Ezra's Hellscaper postmortem

[droqen]

Q: DID YOU DESIGN AROUND PEOPLE WRITING DOWN LONG STRATEGIES?

A: Not that much! This is from Slay the Spire, not Hellscaper; we don't have a subreddit, haha. Mostly it was a small group of friends giving feedback. I wasn't evaluating based on length of strategy description.

[droqen]

Q: What's the line between removing too much busywork and not enough? Too much clarity and not enough?

A: not actually sure! need to make more of these games. as a designer in the past i was worried about reducing the busywork, but now i think that's wrong-headed. we can add more stuff for people to learn rather than try to obscure the things that are already there? more of an aesthetic choice though, cryptic games do exist that go for a certain vibe

[droqen]

Q: WHAT WOULD YOU DO DIFFERENTLY ON HELLSCAPER?

A: Great question. The main thing is, in terms of bang for your buck, we could have done better synergy? The process I used was starting from finished decks and working backwards, which produced very predictable final decks... could an unknitting process work? Should have embraced more organic chaos

(My thought: Dang, I don't know! I'm leaning towards the first myself, but, hmm. Topic to discuss with Ezra later. I'm not going to try and ask a non-question here lol)

[droqen]

(Nvm I have to ask)

[droqen]

My Q: HOW DID YOU COME UP WITH THOSE FINISHED DECKS? WAS IT AN ORGANIC PROCESS?

A: It was a chaotic process haha. We designed a bunch of cards, then identified groups of cards that we thought would work well together, and then added them in big chunks.

[droqen]

Q: WILL YOU MAKE MORE?

A: Yes I have a lot of ideas.
reminder to self: send ezra https://store.steampowered.com/app/1642010/h8machine/
sent!

[droqen]

A2: It was going to be a minimalist citybuilder, but we pivoted to deckbuilder (!!!). This is my first deckbuilder, yes.

[droqen]

Q: OTHER INTERESTIGN DESIGN REALMS?

A: Game that asks you questions that you respond to. Heist game. More deckbuilders ofc. Horror kick.