Current State of A Taste for the King May 2022 Edition
A Taste for the King has been in development for just over a year now. It has gone through several revisions but has largely managed to keep its core gameplay loop and theme. The main changes have come from adding and removing supporting mechanics. For example, originally, the game could largely be played in a solo mode but as the game has become a little more complicated I have considered dropping this aspect of the game entirely. While the game will still largely work as a single player game, most of the action cards will need heavy adjustments (or be ignored) in a single player game. Once the game is in its final, final form I will consider whether to leave the solo mode in the game.
Other changes have come in the form of balancing mechanics such as adjusting how many cards can be discarded and when and certain card abilities. Infiltration initially allowed you to draw two hands face up, rearrange the cards and then replace them. It quickly became apparent that this was both broken and a little pointless and it became an exercise in your own memory. This was quickly changed to drawing cards face up and discarding some before playing some and returning the rest to the deck. This version didn’t see much if any play before quickly being tweaked to drawing a single “hand” of 3 cards face up, discarding two and then playing the rest. This becomes essentially a light tweak on the standard gameplay loop of draw 3, discard 2 (optionally) then play the rest.
The game recently went through a couple of large changes where cards have some hint or indication of what’s in them. This has helped make the game feel a lot more strategic, though this is somewhat an illusion as the game is heavily luck based.
This brings us onto the meat of the post, the current state of the game. (If you would like to see just the summary you can skip to the end).
Card Count
Using the prototyping company, the game was initially based around two sheets of 18 cards for a total of 36 cards. This gave us 8 player cards, 27 deck cards and 1 action reminder card. However, larger manufacturers often use more standard sheets of 54 cards and this would leave 18 cards unused per copy. I’m not happy with this possibility if it can at all be avoided and so I’ve been slowly tweaking the game to use a full 54 sheet stock. This has proven a little difficult to keep balanced as it has managed to slow the game down quite significantly. With that said, I feel like I’m homing in on the final card count, allowing for a few more action cards, some adding more interaction and others adding a little strategy, as well as more poisons to try and keep the game fresh and prevent memorising a strategy between replays (see Balance of Poisons below for more on this).
Menus
In an attempt to speed up play a recent change introduced the concept of bingo-like player menus. The menus are the score card and the ultimate goal of the game is to eat all the dishes on the menu. Originally every player had the same 21 dishes to collect and while this was entirely do-able in a short number of turns due to the relative lack of poisons, the game could still drag, especially towards the end game. To fix this I decided each player should have only 15 dishes out of the possible 20 dishes (1 dish is duplicated to get a round multiple of 3 for card drawing purposes). Each menu gets a “randomised” selection of 15 dishes and each became double sided to increase the amount of variations from 8 to 16.
This did seem to help a little with speed of play as now there’s almost a whole turn less needed to fill your menu, however certain actions are actually slowed down a bit by this, Distraction for example.
Saying Goodbye to Sides
The game originally consisted of 5 courses but I am currently experimenting with reducing the course count to 4. This takes the menu size from 15 to just 12 and in initial testing, this serves to speed up the game quite significantly. While I will be sad to see 4 dishes go from the game (each menu has 3 dishes per course but there are 4 dishes per course in total), I am happy to do so if it makes the game more playable and fun. I chose the course that felt the least liked, people often revel in scoring drinks and desserts. Mains and appetisers seem an intgral part of a feast and only one or two sides ever really get mentioned by players, so while mains might get less “interest” it seemed best to get rid of Sides both thematically and for the purposes of fun.
Balance of Poisons
With the card count in mind and the fact that there needs to be a roughly equal chance of finding a deadly number of poisons in each course the game now has 12 poisons in it. Originally there were just 3 poisons but with no information about what card you would draw there was a relatively equal chance of drawing a poison in any hand, however with the addition of card hints this becomes a little harder to balance as you need at least a “death’s worth” of poison in each course, in case someone’s strategy dictates they only focus on one course at a time. The current rules state that at the start of the game you shuffle just 9 of these poisons into the deck. With the newly adjusted 4 course menus this gives a ratio of just over 2 poisons per course.
This is then tweaked on a per-game basis by shuffling 9 out of the 12 possible poisons into the deck. If it proves too easy for at least 1 player in each/most games to develop a winning strategy based on remembering which courses have which cards I will look at making the poisons shuffled at random each round or turn. However, from testing so far, this does not seem like it would be an issue in most games and not including extra shuffles will only serve to speed up play.
