Meow! A new $9 deduction game from Jellybean Games
over 4 years ago – Thu, Aug 08, 2019 at 08:36:29 PM

Hey Dracula’s Feasters!

Nothing new to announce in the world of Dracula’s Feast (although that will change very soon - stay tuned!) but I thought I'd pop in and let everyone know about a unique new deduction game that's currently live on Kickstarter!

Just like Dracula’s Feast, it's a gorgeous little Jellybean game from a gorgeous designer (shucks, you're too kind!) that brings a unique twist to deduction, and it's only $9!

Meow!is a game of secret rules for 3-12 players: at the start of the game, you only know the rules in your hand and the rules held by the player to your left. You win the game simply by playing a card without breaking any rules (held by anyone) - if you break a rule, the entire table will learn it, and your turn will end.

Just play one card to win! How hard can it be?

Watch your other players to see what rules they're following, and deduce (or bluff) your way to victory! Based on the classic parlour game Mao, we're offering two versions of the game - a more complex version for gamers (The Cult of Cat), and one geared more towards families (Kitten Cabal).

What's more, the two versions shuffle together for even more replayability!

I love it, but you could argue I'm as biased as I am gorgeous, so here are some reviews that confirm what a hoot it is:

If that sounds interesting to you, the game has one week left on Kickstarter - check it out! We've already unlocked almost 20 promo cards, and we're about to hit 700% funded!!

Dracula's Feastquel?

Dracula's Feast was always intended to be part of a series - if you're a KING KONG or higher backer, get in touch! We're about to enter playtesting on The Night of the Mummy, and I want to make sure you get your advance playtesting copy. Send me an email on [email protected] with your backer number, and I'll take care of that for you. :D

That's all for now! Thanks so much for your support,

-Peter C. Hayward

Dracatula's Meowfeast

What's new in Dracula’s Feast: New Blood
about 5 years ago – Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 11:22:00 PM

EDIT: I posted this on the wrong campaign, but...I was about to come over and point you to this update anyway, so all's well that ends well!

Here's a link to the new campaign, if you want to jump onboard!

Hey!

First of all, I have some exciting news: we unlocked a new stretch goal last night! The Bride of Dracula is now going to come with every Kickstarter copy of Dracula’s Feast: New Blood! 

We did it!!

Here she is, in all her vampiric glory:

I’ll be posting a little bit more about her ability (and how it affects the game) over the weekend. For now, I wanted to discuss exactly what the changes are between New Bloodand the first edition ofDracula’s Feast!

Dracula’s Feast: New Blood - what’s new

A few people have asked for a list of the differences between Dracula’s Feast and Dracula’s Feast: New Blood - the art is all-new, obviously, and the game is going to be coming in a larger box (the same size as the Village Pillage box). As well as that, we upgraded the Accusation cards to be Tarot-size (to match the rest of the cards).

But the mechanical differences are a little more complex, and so I wanted to put together a full list. If you’re not interested in game design specifics, you can safely skip the rest of this entry! It’s mostly going to be me nerding out about something I’m super passionate about. Game develpment!

If that sounds fun to you - read on!

The Big

I want to start by talking about what I consider to be the three biggest changes: Advanced Guests, Revealed Characters and Dancing.

Advanced Guests: Because Jellybean Games makes family-friendly games, I’m always looking for ways I can make our games easier to teach. The easier a game is to teach, the more likely it is to come out at a family gathering - and the more fun people are going to have in their first play.

The first edition of Dracula’s Feast had a list of recommended ‘first play’ guests, but it didn’t scale particularly well (I didn’t want to include a list for every possible player-count) and - as you'll see later - even among the 'first play' guests, there was a lot of messy rules to remember. 

Back in the before-times, when Dracula’s Feast was still just a prototype, characters used to have a ‘complexity rating’, from one to three. As the game got simpler, the complexity rating went away...but as I was putting New Blood together it occurred to me that a few characters made for a substantially more challenging first play than others.

