UD Con XXIV: Chrono Con

This weekend, I'll once again be demoing Daikaiju Director at UD Con. The theme of this year's con is time travel since Daylight Saving Time is happening Sunday night. Despite those pesky time travelers stealing a precious hour of our time, there's going to be more opportunities to play Daikaiju Director this year than ever before!

How is this possible you ask? Well, thanks to our good friends at Ohio Gaming Brigade we will be demoing the game in it's latest and greatest form as well as playtesting 4 brand new monsters for 11 hours at the con!

OGB is taking the success of their first Dayton Designed event and bringing it to UD Con! Several talented game designers from the area will be bringing their games including Galatune, Bellum, Dwarven Defenders, and more. Here at Hot Tomaly Games we are honored to get to show off Daikaiju Director alongside so many fantastic creations. We also can't wait to unveil our new monsters to the world!

Dayton Designed is taking place in the Atrium at the following times:

• Friday: 6:00 PM to 11:00 PM
• Saturday: 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM

The con is free and so is parking on weekends. We recommend parking in B Lot at the University of Dayton off of Stewart St since it is the closest to the Science Center. We hope to see you there and until next time: keep the good times rolling!

Dayton Designed: The Aftermath

Last Saturday we had the opportunity to run a playtest with other local game designers at Ohio Gaming Brigade's Dayton Designed event. It was a resounding success. The event itself went amazing and we got a ton of great feedback. If you made it out and got to play Daikaiju Director, thank you! If you didn't, fret not. Ohio Gaming Brigade will be running similar events in the future and Daikaiju Director will be making appearances at other gaming conventions. We want to thank Star City Brewery for hosting the event, Ohio Gaming Brigade for organizing it, and all of the playtesters for making it as amazing as it could be!

Now on to the nitty gritty...

The Good

We got to show off the new Daikaiju art last Saturday and people responded very positively to it. The artist did a fantastic job and we will be showing each piece off as they get colored by our colorist. As said before, this playtest went amazing! People were so excited to play Daikaiju Director that we had a line that we couldn't get through with the time allotted. Next time we hope to have more copies of the prototype and more tables so everyone gets a chance to play. The people who did play only had positive things to say and there were more than a few epic moments that surprised everyone at the table, like the Double Earthquake!

When the player playing Vulcanus played "What a Twist" before dropping "Earthquake" everyone at the table knew something big was happening. After demolishing most of the city with excellent attack rolls, the player just laughed and said, "I do it again."

The second "Earthquake" was just as effective as the first and helped cement his lead in Ratings Points. At that point, the other players began to gang up on Vulcanus, but it was too late in the game. A few double-crosses and failed attack rolls later, Vulcanus emerged victorious in the third and final game of the night.

The Bad

Two obvious issues arose at Dayton Designed. The first is that when teaching the game to new players, they often didn't know how to best utilize their Daikaiju's specific strengths and abilities. This is normal for any game that people are unfamiliar with. This led to a few players mimicking other players' moves to their own detriment. This will hopefully be mitigated by improved Daikaiju cards that have strategy suggestions and a story blurb for each monster. Unfortunately, this issue meant that sometimes, monsters didn't perform to the best of their ability and feedback was skewed towards monsters that weren't necessarily as good or bad as players thought. We realize now that feedback isn't always helpful when it's just "Eelian felt the most powerful" and "Vulcanus won this game" unless it's put into proper context. More about that in a future article though...

The second problem we had was in one game the scene counter got bumped and nobody noticed. This led to a game lasting somewhere in the neighborhood of 17 turns instead of the usual 10. While it was great that the testers enjoyed playing Daikaiju Director so much that they didn't mind playing a more, the people waiting to play were understandably unhappy about this. In an effort to mitigate the risk of such a thing happening in the future we are switching from a scene counter die to a large card with a track printed on it. We will also use this track to mark each player's Ratings Points, which hopefully will help clear up player's positions relative to each other.

The Ugly Gi-Ant Elephant in the Room

Or lack thereof we should say. In our last post we promised a playtest of the new Gi-Ant variant at Dayton Designed. Unfortunately, we didn't feel that it was ready in time for the playtest and elected to just run normal games of Daikaiju Director. It will happen in the future, but it needs a few things before we are confident in sharing this new variant with the world:

1. It needs to be complete and tested by the designers of the game. We don't want to give you an unfinished, broken product to play with.
2. It needs the space to be played. As we are focusing on finishing the core game, we don't want to sacrifice play space for the core game to test a variant that probably won't be included at launch.
3. It needs to look good. With the quality prototypes presented thus far, we want Gi-Ant's twist deck and the Gi-Anthill prop to look like it belongs with the rest of the game. 

 That being said, we will be testing this variant along with others at future playtest events.

In Other News

We want to expand the content on this site so be on the lookout for more game design posts related to Daikaiju Director and other games in general. We will keep you updated on other fun events in the Dayton area as well as other cool games being made around here. In addition to that, since research for this game requires multiple viewings of every kaiju film we can get our hands on, be on the lookout for movie reviews! We plan on review individual films as well as series while providing insight into their historical context and their influence on Daikaiju Director. Hopefully this diversification in content will expand our audience and entertain you guys, the readers.

