Tuesday, November 13, 2012

All in the cards

Towers of London was originally created with a strict rule for the competition I entered it in: No Cards.  This gave birth to the idea of rolling dice to gain Industrial points at the beginning of each turn.  But it was hard for me, because I love cards!  So another evolution of this game has now occurred.  I have begun to design cards which will give players goals to achieve, increased construction output, extra industrial point rolls, and several other fun things to do while building all those factories and towers.  Once I started designing the cards, I realized that ToL had originally played like Ticket to Ride without any routes!  The cards will definitely add some excitement and theme.






Thursday, October 11, 2012

Top Ten Entry!

Well Towers of London came in 7th out of 30 something entries!  Not bad with the layout i entered.  I have since put everything on an 18x18 quad fold board.  It really makes the game look nice.  The wooden factories and tower pawns give it a finished professional feel.  I took some advice and left out the custom dice and just used standard numbered dice.  I'm happy with this final version :)

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Cutting costs

For this contest (The Game Crafter's Steampunk Design Challenge), the cost of the components has to be under $20.  This caused me to rethink my playing surface with the cost of an 18x18 gameboard sending me over the limit. I transferred the map to a 10x10 mat.  The construction sites for each player are now on seperate 4x4 mats.  This has a nice feel and the layout comes in around $19.50!

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Under construction

The factories now have their corresponding construction spaces in each players border.  You will be able to build 2 factories for 10 Industrial points and 2 others for 15 points each.  You can build each construction value factory at any time a space is available, but you may only have 4 in inventory at a time.

The main factor(y) of the game

The Tesla Towers may be the most iconic symbol from Towers of London, but the placement of Electrical Factories are how you win the game.  Your score will be based on the values for the locations your factories are place on.  Above is an old illustration of what a factory from this era would look like.
Players will place factories of their color on the map as they claim a location on the board.  These wooden buildings are a nice representation that The Game Crafter had available in several colors.  Due to Tesla's dream of the wireless transmission of energy becoming a reality in this alternate universe, these will be factories powered by electricity.

Building a tower

The area for the construction of Tesla Towers has been created.  There will be 2 spaces where towers can be built for 7 Industrial points and 3 spaces that cost 12.  A player may only have 5 towers in inventory at a time. The escalating cost makes spending points on inventory a tougher decision.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

We have a loose cog

I have changed the number 1 face of the die to be a loose cog.  My current design has 3 dice being rolled.  They will be called "cubes of industry" or something like that.  You will add the total of the dice for three rolls to gain "Industrial points".  If a loose cog is rolled, that dice is removed for the remainder of your rolls and counts as zero on that roll.  The "Industrial points" will be used to build Tesla Towers and Electrical Factories and to buy the locations to place them.