And lo, Advanced Guests were (re)introduced:

•  Alucard and The Witch (because they lie, but only some of the time) and 
•  Zombie (because she has slightly more complicated rules that she has to follow). 

Add more Advanced Guests to make a game longer, or leave them out for a shorter/teaching game!

Revealed Characters: In the first edition, revealing your role eliminated your powers. This was to slow down some of the more powerful characters (especially those who only needed to target one character to win), as well as to remove weird edge cases and act as a bit of a deterrent.

The idea was that if you were, say, Van Helsing, you only got one chance to find Dracula. If you mess up - too bad! You should have waited a little longer.

In practice, however, it ended up adding a few edge cases. There was more than one character in the original set who needed “Keep this ability even when you’re revealed” written on their card. Not the end of the world - rules exceptions are a standard part of thematic, text-driven games - but it was clunkier than it needed to be.

As well as that, I (eventually) realized that revealing your role is its own deterrent. Once you’re revealed, other people are more likely to accuse (since they have some concrete information) which means that other people are more likely to accuse...it’s rare for a revealed player to take a second turn (though certainly possible, especially in quick-to-accuse groups).

Lastly, and this is something that bothered no one but me, the rule was technically “revealed characters lose their powers at the end of their turn”. Why? Well, the first step of an accusation is to reveal your role. If you lose your powers as soon as you reveal, we would have been unable to include any powers that care about accusations. 

Again, this isn’t something that anyone else cared about, but the overly specific wording of when lack of powers kicks in (in such a light game) has always bugged me.

When you’re designing a game (especially a family-friendly game like this one) you want as few rules as possible. Ultimately, “revealed characters lose their powers” was an unnecessary rule (once we rewrote some characters) and I was very happy to remove it.

Dancing: In the original version of Dracula’s Feast, your turn ended when your dance was rejected. The idea was for it to be high-risk, high-reward: if it succeeds, you get to know exactly what role someone else is. If it fails, you don’t get anything (except information that everyone else at the table also learns).

In Dracula’s Feast: New Blood, you get an additional action when your dance is rejected - an inquiry, which you can direct towards any other player. 

Why the change?

Well, a lot of the gameplay in Dracula’s Feast depends on the group you’re playing with. Some people play it risky, accusing when they think they even have a small chance of winning. Others like to know for sure who everyone is before they attempt an accusation.

In the groups we playtested with, people would regularly dance. After the game was released, however, we found that a lot of players didn’t see the point. When you ask someone to dance, their response is public - if they refuse, everyone at the table knows that they can’t be one of the characters who accept all dances. If they accept, you see who they are...but they see your card as well, making it an even transaction.

And so some groups (quite reasonably) simply never danced. This makes the game a lot less fun - it essentially removes one third of the mechanics - and drastically changes the balance of several characters.

So for New Blood, I knew I had to incentivize dancing. With the new rule, asking for a dance is never a wasted action - it results in more dancing, and more consistent play experiences between groups. It also meant we needed to rebalance the characters, which brings me to...

The Small

There were a number of small changes - query to inquire, a general cleaning up of the rules and the rulebook - but most of the little tweaks between the two editions were to the characters.

The only character from the game who has seen absolutely no changes between the first edition and New Blood is the Trickster. 

Everyone else, however, saw at least a minor adjustment to their powers. Let’s dive in!

Dracula: Drac probably has the smallest change - he’s still unable to be the Mystery Guest, but his ability went from “At the end of the turn where you’re revealed, you may accuse again” to “If your first accusation fails, try again at the end of the turn.”

Within the base set of Dracula’s Feast, there's only one way to be revealed - to accuse. Some of the promo cards and cards from the expansions (and future sets) could reveal you in other ways, but ultimately 99% of Dracula’s reveals were going to come from accusing. 

