Cities Together at the Expo

So that was UK Games Expo 2023, and another great weekend it was. I worked at the Playtest Zone for most of my time there (at least during the days, anyway), met fine people new and old (in relationship terms, at least!), talked a lot, playtested my City State Co-op Game, ate mostly overpriced burgers and pasties, bought a bit of stuff, and played very few games. I'll talk about my playtest first and then move on to some more about other things, though still mostly about the playtesting.

While I was spending most of my time helping other folk at the Playtest Zone, I also had a 90 minute slot booked for testing one of my own games. As it turned out I didn't need to wait for players as I had been talking to a few people about the game through the day, and a couple of them turned up specifically to play, each bringingong a friend to make up a perfect table of four.

As an aside, my opening line when asked about the game was, "It's a cooperative game where you have to attack each other", which is probably the strongest hook I have ever had for a prototype, as it always resulted in some sort of a "tell me more" response. Well worth remembering.

A few turns into the game, showing cities developing very differently.

I wasn't sure about how long the game would run, but guessed about 45 minutes, and it actually came in at almost exactly 50 minutes, which was pretty good, and the players commented that it didn't feel that long, which is definitely a very good sign. I think I took over 10 minutes to teach the game though, which I feel was probably a bit long. I think this was partly because I am not yet used to explaining the game, but may also be a sign that the game is a bit fiddly.

The dynamic was interesting. One of the players quickly took to being a sort of MC, stepping through the turn order and starting discussion. This could have turned into an "alpha player" problem (where one player effectively dominates a cooperative game), but there was definitely discussion with input from all players, and when we talked about this afterwards, nobody seemed to feel that they were being railroaded or anything. I think that this game could easily suffer from having a dominant player, so I will need to consider whether I will address this or not.

My biggest problem with this game is now, I think, trying to get a meaningfully "difficulty arc", as you might call it. In this play through, the players had a fairly gentle start, then in the mid-game they felt that they were under serious pressure, before the last round or so eased off and allowed them to cruise home. From my position of just observing, and knowing what was likely to happen, I could see that the mid-game pressure was illusory, but it was amazing to watch (they felt that they were about to be punished for earlier decisions), and something I would really like to see happening in the game. Basically, what I would like to see is a tense ending, with a few points of tension, with partial release, through the rest of the game. 

We had a good discussion after the game, and I think that one of the biggest points to address is that it turned out to be way too easy to defend against each others' attacks, and the most obvious fix for that is to greatly limit - or maybe even remove - the supply of buildable defences. Without the city wall cards, there would be a lot more pressure and more difficult decisions to make. I might try that on its own (with tweaks to rebalance the decks to compensate) and see how that goes. There was also a turn-by-turn reveal of cards from an additional "wrath deck", which kinda worked, but was an extra thing that needed to remember an additional (simple) action each round, which was easy to forget, and I have a couple of thoughts about how to address this, though I may leave that until later.

After playing, the players asked for a reminder of what the game is called. I told them my working title, which of course is not exactly evocative of its theme. One of the players I had is actually a Greek speaker, and as the setting of the game is currently based on a mythical view of classical Greece, she had a suggestion for a title that we all liked.

As a result, the City State Co-op Game now has the new working title of "Sympolis", which apparently can translate as "cities together", which seems a great option. Thank you so much, Vilma!

Anyway, that was part of my Saturday afternoon; there was a lot more to the weekend.

I arrived on Thursday afternoon to help with the setup of the Playtest Zone. This is actually pretty light work, the hardest bit being deciding how to lay out the tables and chairs, and the rest being largely putting the trademark red cloths on the tables and sorting out the various bits of stationery we have. Other than that it's a good opportunity to say hello to a load of people - although many of them are busy setting up their own stands.

The rest of the days were spent working, mostly welcoming designers and players and trying to put them together, alongside a core team (five of us in total) plus a small army of volunteers turning up to do shorter shifts, and an extra who came to help whenever he had spare time. There were a few quiet spells (largely Sunday lunchtime, but a few other periods too) where we had to work to bring in potential players, but a lot of the time we were finding people just coming up and asking to play something, and far too often there was no space at that point. It's a shame when we can't seat people who are keen to playtest, but I guess it's a good problem to have.

Its-a me, standing by the Playtest Zone.

The way things work is that most of the tables are booked in advance for a period of either 3 hours or 90 minutes, but there are a few tables available to be booked on the day for designers who haven't been able to sort things out beforehand. It turned out that demand for tables greatly outstripped availability. A note for anyone who is considering joining us for playtesting at future events: seriously, book in advance if you can.

On the Friday evening was the designer-publisher networking event. This is an event that typically involves having a drink or two with fellow designers (my experience is minimum publisher attendance) and listening to a couple of talks, generally one from the event sponsor (Panda Game Manufacturing this year) and one from some other industry insider (past years have included luminaries like Alex Yeager and James Wallis). This year it was straight to the drinks and no talks. There was a point when someone was speaking over the PA, but the noise of conversation was so loud that most people didn't even seem to notice, let alone hear what was being said.

Other than that, my evenings were largely catching up with people and very little actual game playing. I can play games at other events, I guess. I managed to spend my breaks looking around the trade halls, and even managed to get out to watch the vikings telling a story, complete with illustrative acting, throwing of water at each other, and bad jokes.

For all the lack of game playing, and the fact that I always leave with aching feet and a befuddled brain, UK Games Expo is one of the big highlights of my year. Attendance at this year's event comfortably surpassed the biggest pre-Covid year (and Saturday seemed ridiculously busy), and I heard really happy noises from a lot of small traders. I'm already looking forward to the next one.