It’s finally here.

For the last few weeks Josh and I have been slaving away to complete the upgrade of the design for Do You Know Your Neighbors?

Last Sunday, we ordered a “real” prototype from TheGameCrafter.com and it arrived today!

I am extremely pleased with the quality of the prototype. You can see all of its parts here.

We should be having another play test at a part tonight. And this will be the first one with this beautiful prototype!!!

So happy right now.

Today, Josh and I will go out into the various communities and scour the land for scenes that will match our Situation Cards. These are the cards (formerly called mission cards) that are presented throughout the game and the neighbors respond to them by performing either Kind or Wicked deeds.

We are doing this photography field trip so that we can keep the production costs as low as possible. Each photo costs ~$50 / photo when doing print runs and so with 25 neighbor, 40 situation and ~10 action cards that could easily be ~$4k. We would then need to add the cost of production of the game’s components and that would require a Kickstarter with a $7k goal.

We are trying to bring that down as much as possible so that we can release this game as the first of many games from Cray Cray Games.

Game Tip
If enough deeds are played to meet a situation’s point value objective, one way or the other, the points for that situation will either go toward the Kind or Wicked team. If the Fickle neighbors were crafty enough to offset the balance so that the objective could not be met, then they take the points for their team.

Tonight we played another 7-person game of Do You Know Your Neighbors? and it went well.

Our seventh player hadn’t seen the game before and we explained it to her and she was off asking questions about strategy in no time.

The game lasted ~25 minutes but only because our new player hadn’t realized that her team won earlier because of the instant-win condition based on her character’s area of interest. She played her character well and Phil misidentified her which ended up revealing his own identity and rendering his sleuthing abilities inactive for the remainder of the game.

Game Tip
It’s important to attempt an identification when you are as certain as you can be but before you are identified by anyone yourself.

Tonight we played with 7 people, 2 of whom were new to the game. It was fun, despite someone having a terribly painful brain malfunction mid-game. 🙂

We’ve decided to increase the number of points required to win the game because we once again ended the game in under 20 minutes.

Everyone enjoyed the game again.

A couple of weeks ago we play tested the game with 3 people and we uncovered a truth that I had suspected would be true:

This game is NOT recommended for under 5 players. Period.

We haven’t yet played with 4 people either and I am violently opposed to ever trying. 🙂

We played with 5 players tonight and it worked. I think it’s more fun with 6 players but the game is definitely playable and still fun with 5. If the same 2 players, however, continue to be on missions with each other, they immediately know the type (kind, wicked or fickle) of the player’s neighbor even if not immediately identifiable.

We got some good feedback and we tried out playing multiple action cards (1 or 2) despite the fact that you only recover 1 action every round.

Still fun…

We implemented the name changes so that there’d be no confusion when asking if your name starts with a __.

There were some other suggestions made but all in all, everyone enjoys playing the game and it seems like it’s going to be a decent party game.

It doesn’t take that long to play after you get familiar with the rules and it can be fun if you get into trying to identify the other players.

Tonight we played two games, 6 players both times, and it went well. Some feedback was given regarding names. Since we have clues that ask about letters but the neighbor names have different letters for their first and last names and that could be confusing.

In watching how the clues were played and the high number of extra clues that were available (using a certain miscellaneous action card) we also decided we should limit it so that clues can only be asked to any given player once in a round.

Without that change, there’ll be repeats of what happened tonight. I was identified before the first round even started because someone was able to give me 5 clue cards. That makes playing the game pretty difficult because it’s obvious what you’re trying to do.

Last week we played this for the first time and since then we’ve made many changes.

We came up with incentive and a reward for identifying other players — when that’s done successfully, the identifier receives a bonus mission which can be applied to his team’s score when identified.

The players thought it was fun and Josh and I picked up some tidbits while watching how people interpreted certain cards, etc. We’ve taken down some notes on potential clarifications so that things are clearer.

We will also add a list of the Phases and what they entail on the player mat that displays all of the neighbors.

We played the revisited version of the game we concept-tested a couple of weeks ago.

We played with 6 people so there were 2 of each of kind, wicked and fickle neighbors.

One of the players was extremely meticulous in her keeping track of questions asked of other players and the way they played their action cards and she pretty much figured out who everyone was. No one else got anywhere near as close as she did to figuring out identities.

Of course, there was no incentive to do that, so we’re going to work on figuring out what might interest players in identifying other players and if they do, what reward might make the most sense.

We also discovered that it’s pretty easy to throw off missions so that their proper values are not attained — which leads to a victory for the Fickle Neighbors.

Mission Adjudication
Two missions are played, simultaneously, each round. The player with the First Turn Token (FTT) is the team leader and picks a team (half of the players) that he thinks will enable him to meet or exceed the mission’s value. Mission values range from 1 to 3 points and players play kind or wicked deed actions. Kind neighbors score if the net value of deeds played lean toward kind. Wicked Neighbors score if it leans toward wicked and if the value isn’t met, it is a score for the Fickle neighbors. Essentially, the net value of kind/wicked deeds played needs to be at least as much as the mission’s value.

It was a good game and it was fun while providing a LOT of feedback to consider before we play it again.

CoS are the initials of a game we concept-tested last week. Josh and I played with one other person to see how this detective-based game played.

The Verdict:
It didn’t really play all that well for a variety of reasons.

We met again tonight to do some brainstorming on how to adjust the game so that it would be more fun and better intertwine players together. In the process of that brainstorming session we forked the game production into two potential games. CoS will sit on the back burner for a while because we should focus on getting something produced first.

We will, however, move forward on a new game we’re calling: Do You Know Your Neighbors?

Anywhere from 5 to 15 players play as kind, wicked or fickle neighbors, whose identities are kept secret. They complete missions by playing appropriate deed cards in the hopes of scoring the proper amount of points so their team (of other kind or wicked or fickle neighbors) can win.