November 2017

  • John Parker

    Design Workbench

    Design Objective

    It has been a while since I first did the makeover of Nines to form Picky Packrats and I have played hundreds of rounds of the game as-is. So, why would I change anything? Well, to see if I can make it better. In this design round, we break the game layout out of the box and into a circle. A circle is more reminiscent of the rat midden that our theme is suggesting and it opens the game up to more scoring possibilities.

    Playtest

    I have played a few full games of 4 rounds each with my fellow expert player to test out the new layout and accompanying rules changes.

    Prototype

    The prototype hasn’t changed from the last round, but ultimately the game would layout better with symmetrical circular or, better yet, octagonal cards. Circular are easily doable thanks to the ubiquitous Spot It and circular cards are available on Game Crafter. Unfortunately, octagonal cards or tiles just aren’t a thing. Hexagons, of course are everywhere in gaming, but they just won’t do.