By now it’s nearly Christmas 2020 and I have a pack of cards that looks OK and a box to put them in. Time for a bit of play testing with the family, some of whom haven’t seen it.
My grandson had played it with me once or twice because I was in his childcare bubble taking him to school, which is why I know that the game can be played by 7yr olds! That also got me interested in using the game for educational purposes and luck would have it my daughter is a learning assistant so I’ll be looking to her to see if we can make FEZ educational for kids. Anyway, digression aside.
Christmas day passed by pressie opening, catching up and playing with my grandson’s presents, well durrgh obviously!!
Then after Christmas dinner it was games time. First up, FEZ. They were impressed with what I had to show and I explained the simple rules and we were off.
I dealt the cards and noticed something I hadn’t noticed before, the stock card pile was looking quite small. There were only 5 of us, so 25 cards had been dealt, leaving 26 and 1 upturned for the discard.
We all played a hand and the stock pile was almost gone!! We managed to play 2 hands, just, and we were done! Game Over!
Every Failure Brings You One Step Closer
The problem was obvious, not enough cards or too many players. This was disheartening because it made for a crap game. I explained what the problem was and said I’d have to go away and think about it. I took feedback on board and started to ruminate.
We finished the day playing other family party games 🥳 and left for the day.
I slept on it and decided that I didn’t want to limit the game to just 2 or 3 players so I decided to create a new pack that would give 2 decks to play with. That way you can play with 2-6 players. Also, if you want a longer game with 2-3 players you can use both packs.
I modified my spreadsheet to show me the digrams I’d already used in pack 1 and started to pick more to create pack 2. Because I had the spreadsheet it wasn’t too difficult, just a bit of juggling letters to keep the balance of letter colours and red/blue scores equal.
For this pack I varied the digrams and added some double letter digrams, MM, FF, SS, OO, EE, and PP to add more variety of words.
Back to the laborious process of printing another pack of cards with my CD labels. Err, not on your Nellie, I don’t think so 😵💫! I ordered a pack of labels that would cover the whole blank card so I could easily print and stick them onto the cards.
But before that, I thought I may as well design the backs of the cards so I could tell pack 1 and pack2 apart. If I was doing that I may as well design the front of the cards a bit better too and have a design that works across both packs and any future expansion packs. You start 1 thing and before you know it, you’re doing a dozen 🤦🏼♂️
So, I’m back to the drawing board and doing some internet image searching for interesting designs. But what about a theme? Does it need one? Should I just use an abstract, geometric pattern like a lot of playing cards do… naah!!!