That's all for now. Check out the Facebook page and Twitter for more updates and keep the good times rolling!

Dayton Designed: a Playtest with Other Local Game Designers

If you've been keeping up with the news we've posted on the Facebook page, then you know that the Ohio Gaming Brigade is hosting a playtest night for local Dayton game designers. Daikaiju Director will be there along with many other great games like Galatune, Bellum, and Just Got Real. I'm excited to have the opportunity to showcase a game I've been working so hard on for the past 2 years alongside so many other talented designers.

The details for the event itself can be found here, but the gist of it is that the Ohio Gaming Brigade is running this event at Star City Brewery on Saturday October 22nd from 6pm to 10:30pm. Star City Brewery is a great family friendly establishment that I've frequented myself many times in the past. They have great beer, a fantastic atmosphere, and an extensive board game library that is available to use if play testing is filled up or just not your style. There will also be a raffle with some pretty neat prizes.

As of right now, there will be two regular games of Daikaiju Director games for people to play was well as a never before played 5 person variant featuring the original 4 Daikaiju teaming up to take on the King of the Ant-Hill himself, Gi-Ant, and his newly redesigned Mut-Ant swarm. I recommend everyone who is looking for something to do that evening to come check it out and support local designers. Hope to see you there!

UD Con XXIII: Mad Scientist Con

It's that time of the year again. UD Con is just on the horizon, and I am excited to announce that we will be having not 1, but 2 playtests there this year! That's a 100% increase in kaiju awesomeness from last year!

Click the image below to for more details about UD Con XXIII: Mad Scientist Con

FASFAC is hosting the Con in the Science Center on UD's campus this year March 4th through 6th. If you want to playtest Vulcanus, Space Hunter X, Eelian, and Fenrir come to the Fishbowl between 7 and 8 pm Friday. If you want to tryout 4 never before tested Daikaiju then come to the Fishbowl between noon and 2 pm Saturday. If you're at the convention but can't make those times, find me and I'm sure we can get a game started at an open table.

I'll also be running a panel about giant monster movies for beginners at 9:30 pm Friday in Room 119. Whether your a total newbie or a kaiju film veteran, it's sure to be a blast. Hope to see you there!

Until next time, keep the good times rolling!

An Actual Playtest for Ants

This past weekend I hosted an amazing playtest with some awesome individuals. The purpose of the test was to see how the changes made after the Gen Con Playtest held up while introducing a new monster: Gi-Ant.

Gi-Ant is unlike any other Daikaiju introduced thus far. What started as a joke from the Gen Con Playtest has turned into a monster that may go on to become a fan favorite. It could be said that he is a synthesis of Eelian and Vulcanus, but don't let that fool you! While it's true Gi-Ant can burrow to escape danger and cause city shattering earthquakes like Vulcanus, his real strength lies in his ability to spawn tiny Mut-Ants!

These Mut-Ants are terribly hard to balance. Expanded action economy is no joke in a game like Daikaiju Director. I want the Mut-Ants to provide an obvious benefit to Gi-Ant, without breaking the game, and I believe I almost hit the mark. Gi-Ant didn't win any of the games in his debut playtest, but he was a force to be reckoned with and a lot of fun to play. He'll definitely need to be tweaked before the final release, but there's a solid foundation to build from.

Now on to things that were completely broken...

If you follow the Facebook page, then you probably know that Daikaiju Director had its first kaiju kill in scene 1. This all happened in the first game of the playtest! Fenrir moved, pounced on Eelian, and then played an impressive combo of Twist Cards that ended up doing 6 damage to the space snake thanks to Fenrir's "Vicious" passive ability. Veterans of playtests past have commented on how Fenrir is either really good, or really bad. He's a glass cannon kaiju killer. After this I'm leaning towards believing he's either too good or too bad. I'm going to make some slight changes to his offensive and defensive capabilities, while hopefully maintaining the spirit of the monster.

The other games highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of the other monsters. We had a very even spread of winners throughout the afternoon. Only 2 out of 4 of the playtesters had played Daikaiju Director before, and one of them had only played it at the first UD Con Playtest. Needless to say the game has changed quite a bit since then! We were also joined by a fellow game designer, Zac Reed, who has his own game, Life is Card, available on DriveThruCards.com

Please check out Life is Card here!

One of the best moments for me this past weekend was to see the playtesters have so much fun playing Daikaiju Director. Despite minor necessary rules clarifications and balance issues, everyone had a blast, and at the end of the day that's what gaming is all about.

If you don't already, Like Us on Facebook as well as Life is Card. I should be updating soon with details about this year's UD Con playtest along with some other exciting announcements. I'm currently looking for an artist to help with some concept art. If you know someone or are interested yourself please email Daikaiju Director. Until next time, keep the good times rolling!