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Last blog, we covered how critical rules enforcement is to giving a better board gaming experience. Just as critical is how Sovranti reports back to the players their options and results in our rules enforced environment. We can only make games easier to learn and effortless to play if players know which moves are legal and how to make the most of them.
Player prompts first responsibility is to tell the players what actions they are responsible for doing at any given moment. The most common and essential is “It is your turn!” or “We’re waiting” for a certain player’s action. When it is your turn, to help with focus, Sovranti uses a clear visual language for interactivity that works on all the titles across the platform. Simplicity is best; we don’t want to bombard player’s with information. For example, cards or pieces you can choose are highlighted in green.
Color is a powerful tool because people can intuit their meaning without it being explained. Red in Sovranti is used to denote illegal moves and negative outcomes like point loss. With red and green in place, we use yellow to denote optional, risky or trade off moves. For example, in Hedgehog Hop when you trade victory points for playable options.
To help explain scoring, Sovranti uses an additional convention. We try to use movement and proximity to draw attention to where the points are coming from. In Sushi Go Party, we have the point values float up from the card combos in the specific player’s area. We do scoring quickly but clearly, going around the table, so folks can learn from how the other player’s are going about things.
A good user interface is effortless to understand. But typically, the easier something appears, the harder it was to design or implement. Sovranti relies on our playtesters and the actual game publishers to be sure we got it right and we have to balance feedback across multiple titles keeping the platform consistent. This can become incredibly tricky, but extremely useful when working with Unique Game Mechanics, which is the topic of our next blog.
Release Updates
Publisher: Adam's Apple Games
Sovranti Developer: Paul
Paul has been working on bug fixes and tech/civ card revisions. Publisher, Adam’s Apple Games, has helped us clarify the Tech milestones like double water advancement from water tile placement. This Tech Milestone is unlocked with both the tile resource advancement and energy resource advancement given to water.
Things to look forward to:
Implementation of the Tech/water advancements
The last of the civ cards being added
More robust scoring visuals at the end of the game.
Publisher: Gamewright
Sovranti Developer: Eric
Eric just finished the initial implementation of ‘Special Order’ along with various bug fixes. Special Orders have had a few challenges. First, it was difficult to present the user with the option of choosing the card to ‘copy’ because special actions are also selectable at the same time in the turn. Second, implementing the visual representation of the copied card was interesting because we needed to show the copied card’s value but also show that card was originally a Special Order card.
Things to look forward to:
Special Order cards early draft
Spoon card implementation
Takeout Box card implementation
Improved stability across device types
Publisher: Fight in a Box
Sovranti Developer: Chuck
A full dance mob of Hedgehogs make skimming possible scoring situations difficult. Chuck is focusing on the Grand Finale scoring animation. We’ll be highlighting scoring groups of Hedgehogs and then inform the players how many points this particular group contributed to their final score.
Things to look forward to:
Scoring each player’s Grande Finale individually.
Cool animations to display final scores.
Sharing that information in a visually interesting way to all players at the table.
