Zombie Mall Playtest 1

11.27.2012

Tonight began play testing of Zombie Mall. Single player play testing, as I needed to take a first whack it it and see how the game plays with someone who knows the rules (I made up the rules, so I should know them). I was expecting a few tweaks here and there, and I wasn't disappointed. The game is supposed to be hard to completely finish - that's one of the reason you collect Victory Points along the way. Here's a few pics from my play session.

I took a break in the middle for dinner, but I think I ended up playing overall for about an hour. I played through 21 turns before I died. In those 21 turns I:

• Killed 28 zombies
• Had 27 Victory Points left
• Got 4 of the Loot Cards
• Was bitten by zombies 4 times before I finally died.

Looing back, it felt like I was spending most of my time spawning zombies. Here's how a turn would go:

• Roll 1d6 for number of zombies to spawn.
• For each spawning zombie, roll 1d10 for direction, then 1d10 for distance.
• For each zombie that spawned adjacent/on top of me, resolve combat (1d10).
• Roll 1d6 for my movement
• Fight any zombies along the way (1d10)
• Move 1d4 zombies 1 space
• Resolve combat if required (1d10).

Mainly I wanted to move farther per turn. Maybe 1d6 is too small? Maybe I should up it to 1d10?

After I died, I played through as if I had the door and radio keys needed to complete the scenario. It took another 10 turns to reach the radio, rolling normally for movement. Along the way I had to kill another 22 zombies, and I would have lost combat & been bitten 4 more times. So it would have been possible for me to complete the scenario, but highly unlikely.

Next I need to go through a 2-player scenario. Maybe after that I'll play around with tweaking movement.

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Zombie Mall - Beta Test Countdown

11.26.2012

Progress! My goal was to have the Zombie Mall play-testable by today. It is, as long as I'm the one testing it. I have all the components together, but updated, printed rules are lacking. But that's ok, I've decided I really need some "quick play/quick setup" rules for those that don't want to trudge through 14 pages (for now) of rules (Keith). Plus, a quick play outline will give me something shorter to edit while and after playing.

The past week had me making/printing the map and tokens. It was more of an adventure than I thought it would be. It was also the first time(s) I screwed up and couldn't cover it up. So here I will share some of those trials which foreshadowed tribulations.

Gameboard/Map

I decided to try printing the map on label paper - Staples had 8½"x11" full sheet labels, and although each store to print was only going to be 6"x6", maybe the labels would make the whole process easier than sticking tape and hoping things wouldn't curl up. Between stores and walkways, I had just over 30 pages to print and cut. In the middle of printing I had to change out for some fresh ink (luckily I planned ahead and had 2 sets of new ink on standby). All the sheets printed fine and I proceeded to cut everything down to size. I then got out my 30"x40" foam core board that I was going to mount everything on, and quickly found that I had printed the map on the back of the labels, i.e the non-sticky side.

I could have gone back and either tried to re-print everything on the cut sheets (that wouldn't have gone well) or just printed everything correctly, but 30 pages of ink feels like a lot of ink, so I went back to my original plan and got out the double sided tape and began taping everything to the board.

Although sized to line-up, reality & my cutting ability showed that everything doesn't line up perfectly. But this is beta testing, so it's good enough. For beta testing I think it's actually pretty good. It took the better part of 2 days to print & stick, and for that I'm happy with the results.

Tokens

I had read about making your own tokens with a hollow punch, so thanks to a $16 set off Amazon I thought I would give it a try. I printed off some ¾" circular tokens and added in a border to use with some bleed area. I printed it on the same label paper as I used for the map, making sure to use the correct side of the label page this time! I picked up some mat board from the framing section of Hobby Lobby, thinking that would give a nice weight and feel to the tokens. 80 tokens printed to a page. After pounding the hammer on the punch through half of them, less that half of what I punched were usable. Either the mat board was coming apart, or more often the punch wasn't going all the way through the paper and board. I'm a big guy using a 4-lb hand/sledge-hammer, this thing should be going through like a mother.

Once again, time to go to plan B. I was probably way past B, but this is my story. I had some 110-lb cardstock, which when sandwiched between 2 pieces of label paper didn't feel horribly flimsy. Not as nice as mat board, but good enough to do the job. Plus, this would let me print the token on the front and back. I would switch from round tokens to square so that I could hopefully use my paper trimmer to make quick work of this.

I went back and made square tokens instead of round tokens. Luckily I saved the original graphics so it was a simple cut & paste job. Simple, but there were still 50+ files I had to change, so it took a little while. Once everything was printed, as careful as I was, I couldn't get the front and back to line up perfectly. I now know the importance of the bleed area and how thick my home made bleed area needs to be. I fed everything through the paper trimmer, then cleaned up some skewed backs with a pair of scissors. Once again, although they could have been better I was surprisingly happy with how they turned out.

Stat Card

The stat card was the last thing I worked on - a little card to keep up with your health, adrenaline, and things that will modify your score. I took some screenshots from the rules and pasted them into the 4"x6" layout of the card, and I had enough room that I went ahead and copy & pasted little rules that would come in handy - help to keep you from looking things up while your learning too play. Taking a lead from Frag, I made a colored border around each card that can correspond to the color of your playing piece. Then I printed it all out on some 4"x7" Avery landscape greeting card stock.

The print was so small I couldn't read a damn thing.