As a younger designer, I thought it would be cool and quirky to have Dracula's base power hint at these alternative ways one could be revealed. In New Blood, I finally realized that 'cool and quirky' is just 'confusing to new players', and made an unsuccessful accusation the trigger, as it should always have been.

Alucard: For the first Dracula’s Feast campaign, I wrote up a number of designer diaries, including one where I went through every single version of Alucard over the game’s 3+ years of development.

During the campaign for the first edition, we made a major rules change that resulted in all the characters needing to be rebalanced. Alucard got a pretty hefty power increase, but after another year or two of playtesting, I came to the conclusion that we hadn't gone far enough. Original Dracula’s Feast Alucard won by being accused of being Dracula - New Blood Alucard can also win by dancing with him!

This does a few things, but the biggest effects are that it makes Dracula less likely to dance when Alucard is in the game and - of course - makes Alucard more likely to win.

Drac being less likely to accept dances means that other players (including Alucard) can fake being Dracula more easily, which makes Van Helsing’s job harder, which means that Dracula can double bluff by accepting dances, which is a risk...and all at the same time Alucard doesn't want to dance (so he can pretend to be Dracula) but also does want to dance in case he gets lucky and finds Dracula.

This small change ultimately added quite a lot of satisfying depth to the game, and I’m really happy with it.

Lastly, Alucard became one of the Advanced Guests, mostly because Dracula needs to play so differently when he's in the game. If Dracula and Alucard dance, it's possible for the game to end on the first turn - losing (or winning) immediately because someone hadn't yet understood the implication of their actions is an extremely dissatisfying first play experience!

Boogie Monster: Everyone’s favourite dancing beast used to get a free accusation when anyone rejected her dance request. Dance requests are now more powerful (and thus dancing is more common) which means removing this doesn’t affect her balance, but makes her card much easier to parse. Win-win!

Doctor Jekyll: The old Doctor Jekyll had to reveal and switch with the Mystery Guest after she made an inquiry. This made it sort of interesting to watch for someone who isn’t inquiring other players, but it also resulted in a lot of people getting the rule wrong.

One of the aims with New Blood was to severely reduce the number of “oh wait sorry everyone I made a mistake, everything you know is wrong, we need to start again” situations which were annoyingly common in the first edition.

The new Doctor Jekyll accepts all dance requests (the game works best when a certain number of characters do, and I had to remove a few of the old characters who always danced) and can reveal at the end of any turn to switch with a Mystery Guest. It’s the same basic power, but less fiddly, harder to screw up, and slightly more powerful!

Van Helsing: The old Van Helsing was overpowered. 

I didn’t want to believe it. My playtesting had shown that she didn’t win a disproportionate amount of time. But the majority of my playtesting had been with an old build of the game (back when accusations worked very differently) and when I was testing the new version, it was mostly with people who had played the old version for many years, and knew all the tricks.

In the first edition, Van Helsing could win simply by finding (and accusing) Dracula.  With very experienced players, this was only a tiny bit stronger than the other top-tier characters. But with new players, she was a powerhouse.

Making her balanced for new and experienced players was one of my primary goals with the new edition, and I'm pretty happy with what we came up with.

The new Van Helsing can still win by accusing only Dracula. But first, there needs to be an accusation that reveals all ‘No’ cards. It’s theoretically possible for another player to hit this by chance, but a smart Van Helsing will misaccuse deliberately, spending time narrowing down some of the other characters before honing in on her target.

I’m really proud of this change, particularly how well it scales. Having to only accuse one person is much more powerful in an eight-player game compared to a four-player game, but your chances of accidentally getting a ‘Yes’ in the mix increases substantially as well.

Van Helsing: no longer broken!

Four-Player Mode: When I was putting the first edition together, I was really fixated on this idea that the setup had to be identical no matter how many people you’re playing with. As a result, it was always “one guest card per player, plus one”, with an extra Mystery Guest included as an optional variant.

