Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack, Part 2

Last time I talked about the playmats and screens in the Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack. Now for the new gameplay. There are 3 new chips, and 5 copies of each of those chips. There are also 15 blank chips, by the way.

The three new chips were pretty carefully chosen. First, the flagship chip, and the easiest one to explain:

Custom Combo is hilarious and awesome, and I hope it's self-explanatory. Do all the actions you want! You might recognize the name from the feature of Street Fighter Alpha 2 that lets you string a whole bunch of moves together really quickly.

In Puzzle Strike, you are usually action-constrained. That is, you usually have more actions available than you can actually play. It's much more true here than in Dominion becuase you start with three character chips in your deck in Puzzle Strike, so right off the bat you wish you could do it all. The hard decisions come from NOT being able to do it all, which means you have to choose which actions you'll play. But for the low, low cost of 7, you don't have to decide, you can just play it all! This chip is an orgasm of fun.

The other two chips can have a pretty big impact on how you play Puzzle Strike. The "purple chips" are the heart of the game, and you'll always be buying at least some of them (vaguely analgous to buying VP in Dominion, except more interactive). Anyway, with certain characters and certain banks, it can be a bit too hard to beat people who buy almost nothing but those purple chips. I'll talk more about that in my third post where we cover the character chips, but for now, two new chips open up the strategy space. Let's start with Combinatorics:

This is a pretty direct assault on the purple-only player, as his strategy will let you draw a ton of chips. Meanwhile, if you are building an engine (playing lots of brown chips per turn) or disruption (lots of red chips), then you'll be able to keep your Combinatorics on the table longer. So you're rewarded for playing some of the more interesting strategies while your opponent is punished for playing too one-dimensionally.

The third new chip is Dashing Strike:

Dashing Strike is sort of a magical thing with several subtle effects. In general, red chips (the attack chips) are good for disrupting your opponent, so that you pull ahead in the long run. Even when you use red chips, you still need to keep yourself from losing though. You still need a way to keep your pile height from getting critically high. Dashing Strike is a RED chip that helps you with that. Several other red chips chain into it because it has a red banner, and Dashing Strike itself chains into brown banner chips. This means having reds and browns in your deck helps, and having fewer purples than usual is ok, because Dashing Strike keeps your pile height down a bit.

There's more to it than that though. Dashing Strike increases an opponent's pile height in a way that isn't counter-crashable. This has a possibly counter-intuitive effect: it results in there being more counter-crashing. When opponents are filling up your pile in a way you can't react to with a counter-crash, it forces you to do regular crashes a bit more than you would. And those regular crashes are probably going to get counter-crashed. Note that Dashing Strike isn't adding any gems to the system (it removes one gem and adds one gem), and the counter-crashing is actually removing gems. It's also making it harder for people to build uncounterable 4-gems.

It's actually a very complicated system, so maybe it's best to just lay out the bottom line of the total effect of the last paragraph: the game goes a bit longer and it gives a wider variety of strategies a chance to materialize. You basically have more breathing room to try more things, while at the same time you can make decks with fewer purples and more reds/browns. Maybe you see why I said Dashing Strike is magical and has so many nuances. It's been a big hit with playtesters, so I hope you all enjoy it, too.

So that's it for the three new chips. Two chips that open up the strategy space and one that gives you what you always wanted. Next time, we'll talk about the changes to the character chips.

Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack, Part 1

The Puzzle Strike Upgrade Pack is coming, probably in October. I haven't had much time to write about design stuff these days, so I figure at least I can write about the design of my own things, so you can get a sense of what goes into development, and how we decide things. And in this case, why the product was made at all.

I'll do this in three posts. First, in this post, I'll tell you about the non-gameplay parts of the upgrade pack. In the second post I'll go over the three new chips, and in the third post I'll tell you about some revisions to the character chips. Those revisions are actually the biggest reason there even is an Upgrade Pack, but we'll get to that later. Note that the Upgrade Pack is not a full expansion to Puzzle Strike. That is also in the works and should come out next year, but the point here is to enhance the experience of the base game. Ok, so first the non-gameplay stuff: playmats and "screens."

