Friday, September 13, 2013

Praetor - from hexes to squares

When we started working on Praetor we had two main game mechanics in mind, worker placement and tile laying. The worker placement part was the constant throughout all the versions of the prototype and it held well under many play-testing sessions so it was definitely a 'winner'. The tile laying part of the game was left for the end of the development process and was the part that came with the greatest challenges.

In our quest to find the perfect combination between worker placement and tile laying, the city tiles of Praetor have evolved from hexes to squares.

New Praetor city tiles


The reason behind this change is the way players score victory points for placing the city tiles. Every time a players decides to build a city tile, he must place it adjacent to one or more other city tiles already built. When the new tile is placed in the city, its colored corners will match (or not) the colors of its neighbors. For every color that matched this way the player will score victory points. The more color-consistent the city is, the more points will be awarded this way.




The 'old' city tiles would not allow a simple implementation of the tile-laying mechanic and would add extra complexity to the game, so the evolution was completely natural. 

With the new tiles and the updated graphics, Praetor is getting closer to its final shape. By the end of the month we should have the final prototype which we plan to present during Spiel '13 Essen.


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