July 2020 - Into the Mine

Intoduction to Into the Mine.

Into the Mine, as it currently stands, is a tile placement game themed around medieval fantasy Dwarfs going into a mine to collect minerals for an alchemist. See below for the complementary video to go along with this blog post.

These images above is an outdated version of Into the Mine inspired by the game Armello. The very first iteration of Into the Mine was a very, very basic placement game where you controlled what other players could place down in an Uno type fashion, and the first player to fill their 25 tile board would win. Of course, almost all games ended in a tie, because there wasn't enough ways to affect the game. On top of that, 20 turns ahead, which was when the deciding what players could place down actually affected the game, was way too far ahead for players to plan towards. So, in natural Niall fashion, I initially made a massive over correction in terms of things you can do and ways you could affect the game as the player. With the version pictured in the images above, games would take forever and there were too many steps to actually getting started playing the game (There were phases like, "everyone goes to market" where there would be bidding wars over items and whatnot. However, I did like the idea of having different Dwarfs with different abilities. This allowed for every game to feel different, as not only are players likely to get different Dwarfs each time to play as, but their opponents are forever changing as well.  

How the game, as it stands now, came to be.

I scrawled down what you see in this image here just after I was sat next to my partner as she was stitching together a pincushion made of hexagonal fabric pieces. At that very moment it instantly came together in my head. I wanted to make a game involving matching hexagonal, colorful pieces together. As I mention in the video above, it took me a while to connect Into the Mine with this gameplay mechanic, but once I did, it was smooth sailing from there. I stole some pieces of hexagonal paper from my partner and coloured them in there and then, and got to playtesting. 

Learning how to Tabletop Simulator.

Due to the current situation that the world is in, playtesting outside of my immediate family is very difficult to do. So, I learnt how to make prototypes in Tabletop Simulator. Apparently it is incredibly easy, it only took me an hour or so to learn the ropes and boom, Into the Mine can be played by anybody in the world. So easy! Check the video out above to see gameplay of Into the Mine in it's current state, like I have iterated already, there are plenty of cards and abilities still to be changed, but the core gameplay is there for sure. 

That's it, for now.

Next post is going to cover either playtesting, or artwork. That depends on if the artwork is commissioned and done by then. I am going to be recording playtesting sessions as well as retaining notes from the sessions so I can go over them in detail. I have gotten a lot of questions about how to manage playtesting, such as how to keep your emotions out of it, and whether you can trust your friend's opinions or not. But all that will be covered in the next post. 

Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next one.