Collapsi Devlog - Day 3: Two Pawns and Cave-Ins

Another day in my weeklong jam! I was able to sit down and play Collapsi with an opponent.  Fortunately, my wife helps me out with playtesting.  Unfortunately, it can't happen until after we get the kids to bed and get everything else for the day finished.  We were pretty beat by the time we sat down to play, so we only played one game.  

We played with the following rules:

• 5x5 grid, aces - 5's x 4, three kings, two jokers
  • during setup, whenever a king was revealed, it was automatically flipped face down as a starting cave-in
  • each player begins on their own joker starting space
    • a player's first move can be any number of spaces up to 5
  • aces are portals that lead to other aces
  • players can "wrap around" left/right or top/bottom

The game went well!  It absolutely worked.  My wife's feedback remains the same: the gameboard should be larger.  I agree with her.  Especially if I want the game to work at the three and four player count.  We did play one time with a 49 card deck the other day, and a 7x7 grid with regular playing cards was huge!  It did make the game feel pretty epic, but we had to play on the carpet.  I really feel like Collapsi will need proprietary game pieces to reach its full potential.  That is outside of the scope of this jam for now.  I do own some mini-cards that are half the size of a regular playing card, so I think I will start using those to play-test a larger board with some different number configurations

In my next jam session, I need to try the following:

• a 7x7 grid
• include 6's again
  • each 6 is an item card that can be used on any card within a range of six spaces
    • you must use the item as soon as you land on the 6
      
      • 6 of clubs is a bomb - cave-in a card 
      • 6 of spades is a shovel - turn a caved-in card face up again
      • 6 of diamonds is a portal - transport to another card (this can be chained with other 6's)
      • 6 of hearts is a ?? - the only thing I can think of is a card swap, swap two face-up cards 
• aces are no longer portals
• wrapping around is here to stay - this really opens the game up

I am not sure the game needs items or powers.  It is always in my nature to try and fit that in (or some good ole take-that!).  The ideas are worth exploring at least.  Powers or actions should be limited in regard to when they can be used because I don't want players using them during the final turns of the game.  That will cheapen the strategic setup and payoff of the endgame.  I think making 6's item cards is a good balance because as the board collapses in on itself, 6's become more and more risky to land on.  Aside from the 6 of diamonds, players will have to move six spaces on their next turn.  This makes them a relatively bad card to land on during the endgame when movement is limited.

As far as a 3 or 4 player version, the only problem I can see with pursuing that is Collapsi becomes an elimination game.  As players are unable to make a legal move, they are out.  This isn't a feature that bodes well with modern tabletop gamers.  However, it is still popular with mass market games (and digital games).  To keep it from being an elimination game, I would have to change the win condition or give the players something to do once they are out.  Personally, I am fine with it being an elimination game because a game should not take more than 5-10 minutes anyways.  The cave-in feature of the game is a built in timer.  

Collapsi feels like a competitive puzzle game like Puyo Puyo Tetris or Bomberman.  I would like there to be more interaction between players.  I envision players messing with each other while also trying to be the last to survive.  I'm not sure if this will translate well into tabletop game though.  I also hesitate to make the game too "mean".  We will see though!  

If I do design proprietary game pieces for this, I envision square tiles with some of the tiles being item cards.  I also envision each player being a little anthropomorphic groundhog with a mining hat - taking inspiration from Toad Treasure Tracker and Winnie the Pooh.

That is really far off though, and I can do all of the testing with regular cards.  I'd like the game, in its final form, to be playable with regular cards and pieces people already have.  It might be fun to take the game beyond that though!  

So far this has been a pretty fun jam! I need to be a little more disciplined with testing to get more plays under my belt before Saturday.