Ever since the beginning of Battle Bash, movement has been pretty unimportant. In the core mechanic model that I posted a couple weeks ago, I saw that it impacted the game mainly by letting you choose who, and when to battle. However, it really doesn’t matter where on the board your battles take place, so in the early tests of the game, most players stayed away from the corners and only went in the middle when the nearest enemy is on the other side of the board. Movement was somewhat predictable, and there were places on the board where battles never took place.
Then, the power up system was added to the game, letting players get new capabilities when they get to the middle square of the board. In most play tests, the middle square is heavily contested. At most points during any given game, there is a player sitting on that square, having just gained a power up. Everyone else is clustered around that square, hoping to be the next one to get a power up as soon as that player dies.
This incentive to cluster in the middle of the board made movement even more predictable than before. Without the power up system, players would often battle around the portals that they enter the board through, which didn’t happen as much once power ups were added. The corners of the board were still almost completely ignored.
I’ve been noticing that players haven’t been using the board for almost the entirety of Battle Bash’s play tests, but I’ve never spent much time thinking about how to fix it. Then, I did one of my first blind play tests. Overall, they really liked the game, having only one piece of constructive feedback: “Maybe you could use the corners of the board more.”
This piece of feedback convinced me that I needed to find a way to make the corners more important so players would use the entire board. The problem was, I had no clue how to do that. Most board games I play use the entire board, but it took a while to figure out how to transfer these mechanics to Battle Bash
In Stratego and Pandemic, there are often objectives that are in the corners of the board. In Stratego, the corners are more easily defensible than anywhere else on the board, so flags often get placed there. Because of this, you often end up scouring the corners in the hopes of finding the flag. In Pandemic, diseases can spawn anywhere, and players go wherever the diseases are. Sort of like how in Battle Bash, players go wherever the power ups are.
The question I had to answer was “how do I make objectives appear in the corners of the Battle Bash board.” I thought about making a mechanic to place free hearts or single power ups in the corners of the board every so often, but I couldn’t come up with a way to add that without making the game way too complex.
Then, as I was in bed one night (many of my great ideas come when I’m trying to sleep for some reason), I came up with an awesome idea that didn’t compromise the game’s simplicity: “What if after getting a power up, players just rolled a dice and moved the shrine to one of the corners based on that roll?”
The next morning, I turned that idea into a mechanic. On the Battle Bash board, there would be five numbered squares with a symbol on them. Four would be at the corners of the board, and one would be in the middle. After getting a power up, a player would roll the dice, and move the shrine to the square that has the number that they rolled. If they rolled a six, they would choose which square it went to.
I’ve tested this mechanic a couple times, and it seems to work really well. Players now follow the power up shrine to all sections of the board, and don’t cluster quite as much.
If you have a problem in your game, don’t be afraid to look at other games for inspiration on how to fix it. Sometimes a tweaked mechanic from a different game can provide just the solution you need.
Thanks for reading!!!
