!
Im not sure how you only used the 2 actions mentioned though. At the start of the game there are only 2 finches in the sky, the other 10 are on finch cards. When finches scatter, they move to an adjacent finch card, not the sky.
How are you getting all the finches to the sky quickly? Most actions just send a single finch to the sky.
You are supposed to set up the garden randonly and not pick which card starts as Ming or place the finches in any specific order.
The rule about there being no cat cards in the garden is for if you flip the cat card that the Ming marker is on, back to finch.
This has been updated in v1.6. There is a rule that says Ming goes back inside. If this card is flipped when there are other cat cards in the garden then ming goes to another cat card.
The action that moves a finch 1 space is just one space, i may change that action because i havent used it yet myself.
I will update the rules again to mention that when you move to another cat card you do not complete that action, just scatter the finches.
I look forward to any further feedback, thanks again.
I only played 4-5 games iirc, so my 100% record sounds more impressive than it actually is! I also wouldn't be surprised if I played incorrectly, it sounds like I played the cat card abilities wrong so I suspect that I might have misplayed some other rule too.
As far as the actions, sorry my language wasn't too clear! I don't mean I was only using those actions, but most of the time I would prioritize flipping cat cards and once there were maybe four or more finches in the sky I would use the one action to return two at a time, which felt very efficient and still let me do other things without feeling like having birds flee to the sky was all that scary. I still definitely used the finch actions that move finches between garden spaces, but it just felt like those actions weren't nearly as important to winning as just keeping the cat cards managed and keeping on top of having enough birds in the garden. The main way I moved finches together was just having Ming move in a spiral pattern, having the finches she scatter move to the next space in the spiral and gradually get collected together.
For all but one of my games I did randomly select which card starts as a cat card, but for my third game I specifically experimented with having that one card as the starting cat card because it felt like it was kind of a safety net that made it so I wasn't too worried about what action I picked, so I wanted to see what it was like not having it available at the start of the game.
Your comments have been really helpful. I thought about changing some cards actions, especially the bring 2 finches from the sky and the card that sends all the finches to the sky. these can be good and bad things to happen depending on the outcome your looking for. but i thought that before i do that I will finish and add the difficulty variants page to the rules V1.8. I havent tried these out yet, theyre still just ideas.
I hope you can try them out and let me know your thoughts. I may use one of them as the base game if it turns out to be better than the current set up.
Tracey
oh wow, that's some quick iteration! I think you probably would benefit from having other people besides me give their feedback; I still have the feeling that there is something I'm missing that is making the games not play as expected. I'll see about printing out the latest version and maybe having some of my friends try it out just from being provided the rules and cards without any explanation/advice from me. Hopefully that will help give a wider range of feedback both for rules interpretation and for puzzle difficulty. I made some logic puzzles for a local LARP recently and I WAY overshot on how difficult they were to solve, so I would be particularly wary about my recommendations regarding difficulty!
Thankyou, It's not just you, i recieved some feedback via FB and have played several more games myself. This is a work in progress so things are bound to change. i am often guilty of making changes available before really checking everything. It's impatience on my part. I have a terrible urge to complete things. So files get changed a lot. That is what the playtesting stage is about really anyway.
So thanks again. :)