Feedback on Bible themed board game

ajharmon89

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Next week I plan to launch a board game on Kickstarter that will teach people when and where significant events in scriptures occurred. I've linked the preview page below and would love to get feedback if there's anything you'd change on the page before it goes LIVE.

I see this game as a great option to play in Sunday School and Youth Group. Unlike most Bible themed games it is not trivia based so it is not dependent on people having previous knowledge, but as you play you will have to find the location of your event cards and then travel to where the events occurred.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andrewharmon/1363812781?ref=373301&token=83a9c18f
 
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Citanul

Well, when exactly do you mean?
May 31, 2006
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Oh, thanks for the heads up. The link has been updated. Thanks for taking a look!

Thanks, it worked. I don't have time right now to write up detailed feedback, so I'll get to that when I can, but I will say that it looks like a decent game with a well laid out Kickstarter page, so you've definitely done a good job.
 
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Citanul

Well, when exactly do you mean?
May 31, 2006
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As promised, here are my thoughts.

It's a very good price for the game, which weirdly is a slight concern as $10 is quite low for worldwide shipping. I assume that you've done your research into just how much it would cost, but I wouldn't want to see you end up losing money on this because you priced it too low.

Other than that, the only thing I would like to see on the Kickstarter page is a video of the game being played. The Dice Odyssey review did cover the basics, but I find that watching a playthough gives a better feel of how the game works than a review does, especially if it's one that talks through why players are making the decisions they do.

As for the game itself, I have a few comments to make, although I accept that these may have been things you've already considered.

I have to admit that I found the time capsule element a bit jarring, something which was commenting on in the review. I get how it fits in, but it doesn't really gel for me, and I wonder if that could be off-putting for experienced board gamers who might already have reservations about the game due to the tendency for Christian entertainment to not always be that good.

I wasn't that keen on the way the placement of the portals was handled. The rulebook gives three suggested locations and then says that they can also be placed anywhere, which is a little too open for me as I feel that it might hamper setup a bit if there needs to be a decision made about the placement. If variable initial placement is going to be a feature then I'd prefer some way of randomising the placement rather than letting the players decide.

Alternatively, there could be some predefined placement options which could be chosen from, maybe ranging in difficulty, perhaps with the hardest only having two portals, or there could be some way of randomly selecting those placement options. That then raises the possibility of the portal locations changing during the game, but adding a new gameplay element like that might change things too much.

Not that it's ever really been an issue, but I prefer to have something in front of me which reminds me of what colour I am e.g. a player board or unplayed pieces. Neither of those are options here, but what could work would be to have a reference card in each player's colour.

And on the topic of colour, since card colour is important, have you checked the choice of colours for colour-blindness? That's something which I've seen come up from time to time in board game discussions.

Finally, and this is something that I don't expect you to act on, the one thing that would be holding me back from backing this game is the lack of a solo option. For various reasons I end up playing board games by myself more than with other people, and if I owned this game I probably wouldn't be able to get it to the table on the rare occasions that I do play with other people.

I can see that there's the potential for a solo variant other than simply beating a high score, but I do realise that developing one would would take time and effort, and at this stage of the game's development the number of people you would end up attracting by making it soloable might not be enough to make it worth that time and effort.
 
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Citanul

Well, when exactly do you mean?
May 31, 2006
3,424
2,621
45
Cape Town, South Africa
✟208,842.00
Country
South Africa
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And just to add, you might get more feedback if you were to post about this in General Hobbies and Interests or Gamers Zone (although that tends to be more about video games) as it might attract a bit more interest there. I only discovered this thread because I saw it in the New Threads sidebar, but wouldn't have otherwise as Children and Youth Ministry isn't an area of CF that I ever visit - as an aside, board games are very definitely an adult pastime, so as an avid I gamer I have a slight objection to it being posted here.
 
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