Playmats

A lot of people asked for playmats, it was actually the #1 request from players. Playmats are fun and cool, and the Yomi playmats look amazing, so it's a no-brainer to make these. It's difficult on the manufacturing side because they are expensive to do at the quality of Yomi's mats, but it's worth it I think.

The reason people want them is to help mark where to put the chips for your "gem pile." That's your stack of chips that represents your side of the screen filling up in Puzzle Fighter or Tetris or whatever. This gets to the design question of what these mats should actually look like. The Yomi mats intentionally do not separate the game zones. They just have beautiful art with some life counters to one side. For Puzzle Strike though, I think people really want the mats to mark the various game zones to help keep track of what's going on. So here you go:

The mats mark your gem pile, your discard pile, and your "ongoing" zone, for chips like Midori's Dragon Form that stay out on the table. The mats also have a reminder of the turn phases (Ante, Action, Buy, Cleanup) and the very, very helpful section that tells you how many chips you draw each turn at each possible size of your gem pile. Having that right in front of you, especially for new players, is a blessing.

For the background image, I thought it helped the overall feel of the game if we show a mockup of what the video game screen would sort of look like. So you can see a character's stage back there, and the UI elements that separate the zones are styled like they would be in a video game. There's even a place for your "next piece" to fall from the top. (That's just for fun!) Special thanks to Boardgamegeek.com member evilgordo whose mockups laid the groundwork for the best way to present the different game zones on the playmats.

Puzzle Strike is a 4-player game, so there are 4 playmats in the upgrade pack.

Screens

Only a few people asked for this next thing, but I figured hey, why not! Sometimes in Puzzle Strike, you can draw kind of a lot of chips. Some people have asked for a way to hold chips other than in their hands. Usually this isn't even a big deal because you pretty much throw down your money chips and play most of your hand to the table, but maybe you have small hands, or maybe you drew a whole lot of chips this turn.

A few people suggested Scrabble racks as a way to hold chips. It turns out to be a better idea in your head than in practice though. Fiddling around with getting chips onto a rack, and just the right number of them is just too much trouble. It's a lot faster and easier if you can throw down your chips on the table behind a barricade of some sort that keeps them secret. You may have seen a similar "screen" as this in the game Revolution by Steve Jackson Games.

So the function of the screen is to let you put your chips on the table while still keeping them secret. But what about the look of it? It could really be anything, so I thought it was a great opportunity to inject some fun and flavor. There are four different screens, each one is a different color. The fronts have a nice texture and the Puzzle Strike logo, while the backs each illustrate a different game rule in a silly 8-bit way.(!)

I was sort of thinking about Scott McCloud when making these. He wrote the awesome book Understanding Comics (which in my opinion is not even really about comics). He also created this comic book for Google when they launched Google Chrome. Anyway, showing a diagram or pictoral situation is a helpful way to teach because it's more interesting than reading some dreary text. These screens illustrate the rule of blue shields being reactions to red fists, as well as three different situations involving crashing and counter-crashing. Those are the key concepts of the game, after all.

For the 8-bit art of these four scenes, I was able to get the amazing Conor "BT" Town. He's painted entire houses, so doing these little scenes was probably just a trifle for him, but his skill really comes through and they turned out great. Seriously though special thanks to BT, who is a member of the fighting game community and a talented 8-bit artist.

Next time we'll cover the new gameplay in the Upgrade Pack, and the time after that we'll cover the rebalanced characters. Whether to fix balance problems or not has a been a big topic lately, so stay tuned.

Yomi Pre-orders, Again

It's been a frustrating wait to get new Yomi sets in stock, but they should be here and ready to ship out in late May. You can pre-order them now, here. Incidentally, I was also sold out of Puzzle Strike, but I managed to get ahold of a just a few copies before the next print run arrives (also late May, along with Yomi), so that's actually in stock right now.

