Grid + Countdown (Jan 30 2026)

Last time I tried to figure out a mechanic that fit all these requirements: they had to be cards that trigger at different times during the game; they shouldn’t be too difficult to remember; ideally have player interaction built into it. I also decided to add a new constraint to that list: the game mechanic has to also work in single player. This is because online multiplayer games are harder to playtest/show off than single player games, and if a game can work in single player mode, it should be able to. This is why Donald X. took steps to let Moon Colony Bloodbath be played in single player, because it wasn’t hard to do for that game. The tricky part is, I still want this game to have player interaction in multiplayer, and there’s very little overlap for “has player interaction” and “works in solitaire”. Like for Territorial March, the mechanic of controlling areas doesn’t make sense in single player, because the game is about having more troops and scouts in an area than each other player.

Then I realized the perfect mechanic for it. Long ago I was inspired by the hourglass zones in Temporum: Alternate Realities. They start with 1 counter per player; when you visit that zone you remove 1 counter from it, and when all counters are removed, you add them back and the zone does something for all players. The idea is that players have to plan for it to happen, and the bonuses are tied to requirements (like having money to pay, or having no cards in hand). I had always wanted to make a game with that mechanic, where there are countdown cards associated with each action. It works great in this game, where the “actions” are choosing a token to add/advance. The mechanic also has player interaction for multiplayer and works just fine in single player too. Another thing is that this mechanic works best if you will want to use the actions in equal amounts, and this game is perfect since you will want all the tokens. It just solves every problem perfectly. 

The countdown mechanic has a few finer details to work out. The first is, how strong should the countdown cards themselves be, and how strong should your regular turns be? Since the countdown cards affect everyone, and take time before they happen, they can be as strong as they want. Putting power into the countdown cards means that the turns should have less power, because 1) to make the countdown cards stand out more, and 2) if the turns were equally powerful then the game goes too quickly. But I also don’t want progress to feel too slow (especially since it can take a while before a countdown card ever triggers). To speed the game up, you now do twice as much on your turns: you choose a token type, then add a token of that type, then advance a token of that type (could be the one you just added, or a different one), then you may submit tokens and placards. Doing the math: if adding + advancing a token equals 1 VP, and a countdown card effect is 2 VP, and on average 1 countdown card will activate once every 2 turns, that means the game takes 10 turns to reach 20 VP, which seems like a good length.

Another thing is how to have these countdown cards not feel extraneous. Technically you could play the game without any countdown cards, but that game would be boring, as there’s no player interaction and much less planning. I also had the problem of, when/how do players get more placards? I solved both issues by having it so, when a countdown card triggers, everyone also draws 2 placards, and this is (mostly) the only way to ever get placards. The only issue is that it may be hard to remember to draw the 2 placards (as the countdown cards themselves draw your attention the most), but I think I’ll just let that be (plus I’m making a computer game). 

Other minor notes: I found several optimizations for coding online multiplayer games (some out of necessity due to making a game that isn’t strictly a 2-player game), and along the way found some bugs I had to go back and fix in Swords vs Shields. I also renamed the tokens to fit the advancing theme. They are now: art, homes, weapons, tech. It’s possible that weapons want to instead be tools, but upgrading your weapons is a very recognizable thing in games. Finding an icon to represent "art: was hard, since there are many forms of art, but my temporary placeholder icon is a painting palette. I also have to give a theme to the placards and countdown cards (“placard” in particular is an outdated term).

Grid Game (Jan 23 2026)

After some more thinking, I’ve ended up with a game that’s much different than the original Antiquitus. There are still some issues to work out, but I like the general idea a lot, so I’ve started programming it. 

Instead of taking tiles at random from the excavation site, you now have a grid. There are 4 rows for coins/bones/weapons/texts, and 6 columns for values 1-6. During your turn, you choose to either: add (any) token of value 1 to your grid (i.e. column 1); or increase the value of 1 of your tokens (i.e. move it to the next column). Then you get the chance to submit tokens and placards, except that you’re required to submit a minimum of 2 placards at once (to force you to juggle multiple placard rules at once). And of course the placards will require you to get tokens of multiple suits and values. I like this a lot because it gives you full control over what tokens you want, and it makes the different values actually mean something, as placards that want higher values will be worth more points. I also like that the different types of tokens don’t trigger things when you get them, since those were easy to forget in the original game. 

