An End Faster Than Lysis

Jacob p -

I’ll be missing you all soon, budding bacteriophages. This is the last normal blog post I will be making here. Hopefully the new artwork I did can make up for this unfortunate news. The title of this post is a reference to bacteriophages and their types of reproduction. Lysis is the fastest way they reproduce and I feel like this project has come to an end as fast as this.

Playtesting took a lot out of me this week. I have been emailing a lot of teachers about playtesting my game and trying to arrange times that work. Playtesting itself is fun, but sending countless emails to arrange it is not. I believe I’ve sent out most of the emails and now it’s time for me to reap my reward this week.

While we’re on the subject of boring things, I also did a lot of work creating a guide for the card game version of the game. A lot of the components are the same but the small changes in wording got me. I also have to approach the turn order differently but that’s a problem for another day. Along with rewording a new guide, I also reworded all the cards I have. This took a lot of time and I am certain I made countless mistakes that will come back to bite me. Hopefully, by then, I’ll have a better way of editing card descriptions.

After fixing all the wording, I printed out just over 200 cards so I could start playtesting the card game. I’m getting much better at using the card cutter, but the process is still tedious. I did take some pictures of the printed cards which can be found at the bottom of this post.

Now let’s talk about what was fun this week! I rediscovered my love for artwork and managed to finish all the environment cards in about 3 days. The art looks way better for most of the cards and overall I am very happy with how they turned out. I also started on some icons I will need to differentiate the card and board games on the cards. The icons so far are just a hexagon board and a hand of cards. The colors aren’t very imaginative (just shades of gray), but it was something new, so I enjoyed it. I was dreading doing this for a while, so I ended up creating these icons after I printed the cards. This basically means I’ll have to tell which cards are for the card and board games from memory. I did end of getting 2 playtests done at the school and was dismayed by the amount of math I was still doing to play the game. I am going to try to fix this in future playtests, but the solutions may not work out how I want.

That’s all I have for this week. The next post will be a goodbye post and probably won’t have much substance. I am hoping this project doesn’t go on ice after the project like it’s infected with Pseudomonas syringae. Below are some pictures of the most recent print.

Environment Cards
Gene, Research, & Disaster Cards

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Comments:

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    rohit_p
    I'm really going to miss hearing about your card game after this project ends, Jacob. You spent a lot of time planning the game and creating the cards (with some injuries that are hopefully healed up by now). I'm glad to see you arrived at the product you intended! I understand it will take a little time for others to get the hang of the game. Do you think you'll be able to win all of your matches against your opponents?
    jacob_p
    Thankfully, all my injuries are healed (they were very small) and I didn't get any infections from any pesky virulent bacteria. I have started playtesting already, and Ms. Schneider has beaten me in the board game version. She is a boss at games! I ended up winning the card game version against her, but the card game version needs a lot more modification.
    Memory Bradley
    Wow, Jacob! It looks great and what a great accomplishment. I have no doubt you will get all the wording figured out as well as the math/game play. Congrats! I am so proud of all the work you have done.

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