I would like to write briefly about a change I have been deliberating over the past day.
A few days ago, I looked at my official work calendar and saw that I currently have just over a month to finish the entire project by the newly set deadline of June 04th. I noticed how quickly time was running out and made a hard deadline of May 21st to finish the ‘making’ stage and begin the ‘printing’ and manufacture stage. May 21st comes two weeks before the main deadline. I would also use these two weeks to ‘clean up’ my development blog, put new posts in about any missing information, and deal with other project-related matters.
Since I now have just three weeks to finish the making stage, and need to savour and use every bit of time that I have left, I am now officially making the decision to remove the use of ‘Rival Cards’ from Last Chance Saloon altogether.
I am making this decision with some regret, since the whole ‘rival’ mechanic was originally implemented to tie in very well with both the character design and story of the game nicely.
However, since the gameplay is not seriously affected by the removal of this aspect, I believe it is better to use the additional time to work on more pressing mechanics such as the ‘Mission Cards’ and ‘Player Position Cards’, which, in relation, do affect the gameplay as a whole. Since each character’s backstory already chronicles who their rivals are, not much harm is done in removing these cards from the game.
Keeping the ‘rival’ mechanic means I have to make a new card reverse design and print six additional cards, potentially adding some more description as well.
In the future, when we look back on the project, my teammate and I can view it as a mechanic which, if I had more time to finish the project, would have been a great addition to the complete game package.