Update #9: The Dance Commander
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Mar 29, 2022 at 10:04:36 PM
So, for anyone who didn’t catch out last update…
WE MADE IT!!!! Thank you to everyone who’s pledged and boosted the signal so far. Thank you to everyone who had a hand in refining the game to where it is today. Thank you to everyone receiving this message. We appreciate you and definitely would not have made it this far without your help.
Re the Dev Diary:
A parent should theoretically love all of their children equally. An honest parent will also admit that some of their children are/were more difficult to deal with than other (hi Mom!) With that in mind, let's talk about the Canto.
It was the last designed piece. It is the hardest piece to learn to use, and arguably the hardest to deal with in the hands of a skilled player. I set out to create Zangief and stumbled my way to creating Yoshimitsu.
Early on I knew I needed a sticky piece, a grappler. I never really settled on a core inspiring martial art. At one point the piece was going to be called the Sambo based on the Russian martial art, but that name has some pretty unfortunate connotations in English, so I steered away from that pretty quickly. I considered Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but worried about double dipping because we already had a Brazilian martial arts influence. For a long time I called it Tui Shou for "sticky hands'' from a number of Kung Fu disciplines, though that still didn't feel quite right. When I got the pewter tokens, I settled on calling it the Angel, because in many ways the piece that would eventually come to be known as the Canto was the flipside of the Flash.
The line between over and underpowered for this piece was obnoxiously thin. It's not an aggressor piece in the way the Gale, Torrent and Arc are. For a long time it wasn't able to capture at all. Early versions gave it an area of effect of two nodes as opposed to the current rule that gives it one. The extra area made it all but impossible to deal with. I also toyed with making it so that the piece could only stun one piece at a time and that made it all but unplayable. The ability to drag and capture was brought in because if the only pieces that a player had on the field were Cantos they wouldn't be able to reinforce and the rest of the game would be an exercise in futility, and it would drag on at that. I compress this into a paragraph but I might have spent the better part of a year (maybe more) on just this piece. Eventually I arrived at something workable. Then there's the development of the alternate win condition.
Back around the third or fourth time I thought I had this piece figured out, after the drag mechanic had been implemented but before the capture, I sat down to play with a buddy of mine. He favored the Angel and we played five games. Every single one of them was a draw. The game was at least two or three years of development in at that point and I don't think I had played or observed a draw once before that day. For whatever reason, me and my buddy's playstyles just sort of canceled each other out. We didn't mind in the moment, but I mulled it over for a little while after. It was an outlier, but if it happened once (or five times) it would eventually happen again and a stalemate isn't necessarily a desirable outcome. Luckily, a tidy solution presented itself and even managed to add a little depth to the game. That alternate win con was simple: If any player begins their turn and is unable to play a piece, they are eliminated.
-Nick
Update 8: Success!
about 4 years ago
– Sat, Mar 26, 2022 at 01:48:01 AM
We made it over the line! What a way to start the weekend. Thanks to every single one of you, and to anyone who helped bring the forward its current state. We couldn't have done it without you!
From the bottom of our hearts, Thank You
- Nick
Update 7: Electric Slides
about 4 years ago
– Thu, Mar 24, 2022 at 09:16:13 PM
We are officially over 90%!!!! Thank you to everyone who’s pledged and boosted the signal so far. We wouldn’t be anywhere near here without your help.
Re the Dev Diary:
All creative endeavors require a certain comfort with iteration. There's an early impression of something or a function that something needs to serve. With the possible exception of the Gale, all of the pieces have undergone significant mechanical changes. Of all of them, the Arc has the clearest before and after distinction between being a usable peace and being a piece that no one in their right mind would pick.
To be clear, the earliest versions of this piece just didn't work. I knew that I wanted to create a feinting piece. The Gale and Torrent are pretty straightforward aggressors. The Flash is a trip wire, and thus primarily reactive. The fourth piece (that would later become the Arc) had to be able to strike from unexpected angles, so the martial art that I turned to for inspiration was Capoeira.
In its earliest stages, the Arc was called the Ginga and it would take both dice for movement and then pivot when one die value ran out, turning the piece into something of a wildcard. In other words: It was a strictly worse version of the Torrent.
I knew it was broken. On some level I know what it was supposed to feel like, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work. I had tunnel vision on the Capoeira influence though, and I kept trying to bend it to make it work.
As luck would have it, I was attending a lot of gaming conventions in the Bay Area, and the solution to the issue with the Ginga was nested in the solution to a different problem. Up until that point I had used different sided dice as stand ins for the nascent pieces (e.g. the Gale was initially a 20-Sided die.) Of course if you use dice as stand ins, then testers will want to roll the pieces, this derailed a not insignificant number of early tests. I bought a set of pewter tokens to replace the dice and the archetype names underwent their first change. The Mitt became the Ghost, the Baton became the Soldier, The Flash became the Demon, and the Ginga became the Archer.
