Playtest NotesOver the week, I finished the Captain Cards, 10 Disaster Cards, and made some other changes to the rules according to my first couple of playtests. After researching the captain names and changing a few of the vessels accordingly, Cataclysm! is now a science fiction Steampunk survival board game._____________________________________________________________________________________

Captain Cards (Disclaimer: Art is licensed and only there for representation)

Airship Captains (Unaffected by Terrain Costs)Captain Vasco De Barros (Spanish descent)Vessel Name: The Raven Claw (Airship)Starting Income: 10Speed Rating: 4Cargo Capacity: 2Upgrades/Cost: Speed Upgrade: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36Cargo Capacity: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45

Captain Aya McCloud (Scottish descent, red hair)Vessel Name: The Nighthawk (Airship)Starting Income: 10Speed Rating: 6Cargo Capacity: 1Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36Cargo Capacity: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45

Captain Mathilda Krause (German descent, curly hair)Vessel Name: The Iron Vixen (Airship)Starting Income: 10Speed Rating: 3Cargo Capacity: 3Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36Cargo Capacity: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45

Amphibious Ship Captains (Affected by Terrain Costs)

Captain Quinn O’Cleary (Irish descent, merchant)Vessel Name: Big Bertha (Airship)Starting Income: 10Speed Rating: 2Cargo Capacity: 4Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36Cargo Capacity: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45

Captain Gustave LaSalle (French descent)Vessel Name: Mistral’s KissStarting Income: 10Speed Rating: 7Cargo Capacity: 5Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45Cargo Capacity: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36

Captain Marina Volkov (Russian descent)Vessel Name: The Sea WolfStarting Income: 10Speed Rating: 3Cargo Capacity: 9Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45Cargo Capacity: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36

Captain Kaito Masuyo (Japanese descent, military)Vessel Name: Dai Uzumaki (Maelstrom)Starting Income: 10Speed Rating: 5Cargo Capacity: 8Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45Cargo Capacity: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36

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Playtest 1I had trouble this week with trying to find unbiased playtesters that were not in my immediate social circle, so Saturday I decided to find some regular board gamers and went to my local comic books and games store, Area 51.

After telling the manager what I was doing and asking for a few tables to conduct the playtests, he was nice to direct me to two of his regular gamers there. I met Paul Coxe (42) and Edward Perez (44), who both arrived early for a Star Trek Ship Battle game. I told them about

the game and nicely asked them if they had time to come playtest it for me. They accepted, since the other players for their game were running late, and came over to the table to read the game rules, captain cards, disaster cards, and set-up chart that I had printed out while I set-up the game board and population on the cities.

Set-Up

Paul asked me a question to clarify the notes I had on “Population Tokens”

Captain Mehndi Kapoor (Middle Eastern descent, Gypsy)Vessel Name: The Maccha YantraStarting Income: 10Speed Rating: 9Cargo Capacity: 4Upgrades/Cost:Speed Upgrade: 1 = $15, 2 = $30, 3 = $45Cargo Capacity: 1 = $12, 2 = $24, 3 = $36

where it says 1 mini poker chip represents 10 actual citizens. I plan to reword this to show that this is only to make it more realistic and is not related to the game in any way.

Paul chose Captain Mehndi Kapoor, who manages The Maccha Yantra and Edward chose Captain Kaito Masuyo, who manages the Dai Uzumaki (Maelstrom in Japanese), and placed their related vessels on the map at their starting hex tile. Immediately, Paul noticed an error in the order of the player’s turn steps regarding movement and loading/unloading passengers, which

were set up initially as Loading/Unloading Passengers phase for Step 2 and the Movement phase for Step 3, so I had to change the order forthwith. After a few rounds, Edward noted that the radius of the Super Storm Disaster card needed to be changed because it was confusing. I notated this and plan to change it for the next playtest. They both played for about 11 Rounds, which took about 40 minutes and then had to leave to set up their Star Trek tournament games, so we couldn’t finish this playtest completely. Paul ended up with 18 points and Edward had 13. They told me it was an interesting game and would love to playtest it again sometime, but I couldn’t find them after their tournament. I asked them for suggestions or any comments and they both thought that the bookkeeping for the disasters was hard to keep track of. Edward suggested that a Disaster Chart with tokens representing rounds of duration might work, so after the playtest, I developed the chart for each Disaster and Region.

Disaster ChartDisaster Region 1 Region 2 Region 3 Region 4 Region 5 Region 6

Wildfire 2RForest tiles outside city: impassable for

2R. Spreads to adjacent.

Volcano 4RAsh makes +3 movement cost in 2 tile

radius.

Super Storm 3R+2 movement cost to all vessels in 2 tile

radius.

Earthquake 2RAll vessels cannot take off or land in

affected tiles.

Flood 2RAll adjacent forest, swamp, desert, and

grassland tiles are ocean and add +2 movement cost.

Tsunami (Global) 3RCoastal tiles are impassable for duration,

vessels cannot land or take off.

Global Warming (Global) 5R

Meteor Shower (Global) 2R

Sinkhole (Global)Tile becomes impassable by

amphibious ships for the remaining duration of the game.

Steam Geyser 2RTile affected becomes impassable

to all ships for duration.

Playtest 2The second playtest happened Tuesday night with some of my wife’s friends. Jennifer (36), Georgia (14), and Cole (11) Holsomback came over and proceeded to help test the game.

Jennifer picked Quinn O’Cleary, Cole picked Vasco DeBarros, and Georgia selected Mathilda Kraus as their respective Captains. I noticed right off the bat that all of them were Airships. I thought this would be a good balancing test for these captains, and it didn’t disappoint. None of them had many questions and genuinely seemed to be enjoying the game. Halfway through the game, the score was almost even, even though Cole got blocked by a few disasters, so it seemed to be pretty balanced. In the end, Georgia won, with 39 points after 2 hours and 24 minutes. Jennifer had 32 points and Cole ended up with 36 points. Cole suggested that on the Volcanic Eruption disaster card to make it more interesting and to give players incentive to go after the people and save them from the magma instead of just halving the population like the card says. It now has a 4 round duration and provides double the passenger fees to Captains that can come fast enough to save them. At the end of the 4 Rounds, half of the remaining population dies from the lava and half are displaced to the nearest city. During this playtest, I also thought of a better way to keep track of the rounds and shuttle timer by using a mini abacus. The first rung will mark each round and after every 5 rounds the second rung will mark each shuttle leaving the planet. I will have to do research to see if I can find an abacus that could work for the next playtest.

Playtest 3The third playtest involved only one other person besides my wife, Annie (39). Mark Kreamer (32), our chiropractor, came by the house to help out since I was having problems finding people to help playtest the game. He isn’t really a big gamer, so his feedback helped give insight into average, middle aged non-gamer demographic.

He decided to pick Kaito Masuya, the Japanese Amphibious ship captain and Annie selected Aya McCloud, the Irish Airship captain. After looking at his captain card, Mark immediately had a question about the upgrades. He asked “Does 2 = $30 mean that I can spend $30 for a speed rating upgrade of 2? I said “No, that 2 is the second upgrade and it costs $30, but it is accumulative, so you have to buy the first one at $15, then you can buy the second one later at $30”. I also told him that only one upgrade could be purchased at a time, so I edited the Game Rules at this time to reflect this. I realized that this needed rewording for the next playtest, so I planned to change it to “Upgrade 1: $15, 2nd Upgrade: $30, 3rd Upgrade: $45” to clarify it better. As soon as Annie, playing as Aya, realized how many passengers Mark’s captain could carry (8), she immediately realized that she couldn’t win against Kaito because of the income he could create so much faster. By the halfway mark (Round 13), Mark had already generated over triple the income of Aya, but both of their upgrade costs were the same.

I decided to rework the Upgrade costs of both the Airships and the Amphibious ships after this playtest, so I made notes to make Aya’s cargo capacity upgrades to become $8, $16, and $24. Kaito’s new upgrade costs for speed became $30, $45, and $60 and his cargo upgrade costs became $20, $30, and $40. The game lasted 2 hours and Mark won with 45 points, with Annie losing with only 31 points, so there definitely needs to be better balancing between the Airship Captains and Amphibious Captains.Another thing I decided needed reworking at this point was the bookkeeping of the

Banker. Annie was having to think about her strategies and deal with all the responsibilities of the Banker, which are many. I decided to put the Disaster Chart in charge of a different player so that the Banker wouldn’t be overwhelmed. So for the next playtest, the players would volunteer to manage the Disaster Chart so that the Banker would be less stressed during the actual gameplay and be able to have his/her head in the game more.

Playtest 4For the third playtest, I brought the game over to my sister’s house on Christmas Day. After we ate, Loretta Taylor (my sister, 48), Steve Cooper (brother, 50), Scott Cooper (brother, 52), Rebekah Cooper (daughter, 14), Cheryl Wilkins (Steve’s wife, 52), Annie Cooper (wife, 39) and Spencer Cooper (son, 16) played. After explaining the rules, Annie decided to just be the banker, Spencer had the highest roll and selected Gustav LaSalle, then Loretta selected Aya McCloud, Cheryl selected Mathilda Kraus, Scott selected Vasco DeBarros, and finally Steve selected Kaito Masuyo.

Since Steve selected his captain last, he went first. The only questions before the game started were the terrain spaces and the different between the Airships and Amphibious ships, the latter being the only ships affected by the terrain. I explained that some of the disasters would affect the Airships and showed everyone the

changes I made from the last playtest. During the first few rounds, I decided that having one person play the banker was much more efficient and effective than asking a competitive player to manage their ship and manage the banker’s responsibilities, so I made notes to the Rules that for a 2 player game, the players would split banker duties and for any game with more players that one of the players would be just the banker. I even thought about making a Banker Card with all the responsibilities listed on it: one side showing a male banker and the flip side showing a female banker. After 5 rounds (1 hour), Rebekah and Cheryl were tied with 12 points and the rest of the pack were not far behind them. The balancing changes I made to the upgrade costs seemed to be helping. Steve was saving his money to get multiple upgrades, even after I explained to him that the upgrades were accumulative and had to be bought in order. He said, “No problem, I’m just saving for that last upgrade”. I tried explaining that it was more efficient to purchase upgrades as you get more income, but he was adamant at saving his money, so I didn’t push it. Apparently the changes I made to the Captain Card Upgrades didn’t have the effect that I wanted

and didn’t explain it enough. After he accumulated over $60, he tried purchasing all of the speed upgrades at the same time and asked why there wasn’t a way for him to do that. I thought about it for a couple of more rounds and decided that it would make sense for a Captain to be able to purchase more than one upgrade of the same type, if the player so wanted, just not multiple upgrades of a different type. Steve ended up purchasing the speed upgrades he wanted in consecutive rounds and finally started to catch up to the leaders in points. Rebekah ended up winning the game with 36 points, with Steve coming in second with 34 points. The rest of the pack besides Spencer, who got caught multiple times by disasters and had to skip his turn a lot, were not that far behind the leaders. Everyone said they had fun and said the game just needed a couple of clarification changes for it to be finished. After the game, Scott suggested that the terrain tiles be a bit easier to understand, so I decided to label each tile with the terrain type and movement cost for easy reference instead of all the players referring to the Map Key.

Playtest 5Saturday morning, I streamlined all the rules by moving the Purchase Phase as the last step, which made it possible to buy upgrades on the player’s first turn. I then made it to where a Captain can load and unload passengers and keep moving the rest of his movement points. This really sped up the game and really made the game flow a lot better. I also made a template for a new Captain Card that has upgrade spots for chips to be placed where captains have purchased the upgrades to avoid any more confusion. I decided Banker needed to be a stand-alone character, yet non-competitive player, because of all the bookkeeping and managing they had to do. Then, I made the new Banker Card and

devised a Banker Scorecard which the banker actually used in the final playtest, since I could not find a suitable abacus. The Scorecard has the player name and captain name they are using, a round counter, and space to mark the Survivor Points.I also started thinking of some neat bonuses for the Kickstarter campaign if I ever decided to go that route with the game. For the final playtest, I took the game to another Comics and Games store called Generation X, in Bedford, TX.

We found a really nice table there and Annie set up the board while I looked for potential testers. After explaining what I was doing and describing the game, I ended up finding five guys that were playing Magic: The Gathering who were generous enough to come test the prototype: Ben Dubroca (26), Terrence Samuel (20), Mitchell Campozano (21), Stephen Stark (17), and Noah Bakri (22). Ben read the rules by himself and then Mitchell read the rules to the rest of the guys. After rolling to determine the captain selection order, Ben had the highest roll and selected Marina Volkov, captain of the slowest of the Amphibious Ships. Then, in order, Terrence selected Kaito, Stephen selected Vasco, Mitchell selected Mathilda, and Noah selected Mendhi.

Noah started the game first and the turn order went counterclockwise with Terrence going last. All the players understood the rules and upgrades this time and did not express any frustration at any time, in fact there was a lot of laughter and they all seemed to be really enjoying the game. Noah ended up winning with 38 points with Terrance at 32 points, Ben at 30 points, Stephen at 26 points, and Mitchell in last place with 25 points. The three with the most points were amphibious ships, so I think I need to do a little more balancing there. All of the players said they had fun playing and wanted to play again, but I didn’t have the time to stay. Overall, most of the feedback for Cataclyzm was to flesh out more disaster cards to make it even more interesting. Ben suggested that the board map be customizable so that the players can change the location of the cities, captain starting locations, and the shuttles, so I’m thinking of updating the map by making it larger with more hex tiles, adding more terrain to slow down the amphibious ships, and possibly making removable hexes so that players can create the map the way they want it. Ben also suggested that since the Tsunami disaster card makes it to where all coastal tiles are not traversable to amphibious ships and as a consequence make them unable to travel into the mainland, to make it to where a coastal city has a

couple of citizens stranded in the water tile just outside of the city. The citizens can only last 2 rounds before they drown, but can only be picked up and loaded by amphibious ships and they also give a double bonus passenger fee to the captains that save them. I really like this idea and will be implementing it for the next playtest.Mitchell suggested another idea for the Volcano tile to make the second radial tile traversable to amphibious ships, but not airships. I will think about this and decide if I want to change it later. Terrence’s suggestion was to adjust the population lower for the outlying cities to make it more of a competitive race to get to those cities. As it is, there can be multiple captains picking up survivors from each of the further out cities. I liked this idea, so I will be thinking of ways to make it more competitive soon.