How to Avoid the Ninth Circle
How to Avoid the Ninth Circle is a board game we developed for Table Top Simulator on steam.
You, as a serial sinner was sent to the 9th circle of Hell! You have one night before your impending transfer, or rather, demise, as you spend your time at a shady bar in The Underworld.
In the midst of your Hellish booze consumption, you notice a very attractive demon at the end of the bar table -- The Devil themselves!
Now’s your chance -- treat The Devil to their favourite drinks and buy them Gifts to win their heart! And maybe you’ll wind up in The Devil’s chambers instead...
Brain Storm Stage
Many of our teammembers enjoy playing dating games a lot so our original idea was aiming to create something close to a dating simulator: player fight against each other and win the heart of the lover.
Things start to getting weird when we start to talk about Devil May Cry and alcohol. An hour later, first draft of our game was borned: a board game that combines the idea of 7 SINS and the cocktails together, with player fighting against each other to pleasure the Devil in order to change their fate.
First Prototype
Rules were detailed and refined. The 7 Sins were transfered into seven events cards which represent 7 different colors. While the cocktails were divided into 15 different types and for each cocktail type there will be 7 color variation.
The intention here is to create a sense of emergent play. Upon mixing and matching the cocktails cards on player's hand, Sin Card Effects (color combo) will be triggered, which could either create benefits to player themself or sabotage the opponent.
Alpha Play Test
We brought our game to a playtesting session. The overall feedback was good but many issues were found as well.
Many rules of the game was not explained in detail, the descriptions on the card face were also not clear and cause confusion. And most importantly, we failed to create emergent play as the player were simply follow the pre-designed "dominant solutions" when playing combos, rather than following their own stargety.
This really teached us the importance of playtesting again: is it really hard to find problems from the eyes of the dev team, because we are too familiar with everything.
Iterations
Base on the feedbacks we got from the late playtesting, we iterated our rules several times. The major goal was to cut down the handcard numbers, remake the combo rules and design a new connection between the handcards and the combo in order to generate emergent play.
Our last prototype was borned one month later: we put more focus on the hand cards itself. Hand Cards were divided into Play cards / Condition cards / Reactions cards. Players are able to react to the move of their oppoenets accordingly.
The Color combo was redesigned as well: the 7 sins still represent 7 colors with 7 special effects (SIN-ergy). If players play two cards of the same colour, they are able to create a SIN-ergy in their play
Final Product
After about 4 months of hard work we finally complete our game and brought it to another testing session.
Very positive feedbacks were received and emergent play was clearly observed when players were saving for combos to create greater benefits / saving reaction cards / Alliancing weaks to fight against stongers.