I neglected that the screen shot resolution wasn't the printing resolution. So I backtracked and made the majority of the stat card in word, then tweaked it with some graphics. I still kept the colored border. There's a lot less information on the card - mainly the stats you're tracking - but it's legible now. There's still a spot in the lower right open, just begging fro some useful piece of rules info.

So now all the pieces are made. Either tonight or tomorrow I'll run through a game or 3 by myself with my quick-rules notes and see how things play out. From there I'll tweak and hopefully be ready to update the real rules and pass this along to Beta Test Group Alpha.

I don't know who Beta Test Group Alpha is, but thanks to me posting some updates on Facebook I've got a handful of people already interested.

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Amazon Black Friday

11.23.2012

In years past I've gotten the latest WWE videogame on the day it's released. It's one of the few games I get my money's worth out of, because I tend to play it until the next version in released. For the past 2 years I've noticed that the WWE game (and the latest Need For Speed for the year) which is released in late October/Early November, will usually get a good Black Friday discount. This year, instead of spending full price on new release day, opted for the Black Friday route. I've been slacking off on my wrestling watching/enjoyment/game playing, so I didn't feel like I was missing much by waiting.

One of my bonuses for waiting turned out to be a list at Dealnews that had the Amazon Black Friday lightning deals which showed WWE '13 would be on sale for $25 (regularly $59.99) between 11:10AM and 1:10PM. If you're not familiar with how an Amazon Lightning Deal works, they set aside a finite number of items at a special sale price for a limited time, at which point it's first come-first served.

Friday morning was hear and I had the deals page loaded. I had it loaded 3 hours in advance, actually. I watched the timer tick down until the sale started. Suddenly it was taking my browser far to long to switch from the "countdown" to "buy". I reloaded the page and the "buy" button showed up which I promptly clicked. I selected the XBox360 version and the "buy" button turned into a swirling "checking deal" icon. The deal status showed 6% claimed. 61%. Still swirling. The swirling stopped. 100% claimed. You are #2 on the waitlist. This was 1 minute and 12 seconds after the deal started.

Waitlist? WTF?

So I'm on the waitlist. If someone either cancels their order or doesn't complete their order in the next 15 minutes, I've got a chance. I have no idea how I'll know I have a chance.

In another browser window I finish another online order, and a couple of minutes later come back to my Amazon window. In the spot that had "100$ claimed" under the videogame, it now says "Add To Your Cart in the next 1 minute 20 seconds". So I did. I hit every button I could until it showed up in my cart. Once it was there, I hit "checkout".

I'm still checking my Orders Page to make sure I actually ordered it and everything went through. Lightning Deals are harder on my blood pressure than eBay.

Hardest $25 I ever spent, all to save $35.

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Zombie Mall Update

11.21.2012

No pics for this update - too tired to upload any :)

Server problems notwithstanding, I've made great progress in the Zombie Mall Game since my last post. The map is 90% ready. The graphics are done and printed on label-paper. Next I have to cut to size and stick the paper to the board (I think it's a display board for presentations, I got it at Staples). It's just a matter of cutting straight lines and laying stickered paper down straight.

From there I have to re-visit the rules and make some updates. Now that I know what the graphics look like I can update that part, along with tweaking the rules on how to pick which zombies move.

After that I would like to update the walkthru I worked on. I had 5 turns mapped out for 2 players, with movement, combat, weird things happening, etc. I think now I can go back and have it make more sense.

My goal was to have this thing ready to play by Monday. I'm pretty sure I'm going to make it. I may not have many frills thrown in. I promise to have some pics next time, though.

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Cards from Hong Kong

11.16.2012

At last report I had finished uploading graphics for the cards for my zombie boardgame to the manufacturer in Hong Kong. That may not be how it really worked, but that's the end result of what I did, and I think it sounds cool. Between production and shipping it could take up to 3 weeks to arrive at my house. It took just over 2. Above is a sample of what I got.

The cards look a lot better than I was expecting. I was afraid everything would be too dark. I don't exactly have my monitor calibrated for printing, and there's a lot of dark colors on those cards. Saving off the images at 300dpi seems to have worked well. I've read other people going to 450-600dpi, but seeing as how the main chunk of what you look at on the card is a picture I stole retrieved from the internet and had an original 72dpi, this works well.

I posted the above pic on Facebook and quickly got compliments and a couple of questions about the game. It looks like my pen of play-testers may have grown :)

My goal over the next week is to crank out the map to play on. I got side-tracked after sending the cards off - my goal was to make great strides toward finishing the map. Instead I got sucked into making the store content graphics better thanks to finding some good collections of 3D models at Digital X Models (I'm really hoping they have a sale around Thanksgiving). I purchased one of their clothing collections (at least half the stores in a mall sell clothes, it seems) along with a bookstore collection that had some of the best shelves/shelves of product I could hope for. This should give the map a good look with enough variety to not make it monotonous. A Thanksgiving sale would help make it a lot less monotonous.

So now the Monday after Thanksgiving is my goal for having a completed map and ready for play test. The cards are here. The rules are 95% done. I have a walk-though guide that I'll have to revisit once the map is finished, but that shouldn't hold up the first round testing. Monday. 11 days away. Map sections for 19 stores, 3 specialty sections, a food court, and mall walkways. On one hand this should be a breeze. On the other, things always pop up: have to properly schedule my visits to various Thanksgiving leftovers.

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