That being said, there are still some gameplay issues for me to work out. A major one is how to add extra cards that shake up the game and give it variety. The first possibility is that there can be cards that sit out on the table and tell you what changes in this game. This allows the cards to change basically anything in the game. The second possibility is through a progress deck like in Moon Colony Bloodbath, where there are cards that let you take a turn, as well as some twist cards that get shuffled in at the start. At first I heavily favored the progress deck because there’s nothing to memorize or forget (which is very easy to do if you just have cards sitting on the table, far away from you). The thing about MCB though is that cards are constantly being added into the progress deck, while in this game I don’t think there will be. But then that means creating and shuffling the progress deck may feel like it’s not doing enough to be worth it.

There are a couple solutions to this (other than not using a progress deck). One is I could tie the end of the game to shuffling the progress deck. Right now the current end condition is when someone reaches a certain number of points, but it could very easily switch over to: after 4 shuffles, the game ends. One thing is, after the last card in shuffle 4, there has to be one last chance to submit things, because I don’t want it to be possible where cards let you add/advance tokens, but it’s all pointless because there are no more chances to get points. Another idea is something I mentioned months ago: players draw a twist that they’ll add into the deck at some point, and there are multiple twist decks. That could also work, but is a lot more complicated. 

Other issues. How and when do players draw more placards during the game? Antiquitus tied it to taking Coins, but this game doesn’t have that option. The progress deck can start with cards that let you draw more placards. But if I’m not having a progress deck, then I’m not sure what the solution is here. Another thing is, none of these solutions have any interaction between players, which I still want. Finally is flavor, since the game is no longer about digging up artifacts and is now about upgrading tokens, which means the history theme and the 4 tokens probably have to change. Which is good for me, because I’m not knowledgeable enough at history to be able to give the placards more names (my teammates came up with most of those names).

New Antiquitus (Jan 16 2026)

Bad news on the current game I'm making (which doesn't even have a prototype name for some reason): I've kinda stalled on the enemies. I just don't really know what they can do to be interesting. Which means I'm probably shelving this game until I figure out what the enemies can do (although there's been a trend where shelving a game is the same as abandoning it forever).

While sleeping on monday night, for some reason I kept thinking about Antiquitus. I know I said I wanted to take a break from multiplayer games due to playability, but if this game can also work for single player that may be fine. Now there were a few things I wasn’t a big fan of in Antiquitus, but a big one for me is the game isn’t simultaneous. I was wondering if there was any way to make the game simultaneous, given the system of taking tiles from the excavation site. Also, the tiles have effects when you take them, but they can be hard to remember, especially since they were just tiles, with no instructions written on them. And when playing Pacific with mom, these issues were apparent too. But the tiles can’t all be identical, cause that would be a boring game.

The simultaneous gameplay issue is the one I focused on first. In theory for a computer game, there can be infinite copies of each tile, which would allow multiple players to take the same tile. But there didn’t really seem to be a way to preserve the mechanic of revealing/discarding cards from the site, or letting players interact with the site (when taking bones or weapons). Then I realized, maybe I don’t need the excavation site at all. There are several games where you deal out cards, and when a player takes one there’s a new one. I’m not sure I like them very much, as usually the cards you want are constantly taken away from you. The excavation site is like that, but even more complicated. One idea I considered briefly is, the game can present multiple tiles at once, and after each turn they’re all discarded. But I think it adds way too much luck, since now you’re at the whims of randomly drawn tiles, with nothing you can really do to get around it. Also this idea removes all player interaction from the game.

To solve all of these issues (in addition to the issue of making the tiles different), I could add a new gameplay mechanic. By default, the tiles don’t do anything special. But an idea I had is, there can be special Rules cards that give each tile an ability, and these abilities can do things like give extra points/placards, interact with other players, and also gain/change tiles you have. It also gives the game more variety, as the tiles will all do different things. I’m not yet confident this is a good solution though, due to 1) a beginner’s game, with no Rules cards, still has all the issues that the Rules are trying to fix, and 2) it may be tricky to make the Rules cards (especially the ones that give points, they don’t want to make you skip the gameplay loop of submitting placards). So still some thinking left to do.