What I failed to take into account is that any game you sell will almost always be played with the smallest player count (excepting solo modes). A lot of people pulled out the first edition of Dracula’s Feast with four players, and were disappointed to discover it was over before everyone even got a turn.

The correct move is to play a four-player game with two Mystery Guests, and that’s what the New Blood rulebook specifically tells you to do.

(I spent a while trying to get New Blood to work with people always having two Mystery Guests, but boy oh boy. At 6+ players, that’s like a mega advanced mode. Try it out, if you like a brain-burner!)

The New

Trickster remained the same. Dracula, Alucard, Boogie Monster, Doctor Jekyll, and Van Helsing got minor tweaks.

The other guests were completely rewritten.

Let’s start with who’s missing: a lot of people found the presence of Beelzebub in the original game offensive - having a stereotypical appearance of the devil alongside a lot of clearly fictional characters. I never want to offend people with my games, so he was removed and replaced with The Swamp Creature.

Werewolf was a fun (but also overpowered) character. Since the first campaign, I’ve been working on the sequels (Dracula’s Feast: New Blood is the first in the Masquerade series, a collection of standalone games with similar base mechanisms) - it occurred to me that such an iconic character should be more than a sidekick in Dracula’s game.

If we the series can continue long enough, the fourth game will be The Howl of the Wolf Man (or possibly The Curse of the Wolf Man), introducing a whole bunch of cool new Wolf-specific abilities. Fingers crossed!

And so Werewolf was removed and replaced by The Ghost.

Lastly, I came up with an idea for a tenth character. Originally, The Witch was going to be a stretch goal, but the more I played with her, the more I knew that I wanted her in the game no matter what level of funding we hit (stretch goals are for enhancements, not core parts of the game) and so Dracula’s Feast: New Blood launched with the full roster of 10 characters. Let’s have a look at these newbies!

Zombie: Zombie isn’t a new character, but she has a brand new ability! This one was devised by one of our developers, David Stephenson - originally, the character he wrote this for was a Golem, but I quickly realized how perfectly it fit the Zombie. 

If the player before the Zombie dances, she has to request a dance on her turn. If her dance request is rejected, she may reveal the player who rejected her and immediately accuse (a more powerful version of the ability we took away from the Boogie Monster).

It’s such a perfect zombicidal ability - mindlessly following the player before you, but (thanks to the new dancing rules) not having your turn ruined as a result. 

With this second edition, I really wanted to get rid of rules that forbade players from doing certain things (such as Doctor Jekyll’s inquiry restriction from the first edition) - they just give people too much opportunity to mess up without realizing, which removes other players’ ability to deduce who everyone is, and can be a frustrating experience.

This card is the one exception to that rule, which is why she's an Advanced Guest. We're hoping people will only pull her (and the other Advanced Guests) out once they've gotten the hang of the game, leading to fewer missteps!

The Ghost: When she’s given an incorrect accusation card, she may immediately reveal and make an accusation with the card she’s given. 

This is not only a fun little ability (just like Alucard, she can essentially steal an accusation) but also serves to add a little risk to the accusations of characters like Van Helsing and Dracula.

The original Werewolf was fun, but very powerful, and added an awkward stage where you announce your intention to accuse...and then pause and wait for Werewolf to interrupt before you reveal your card. I wanted to eliminate those awkward moments, which The Ghost very much helps with!

Swamp Creature: The original Zombie could win by accusing their neighbors, had to accept all dances, and couldn’t ask their neighbors to dance. 

When the Golem ability was given to the Zombie, the Zombie's ability was moved over to the Swamp Creature - he's lurking beneath the mud, ready to strike. (I actually think Swamp Creature getting this ability is much more thematic than Zombie having it).

He still accepts all dances, but now he wins simply by accusing his neighbors...unless one of them is revealed (at which point, he has to win the same way as anyone else). So much simpler!

