When Is a Game Done? Part Two

Well...it turns out I’ve iterated yet again! In the midst of this pandemic, My plans to find an artist and designer, launch a Kickstarter for the implied art and design and get something of a finished game out to people by summer have been...waylaid, to say the least. That being said, here are the changes that are being developed this spring, with a hopeful release of the text (playtested and playable) this autumn:

• The first draft of the game was relatively barebones! Which was not a bad thing, at all. If you listened to the actual play linked from the game’s page, you heard what we accomplished with it. But it could better! And so it will be.
  • I’ve expanded the text and rewritten every move, alongside new moves, and worked with the mechanics and currency/currencies of the game. This should make the system a little more responsive and adaptable, as well as a little better supported to explain itself to people coming to it fresh — not to mention, easier for people to interface with who have no experience with the mecha genre of anime.
• Playbooks! There were precisely zero playbooks in the first draft of the game and I have decided to forge ahead in creating them.
  • As part of character creation, I offered some character concepts — Archetypes, as they’ll be called in the final release — and, more often than not, people used those. Which is great, because I listed those to closely mirror the kinds of characters found in mecha anime. By creating the playbooks, I can center those types of characters and give players a workspace to expand or refine that archetype, like any other Powered by the Apocalypse game.

The game feels stronger, even in this early version two. By summer I should be playtesting these Archetypes! Very exciting for me, since I love this game very much. If that’s something you’d like to be a part of, keep your eye on the Gauntlet Hangouts calendar! It’s open to everybody *~

Thanks for your continued patience. The game is coming! Slowly!