One final bit of balancing is to maybe change how many Belladonna and Amanita cards there are in the deck. Currently there is only one of each. These two poisons counteract each other but can work normally if only one is in the deck at a time. However, given the nature of random shuffles, it may prove prudent to add one more of each into the game, increasing the likelihood of achieving the special effect and potentially speeding up the acquisition of delicious dish cards.
Other Mechanics
Up until recently there have been about 8-12 cards unused in the production process. I had tried to find a way to fill these using additional functions within the game such as wagers, however as you may know from a previous post, wagers did not play well at all, only serving to slow the game down. I also considered adding a global modifier deck, triggered either at the start of a round or on playing of a specific action card, however with the addition of course hints and the increased amount of poisons needed to make this work, there were not enough spare cards left to make this work in a satisfying way, only allowing for 3-5 cards (maybe 6 if it is triggered at the start of the round). The way I envisaged the modifiers working is you would need more than 1 per round in the deck for replayability, especially if it is on card drawing where multiple could trigger in a single round. The idea would have been that the last card in the deck always triggers the end of the game.
For a long time the game has had a rather under used feature called Refreshing the Deck. This allows the player to go through the discarded deck one more time, ignoring action cards, to try and get those last few tantalising dishes, however I think this will finally have to go and it may become apparent why with the next section. Ultimately, while I felt that this mechanic was needed to fully realise the “push your luck” concept of the game I’m not too sad to see it go, especially as most people don’t take the opportunity.
Discard Stealing (Gluttony)
This is a relatively new ability in the game which allows other players to get first refusal on discarded cards. The person to the left of the current player can say “No, don’t be silly, that card clearly isn’t poisoned” and take it for themselves. At the end of a player’s turn they reveal their stolen dishes and can score free extras. If they reveal just one poison the whole lot is scrapped for that player. This mechanic seems to work quite well for several reasons. One it gives players a chance to score dishes out of their turn for no additional risk which works well for rubber banding and making the end game more competitive but it also helps keep players engaged outside of their turn, which is great! Because there’s a high probability of revealing a poison I don’t think it’s too powerful.
When a player does steal a card they are given the glutton card and the next time that a card is discarded, the person to their left is given first refusal. This gives everyone a fair chance at having first refusal.
The main contention at the moment is should these stealing players be allowed to score just one dish or one dish per course? If they are smart (and very lucky), they could see themselves gain up to an additional 4 cards, which is 1 per course or roughly an extra turn’s worth of dishes. However, if they can only score 1 dish this may not feel great, especially if they’ve managed to take 4+ dishes and none are poisons.
As you may have guessed this is the reason for the removal of Refreshing the Deck. Because people can now steal your discarded dishes, there may not be enough dishes in the discard to reload and I think it will just add unnecessary complication to the game, potentially negating the speed increases brought in elsewhere.
Extra Actions
With the removal of the four Side dishes (and other existing slots) and the lack of space for any significant new mechanics, this has allowed for more action cards. I doubled up two of the existing actions, Infiltration and Distraction to give them more chance of being played against the additional , adding two new actions that I think will add a little more strategy to a turn.
Diplomatic Gift
The first is Diplomatic Gift which forces a player to give (discard) two cards to another player in exchange for one of their already safe, scored dishes. This allows for some mean or nice play where if the current player can maximise their gain and minimise the other player’s gain they should do so but if they feel bad for a player they can maybe help with some catch up. However so far, in testing this has not worked as expected because this card seems to come out as the first card disproportionately which means its action never triggers. Short of making an except and allowing this to trigger once per turn instead of when it is drawn, I don’t really know how to fix this. Distraction (which allows you to steal an existing scored dish) has a similar problem, however it is easier to parse and thus I think it feels less bad when it doesn’t trigger.
I do wonder if it would feel better if the card were an optional play, however it may just be that the card needs reworking or replacing.
