Big Update: Adding Uphills & More

I've now added uphills and downhills, starting on race 4, which make the races a lot more varied and fun, as well as a game log that should help with understanding what's happening between turns.

Give it a go and let me know what you think! Do you like how the hills work? Do they force you to adapt your strategy? Are they too easy or too hard?

For anyone interested in game design, read on to hear some thoughts about my process as I worked on this update over the past week.

Uphills and downhills

I've been really excited about implementing hills to add tactical and strategic depth to the game. Some new rules apply when starting a turn on an uphill/downhill, like only regaining 2 energy on uphills and not benefitting from slipstream. This mimics real life, where riding uphill means you can't coast and have to be constantly pushing against gravity, and where the lower riding speed means slipstream is less of a factor. On the contrary on a downhill you can let gravity do the work and recover faster, so in the game you regain 4 energy per turn instead of 3, and you don't get an endurance penalty for being "in the wind".

I think this creates new interesting decisions for the player to make, forcing them to think tactically and strategically. E.g. "if I move 10 spaces this turn, I'll land on an uphill, would I rather go slower and regain more energy this turn, or should I try to go faster and get over the hill as soon as possible even if it costs me a lot of endurance? I think hills also influences card choices between races, as some cards are more energy-efficient which makes them stronger on uphills where energy use is limited.

Game Log

I added a game log that describes what's happening during the game. I had early feedback from players that it was hard to understand what's happening between turns. This game log is definitely not the optimal way to solve this issue, and by the time the game is "finished" I'll probably have replaced it entirely with a more elegant solution (probably involving a lot of animations), but for now I hope it does 80% of the job for 20% of the effort. Indeed, the better way to do it, like adding  animations for when a card is exhausted or for the energy being replenished, is a ton of work and probably not where the effort is best spent at this stage in prototyping. There's too much of a risk that I spend a lot of time for example on a beautiful exhaust animation, only to discover two weeks later that cards exhausting is not really adding anything to the game.

What's Coming Next?

I think the cards themselves need a bit of an overhaul. Especially now that there's uphills and downhills, it would be interesting to add some card effects that benefit by the presence or absence of uphills and downhills. For example, I could add a card that moves you 3 for 1 energy (not very efficient) but moves you an extra 2 if you're going uphill (very efficient!). On the opposite end, I could add a card that costs just 2 energy for moving 9 spaces (very efficient), but can only be used on flat terrain.

I also need to do more play testing to see if hills are too easy/too hard for the player compared to the opponents. If uphills are too hard for example (which I kinda suspect they are), I could increase the energy cap when going uphill from 2 to 3, or make opponents go even slower on uphills. I also think I might need to add logic to prevent players from just skipping past a hill altogether (start turn before, end after) without being affected, like it's the case now.