Alone With The Crunch: How a Video Game Pushed One Man To The Brink [Indie]

Bimbo's Initiation

... consider this a rite of passage ... enjoy!!

Another Alpha Test Sequence Complete!

So, last weekend Me, James, Ivana and Nick got together to play through another grueling game of Psycho Billy's House of Slaughter.  It was going faster as intended but had some glaring errors.

Trying the card system out for the first time (instead of random tables) quickly came across some snags. One thing (other than an unbalanced economy of Ranged weapons) was that not revealing when a player found a Scavenger item (or any item they drew) meant that players had no idea where their needed items were.  It should probably be declared by the Host what items are found.  The card economy needs reworking too so the entire card based item acquisition is balanced for different kinds of play.

The difficulties of everything (defenses included) need to be reduced significantly.  Players don't want to fail that often and it really is a matter of addressing the risk-reward for each dice roll.  The difficulties being lower and perhaps the pay-offs being a bit higher is an easy fix but it may require more Items to add to the card economy.  James seemed to have a good insight into this area (even the first time he played) and he was a great asset pinpointing where he felt things needed addressing.

Cracking a safe should be difficult but rewarding.  Nick cracked a safe but it took a few turns and I felt that the pay-off (currently four items) was still not enough.  I was thinking that the Safes should perhaps yield a Safe-only item (of which there are nine) plus find some on the side.

Ammo might be removed next game.  This way ranged style play is not too limited.  I might reduce the ranges on the weapons to reduce the weird kinds of shots that can be made across the board.  Try it and find out what happens.

I killed Lindsay's character three times.  She was a great sport about it.  She declared 'Dead' so playfully once that it would be an excellent sound byte for commercials.  More HP are needed to balance the reduction of defences and give each player more of a cushion for combat.  Food and Drugs and Alcohol should provide more Hp too.

James mentioned that Books need addressing and I kinda agree but I am going to leave them for now as they are easily changed and have to be redone anyways.  I tend to once again agree with his impulse though and will probably boost the bonus to a permanent +3 (and stackable with backgrounds).

Stealth ought to make a comeback for the next session.  I think I heard Lindsay mention how it could work out in a dynamic way.  It seems needed to work much like how Speech worked but without having to target Will and having different Attributes involved.

I am also working hard at getting the starting weapon pool with some weaker ranged weapons.  Nail gun, flame thrower, crossbow, and that sort of thing.  It means that players would start with one Ranged and one Melee weapon. This would again help balance the different kinds of play.

It was Ivana's third time playing and she seemed to appreciate the changes that improved the game this time around.  It was nice to have someone who has seen where the game has come from at the table with me.

Thanks to everyone that came and keep your eyes open for another invite in the future.  I might even do a double feature one afternoon and evening.  Two games back-to-back!!  It might be a nice way to shotgun some games in on a weekend.

Stay Tuned,
Psycho Billy Staff

Fun for the whole fucking family.

Initial Alpha Test Complete.

Good job crew!  We not only got through a jarring 16 turns in the first run of the current prototype board game we managed to kill a few characters along the way.  It had so many things to fix that we spent most of today playing out the suggested changes in a quick running 2 player game with the Game Master having his hands on the wheel of a contestant.  End game looked somewhere around Round 75 and that seems a tad daunting.  None the less, it was a great coupla days at the house of (S)laughter with food, folks and a fuck-load of fun.

We have plenty of tactile elements to the game already!!