More DeckVille

If you read my previous post from two months ago, you know that DeckVille is a euro-style card game that I've been designing in which players compete to build the best districts of a city. Unlike most of my designs, DeckVille seemed to basically work right from the start. But there's a lot of distance between a good start and a finished game, so I've been working on improving that first-cut design.

Since that post, DeckVille has been through several revisions (and I now have an impressively tall stack of obsolete prototype cards that I am using as a scratchpad). For example, one important change has been the addition of "special powers": some cards provide a special power that improves the player's ability to get things done. These give the cards more variety, and give the players more to think about. The list of actions you can take on your turn has also been evolving, and the game now offers some interesting ways to manage your hand.

I took a prototype to the KublaCon game convention, where it got a lot of play and I got a lot of interesting, useful feedback. Because of that, the latest revision is now much better balanced and I think provides more interesting gameplay. (I was listening, guys!)

I still intend to make the game available via TheGameCrafter.com when I think it's ready, but it's certainly not ready yet. Just this afternoon I added two new special powers to the deck, and made some improvements to the iconography. But I may make a print-and-play version available in a few weeks, when I stop feeling the urge to make significant changes after every other play (assuming that ever happens).

In the meantime, here's a sneak peek at a diagram from the rulebook, showing the elements of a card: