A Week of Working For Myself

My first week at home is nearly done. It's felt good, but also slightly strange. It feels a bit like taking a week off, in the past I've taken a week off work to construct lots of games in preparation for a big convention. I think it'll take a few weeks for it to really sink in.

I've spent most of today working on Network. I was concerned that the version that Paul and I came up with on Wednesday could be broken if one player played a particular strategy, so I tried it out today and I was right :-( I've spent most of the day soloing various versions, trying to simultaneously fix the strategy problem and tighten the theme up a bit. Nothing major, just changing hand sizes, scoring mechanisms and also trying out some extra cards that the original submission also came with, but I'd taken out. Network is so nearly there, but it's difficult to stop playing with it and call it done. I guess I'm a perfectionist, or an inveterate tinkerer - one of the two! I'm trying to tie the game tighter to the theme by tinkering with the scoring, so that it 'makes sense' in the context of the game. It's also possible to do it by adding flavour text to the rules, or just rewording things, an example from the Network rules: replacing 'replace a piece' (the mechanic), with 'bribe an opponent's operative'. I'm hoping to do some playtesting on Tuesday night, and I'll take it along to Paul's on Sunday, if people are interested it will be really useful to get more multi-player games in.