I want to pretend the archer allocation was a eureka moment, but it was kind of a choice by default. I resisted the ranged attack because I wanted to keep guns out of the game (they aren't on theme.) I also have a dev rule that anything suggested has to be tested(within reason, I can't afford to see if gold plated pieces play better.)
The piece played better. I was salty about this for a week. Then I was reminded of tethered projectiles like rope darts or chains and sickles. A person who is skilled with a rope dart can attack from a variety of angles and can even snake past an obstruction to hit a target. Every proposed solution up to that point had increased complexity without depth but the ranged attack has been downright elegant. It also gives the Arc a distinct advantage against the Canto. The solution to the problem was as indirect as the piece itself.
-Nick
Update 6: Will o' the Wisp
about 4 years ago
– Wed, Mar 23, 2022 at 08:21:38 AM
A week left and we’re 80% of the way. Thanks as always for your support and signal boosts! We’re all gearing up for that last push.
Continuing with the Dev Diary:
By a certain age, you should stop losing at tic tac toe. It's an easily solvable game. Your first placement should be on one of the orthogonal squares. Your second move should be on another orthogonal square 90 degrees from your first mark. If your opponent is threatening victory, cut them off on your third move and play your way to a stalemate. If they aren't, cement your way to a two-way tie and win. Described as such, Tic Tac Toe isn't much of a game. I still enjoyed it as a kid though. It was engaging, and reacting moment by moment was rewarding. Every win felt great and every loss felt close. My five year old self had very little concept of strategy and, in place of tactical thought there was an intuitive grasp of agency. Agency in particular is key, because the third developed piece in 5 Paths (known today as the Flash) requires the opponent to make a choice.
This unit is often treated like a trip wire or proximity mine. Use them wisely.
Originally referred to as "The Circle" the piece that would come to be known as "The Flash" was initially thematized around Aikido and the reversal of momentum. Back then, the winner of the roll off would eliminate the other immediately. At this point I had established a piece that was dangerous at a distance (The Gale) and a piece that was able to be aggressive in bursts (The Torrent), I knew I would need a reactive piece to draw opponents in. It had to obstruct straight paths to a target. It had to (potentially) punish greedy players. Someone may correct me on this at a later date but I believe the Flash is the single most important piece when it comes to preventing rote memorization in 5 Paths. The locus of skill for the game rests firmly in a player's ability to apply the die roll as refracted through their piece archetype. That locus of skill doesn't shift with the Flash's roll off either. The invading piece makes a choice that carries them across the Flash's line and if the invader loses, the Flash's controller still has to figure out how to apply the die roll. In my mind, 5 Paths is still very much a game of luck and skill in equal measure. The dice are weather. You can't control the weather (at least not as of this post,) but you can figure out how to work around it.
- Nick
Update 5: Tap tap
about 4 years ago
– Fri, Mar 18, 2022 at 07:32:59 AM
Chugging along, chugging along. Thanks to everyone who’s pitched in so far, as well as anyone who’s boosted the signal. To our new followers: Welcome! We’re glad to have you with us.
What makes a decision meaningful? More specifically, in a game, either while setting up or taking a turn, what makes your decisions meaningful? Meaningless decisions are wasted design space, but the line isn't always clear, especially if there are a lot of things to keep track of.
We touched on the relationship between complexity and depth in an earlier post and with every option presented to a player, complexity increases. Complexity in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as it's warranted. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that it's okay as long as it's earned.
I knew early on that there would be 5 piece archetypes, and each new piece would have to be balanced against every piece designed before it. Last time we discussed the piece known today as the Gale, but that wasn't its original name. In its early stages it was referred to as a Mitt. I envisioned that each piece would be based on a different martial art, with the first being dedicated to Western Boxing. I wanted a wide spread so the second piece I designed, initially called the Baton (later the Torrent) was based on Escrima.
Each piece uses 2d6 (2 6-sided dice) in their own way. This is the core of the game. The Gale was the blueprint for all following pieces (roll 2d6 and move equal to the sum.) The Baton would have to feel different. The first step was to create a choice about which rolled die to use. You can take this one or you can take that one, but why would you ever take the lower value? The Area of Effect pieces didn't exist yet.
While we're on the subject: why would you ever pick the torrent which uses one when you could move two dice worth with the Gale? Keep in mind, these were the first two archetypes, there weren’t any area of effect pieces, you probably wouldn’t see more than four pieces on the board between the two players. So why pick a conditional piece when there’s one that will consistently zip across the board? Implied threat was present in the game well before the the Flash or the Canto showed up, and losing two pieces on the same turn can be catastrophic, even in the finished game.
From its inception, the Torrent (Baton) was meant to hit more than once, even if individual hits weren't as "powerful" as the Gale (ie it didn't have the Gale's reach.) So the Baton could capture two pieces on the same turn, provided that it captured after the first die value was applied. It also initially had a pre-roll positioning movement (and the ability to capture three on a turn rather than two) but people were eventually able to convince me that this was overpowered. I do still miss that free movement from time to time though.
In a game where the object is to capture 5 pieces, being able to capture two on the same turn is incredibly powerful.