Also remember you can play Yomi online for free on our development server here.

Yomi Cursed Cards

The cursed cards are a set of new, alternate character cards for Yomi. You don't actually need these or anything, and they won't help you win. In fact, they will help you lose because they weaken your character! You can use them as a handicap against weaker or beginner players, or you can play cursed vs. cursed characters for a kind of hilarious lower-powered game.

The cursed characters all have a different epithet, too.

Grave, Wind Warrior -> Rusty Warrior.
Jaina, Phoenix Archer -> Phoenix Arsonist
Midori, Mentor Dragon -> Scrub Dragon
Setsuki, Ninja Student -> Outfoxed Ninja
Rook, Stone Golem -> Tiny Golem
DeGrey, Ghostly Diplomat -> Debaucherous Diplomat
Valerie, Manic Painter -> Depressed Painter
Geiger, Precise Watchmaker -> Careless Watchmaker
Lum, Gambling Panda -> Unlucky Panda
Argagarg, Water Shaman -> Savage Shaman 

You can get a pack of these coveted (ha) cursed cards for free, just by pre-ordering Yomi from sirlingames.com by Friday, May 13th. If you do, you'll automatically get them with your order.

If you are late in ordering, or if you already have Yomi, you can still get the cursed cards. They're just $5 in my store, so no big deal. (One per customer.)

Bundle

If you want to get Yomi, Puzzle Strike, and Flash Duel Deluxe all in one go, there's now a bundle to save a few bucks. Check it out.

Retail Stores

If you're a brick-and-mortar retail store (anywhere in the world) and you'd like to carry Sirlin Games, just contact Dan at Salute@GameSalute.com and he'll arrange it with you. You can also contact Dan if you're a customer who just wants to see Sirlin Games in your local retail store. If there's a store near you that you'd like to support (possibly because it holds great local game nights and events that help build community) then let him know about that store, and we'll reach out to them!

Where Did/Would You Buy Sirlin Games?

I'm basically sold out both Yomi and Puzzle Strike, but I did get ahold of a very limited quantity of each at www.sirlingames.com. The next print runs are on their way, and I'm planning to support your local hobby game stores even more from now on. I'd like your help though.

You can help by filling out this survey and letting me know where you bought Yomi and/or Puzzle Strike, and just as importantly, where you'd *like* to buy those or future Sirlin Games. If there's a great local game store near you that you wish carried Yomi or Puzzle Strike then let me know! Maybe you'd like to have a gathering place to play for fun or in tournaments. Or maybe it's just a great game store that you're proud to support.

On the other hand, if you ARE a retail store owner, I'll refer you to Dan Yarrington, CEO of Game Salute. Sirlin Games is now a proud member of Game Salute, and you can contact Dan about purchasing and promoting Sirlin Games for your store, as well as details about becoming a Game Salute Select Store (it's a good thing!). You can e-mail Dan at Salute@GameSalute.com or call at (603) 401-2080.

Don't forget to fill out that survey. Thanks!

Puzzle Strike Reviews

My Puzzle Strike inventory is getting a bit low, and recent reviews are getting people pretty interested, it looks like!

Drake's Flames

First, check out Drake's Flames review of Puzzle Strike. What's notable and kind of mindblowing is that I think it's the most positive review that is even possible for something to get. I thought Ken B. at fortressat.com giving his personal game of the year award in 2010 was about as good as can be hoped for, but somehow Drake's Flames loves the game even more! Ha, thanks!

Wired.com

Next, wired.com liked the game too! Here's GeekDad's review from wired.com.

Drakkenstrike

Drakkenstrike is known in the board game world as having incredibly well produced videos that show the components of games, to go along with his reviews. Here's his spiffy Puzzle Strike video review:

If you're interested in buying Puzzle Strike, remember that you get the print-and-play version for free when you get it from my store. Thanks everyone!