Favour’s Fortune
This card, when in play, makes the next two discards go to other players face up. Those players can score any dishes that they get but the advantage for the current player is that they get to see what they’ve discarded, informing them about dishes that will be coming up in the future. Personally, so far, I think this card works quite well, however my concern is around tightening up the wording and rules to make certain edge cases clear, such as the case where Infiltration comes out immediately after Favour’s Fortune. In this case Infiltration allows you to see 3 cards face up. You can then choose to discard up to two. This slightly negates the intended effect of Favour’s Fortune because it doesn’t reveal any additional information that Infiltration wouldn’t. This said, if I wanted to fix this “problem” I would have to write an edge case into the rules that says Infiltration discards are ignored by this card which might feel a little hacky. This is doubly confusing when the main goal of discarding cards with Infiltration is to get rid of poisons which don’t have any effect when discarded through Favour’s Fortune.
First Player Card
Originally the first player was marked on a menu. This worked well when all the menus were the same as one could just be marked with the first player symbol, however short of drawing one on at the start of the game, with the random menus this doesn’t work.
Rounds
The game has recently had a limit put to the number of rounds, something I had considered from very early on but had considered to be a possible expansion mechanic. The game used to end only when someone finished their menu but with the extra poisons this can prove difficult to do. The game now lasts five or less rounds. These rounds are tracked on the first player card and it makes this card somewhat fixed in the card count now. While I could replace the first player marker with some sort of token, I would still need a card to track the rounds. If I need one additional card in the deck I could replace the Glutton card with a token (this would increase the cost of the game slightly but much less than adding a whole extra sheet of cards for 1 more card).
Secret Message
Secret Message has been one of the most revised parts of the game and I feel it could use some more tweaking. Compared to the other action cards (even most of the new experimental cards) it does by far the most action(s) in one card. With that in mind, and being mindful of the component count, I am considering splitting Secret Message into two separate cards. (More on this in a future post).
Current State Summary
Course hints are likely to be staying – Besides basic balancing of action and poison cards in each course I don’t see much change going forward.
Bingo-style menus. I think the bingo style works, it gives everyone a different goal and makes it feel a little more like everyone is playing the same game instead of separate concurrent instances of the game.
Extra poisons shuffled into the deck seem to work well to mitigate memorising a strategy but more testing is needed to see if this shuffling is required more frequently in the game than just at the start.
Extra Actions – I think having extra Distraction and Infiltation works quite well but I’m not too sure about the new actions. While I like the intention of them I’m not quite sure they work quite how I want yet. This can be tweaked and balanced with more play testing.
Discard stealing (Gluttony) – This works really well as a light interaction mechanic that keeps other players engaged out of their turn. I foresee it staying for the rest of the game’s development, it’s just a case of tweaking how it works until it feels optimally good.
Reduced Courses – The reduced course count makes for an easier to play game and allows for the menu to be less cluttered, with larger icons that are easier to distinguish. While I will be sad to see the dishes go, especially as people seem to like the Pochee (poached eggs) and Ryse (saffron rice) I do think it will ultimately help the game.
Rounds – I think limiting the game to 5 rounds works fairly well. While the game usually lasts about this amount of time anyway, it seems to help that there is a fixed limit in case it proves difficult to get the last few cards to trigger the end game. I think sticking to 5 rounds even with a 4 course menu works well as it gives everyone one extra push to get the cards they need. I will likely need to rename the courses for the rounds to reflect the removal of Sides from the game. Perhaps renaming it as some sort of Encore or Aperitifs.
Secret Message – While this card is currently being tested with a mild revision, I suspect it may need some more tweaking before I can consider it finalised (more about this in a future post).
Extra Indicator Cards (First Player and Glutton) – While I don’t really foresee the need to replace these I would favour replacing the Glutton card over the First Player card as the First Player card has the dual purpose as the round tracker and I think it works well with both functions.
Global Modifiers – I’m slightly sad that there isn’t room for this mechanic in the card count as I think it could add some really interesting chaos into the game. I will keep it in mind as a potential expansion mechanic in the future, along with several others (some of which have partially made it into the game in other forms). I do think the game has hit its mechanic limit, especially in terms of card-based mechanics. It may be that this can be introduced as an expansion mechanic but this depends on how much complexity it adds to the game, potential card count for both the global modifier deck and any other cards that come as part of the expansion. If there are not enough cards to produce the expansion I would rather not make it and I don’t want the expansions to add so many extra mechanics that the game becomes bloated.
If you would like to play the game in its current state, feel free to join the official Drentsoft Games Discord server or hit me up during a Twitch stream and we can test it. In fact bring some friends and we can try to break it with as many people as possible!
