The Fantasy Civ Solo: Quests Expansion is out now! You can purchase it from DriveThru or itch using the buttons below.
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I just finished playtesting the final map for the Fantasy Civ Solo Quests expansion, and I learned three new things that will make the map more fun – mountain interactivity, terrain variety, and map consistency.
Mountain Interactivity
Upon release of Fantasy Civ Solo, terrain all behaves the same way (for the most part). A forest mechanically is the same as grasslands, which is the same as a swamp. There may be one or two discoveries or monsters that care about terrain, but generally speaking, terrain is ambiguous – with one exception. Mountains.
Mountains are inaccessible, meaning you can’t travel over them. There is an opportunity to discover a pass through the mountains in the Fantasy Civ Solo base game, but it is a rare occurrence.
For the quests expansion, overland travel is emphasized. I designed the map so that the player would have to think about how to make it through the mountains that dominate the center of the map. After playtesting, I wanted a bit more control over this, and I realized the best way to do that, was allow for more mountain interactivity through the events.
So, I’ve added events that allow for more mountain interactivity. While still random occurrences, these should allow the player more chances to turn a mountain hex from inaccessible to accessible, giving more strategic decisions to the player.
Terrain Variety
I made two mistakes with the map Alex (the artist) worked on for the Quests expansion. The first one was something I just didn’t realize – there are no desert spaces.
Oops.
Why does this matter? My aspiration is to next year release a terrain discovery expansion. This would massively increase the amount of discoveries you can encounter while playing the game, and each discovery will be based on the terrain type being explored. This was how I originally designed the game, though it became too daunting to try and include in the original release.
So, today I’ll see if Alex is available to do an art update, adding desert tiles to the original map. It’ll cost a bit more money, but I am certain it will be worth it.
Map Consistency
The second mistake I made is that my expansion map somehow has different dimensions than the original map from Fantasy Civ Solo. This results in the inability to (easily) combine the maps if someone wanted to.
Oops.
I actually didn’t realize this was something that was important to me, until I started playing. I thought to myself, “wouldn’t it be cool to make a bigger map, combining both?”
Only then did I realize it would never work – the Quests expansion map is slightly bigger (an extra row I think), which means the dimensions are different.
Ugh.
So Alex will be getting two requests in his email from me today.
Next Steps
Even though these mistakes are frustrating to find (especially after I missed them in the previous tests I did), I am glad I found them now. The Quests expansion is about a month away, so that (hopefully) gives Alex enough time to make the revisions as needed.
I also know there will be players out there that are very happy these updates have been made. It will feel much better to have a map that works for everyone upon release, rather than one with a few issues gameplay issues that I didn’t catch up front.
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