Great concept!
I took rather detailed notes on a successful playthrough (as in, I pushed through to the end):
- 23 rounds before I had 6 cards on all planets.
- The last planet took a long time because I didn't roll a six on it for a while. I would start on that planet, roll through all the cards without getting a 6 to add a new card, and then move on to another planet and unlock cards on planets that were already done.
- In the end I had unlocked 18 new cards on top of the initial 20 (minimum would be 2/planet, so 10). I forgot to note down how many per planet before I reset the game.
- The reliance on chance (only a dice roll) to influence how well you are exploring, and if you can unlock new cards or tokens meant that even on later rounds, I could roll badly and only visit two locations. For example, before I had all plants fully explored on round 20 I explored a location (1 token), rolled a 1 (-2 tokens), explored a location (1 token), rolled a 2 (-1 token). And that was the whole round. See table, below, for list of explored locations per round. You can see that I had a couple of long runs, but that most were 2 or 3 locations.
Number of explored locations and new cards unlocked:
| Round # | Explored locations | Newly Unlocked Cards (Total Unlocked) |
| 1 | 3 | 0 (0) |
| 2 | 5 | 1 (1) |
| 3 | 3 | 0 (1) |
| 4 | 13 | 2 (3) |
| 5 | 3 | 0 (3) |
| 6 | 3 | 0 (3) |
| 7 | 2 | 0 (3) |
| 8 | 4 | 0 (3) |
| 9 | 3 | 0 (3) |
| 10 | 2 | 0 (3) |
| 11 | 2 | 0 (3) |
| 12 | 2 | 0 (3) |
| 13 | 3 | 2 (5) |
| 14 | 3 | 0 (5) |
| 15 | 4 | 1 (6) |
| 16 | 11 | 0 (6) |
| 17 | 10 | 1 (7) |
| 18 | 4 | 0 (7) |
| 19 | 4 | 2 (9) |
| 20 | 2 | 0 (9) |
| 21 | 6 | 1 (10) |
| 22 | 15 | 1 (11) |
| 23 | 6 | 2 (13 - All planets now complete) |
| 24 | 2 | 0 (13) |
| 25 | 6 | 2 (15) |
| 26 | 4 | 1 (16) |
| 27 | 2 | 1 (17) |
| 28 | 3 | 0 (17) |
| 29 | 2 | 1 (18) |
Thoughts on reducing the grind to the end:
- To explore a location, you spend a token. Then, if you roll a 6 you gain a card but don't get any new tokens. This means that gaining a card reduces your token count, and that only 2/6 possible die rolls increase your ability to explore. It felt like pretty low odds for a game that focuses on exploration, especially at the end. But, I guess it is a grim "end times" theme so perhaps it fits. Might be nice to gain a token or two when you unlock a card to make it a bit more hopeful, though.
- Perhaps for every unlocked planet card you get an extra permanent token that doesn't reset at the end of the round? That would mean that the more success you have the longer your runs can be, and the lower the chance of those disappointing 2-explore late game explorations.
- It felt a bit weird to be adding new cards to so many other planets at the end of the game while I tried to roll a 6 on the last planet that wasn't fully explored to 6 cards. Maybe you could sacrifice a perma token (if that was added) to get a guaranteed new card? Or, some other mechanism to give the player some agency over their ability to move forward.
General thoughts:
- Nice, compact game! The color cover image uses a ton of ink, whether or not you print in color. Would be nice to have a low-ink, and even a black and white option of the layout.
- The game is set out as a trifold layout, but it is not possible to print it double-sided such that you can see the Atlas and the d6 table at the same time. Would be nice to be able to do that to not have to keep flipping between the sides to check on location cues vs token usage.
- Would be cool to somehow incorporate the memories that the player takes with them on the race to the Eye into part of the way the world they envision turns out.
- The "how you envision the new world" thing kinda comes out of nowhere at the end, and the whole "different than you imagined" implies that it was imagined previously. Might be good to get the player to put down some sort of vision for the future at some point in the game, and then there are consequences for not exploring to gain more tokens at the end because the vision that they have will be lessened if they don't. Something like that to make the choice to explore more of a drive for the player - so that they can build the full world they have set down in their vision.
- The setup involves giving your character and your ship names and personality. Would be cool to see how the personality could change the gameplay, or if it had an effect on the ending somehow.
The prompts unlock a lot of interesting ideas! I like the way the player returns to familiar areas but discovers new things and different perspectives.