The Witch: I know you’re not supposed to pick favorites, but The Witch is definitely the card I enjoy playing with (and against) the most.

Her ability is simple: she lies to her neighbors. If a neighbor asks her if she’s the Witch, she says No. If they ask her if she’s anyone else, she says Yes. To everyone who isn’t her neighbor, she responds honestly.

This makes the deduction much trickier, especially if Trickster is in the game as well. It also makes the Swamp Creature’s job a whole lot harder - he only cares about his neighbors, and when The Witch is in, he has to really work to learn who she is.

The Witch, it should go without saying, is the third Advanced Guest (and probably the one I recommend introducing last). If you liked the deduction puzzle of Dracula’s Feast, you’re going to love it with The Witch in the mix.

So, those are the changes! As you can see, it was mostly about streamlining, with a little bit of balance thrown in. 

I’ve spent the better part of a year cleaning the game up, rebalancing the roles, simplifying the rules and making sure that everything is as smooth as possible. The fun of this game is in the thematic, bluffy puzzle at the center of it - my goal was to eliminate anything that made that harder to understand!

Dracula’s Feast: New Blood is easier to teach/learn, the rules stick in your head far more easily, and it's just an overall cleaner experience.

Whoof! That sure was a lot of words. Hopefully I've covered all the changes between the two editions. If you think I'm missing something, tell me what!

I’ll be back this weekend to talk about the Bride of Dracula. In the meantime, let me know if you enjoyed this wall of words about game design - a few people have been asking why we don't just rerelease Cthulhu & Friends alongside New Blood,  and I'd love to dive in and give a proper explanation.

Thanks so much for your support,

-Peter C. Hayward

Dracula’s Feast: New Blood is LIVE!
over 5 years ago – Tue, Jan 22, 2019 at 10:19:51 PM

Vampires and Zombies, it's time! 

The campaign for Dracula’s Feast: New Blood is LIVE! With ten unique characters (and some that we're hoping to unlock through stretch goals), gorgeous new art, streamlined and rebalanced rules, and even MORE names on the box, this is the ultimate version of Dracula’s Feast.

What's more, I made the video and I'm really proud of it. If nothing else, head over to the campaign page and check out the video!

Also, we found a few copies of the original Dracula’s Feast - if you're missing Tania's art and want to get another copy (for a friend, say) there's a pledge level just for you!

Dracula’s Feast: New Blood - it's going to blow your mask off.

Check it out!

Dracula's Feast: New Blood launches in TWO WEEKS! Rulebook within!
over 5 years ago – Tue, Jan 08, 2019 at 11:10:51 PM

Hey!

I've been work work working on the Kickstarter for Dracula’s Feast: New Blood, the second edition of Dracula’s Feast, and I'm excited to announce that it launches in two weeks, on the 22nd of January! I just finished the final round of blind playtesting - the game is done, balanced, smooth, fun, and holy heck am I excited. :D

Because you were generous enough to support the first edition, I thought I'd give you a special sneak preview - the rulebook! This contains all the updated rules and roles for New Blood - enjoy!!

Man I am excited for this to launch. This is probably my favourite game I've designed, and I really think this second edition brings the games to new heights! I'll let you know when it launches. :)

Thanks so much for your support,

-Peter C. Hayward

Old Blood

Dracula’s Feast Second Edition Box Art
over 5 years ago – Thu, Nov 22, 2018 at 09:20:55 PM

For the first time in Jellybean history, this update is coming from someone other than Peter C. Hayward! For not the first time in Jellybean history, Peter is unfortunately under the weather.

Fun fact: Peter’s been ill more times this year than any other year in his adult life.

He swears it has nothing to do with working with me and all to do with having the world’s most adorable-yet-germ-filled baby.

I’m 80% sure I believe him.

At any rate, we’re still hard at work on the second edition of Dracula’s Feast and we’re so excited about the new box art that we just couldn’t wait to share it!

Due to BBR [Boring Business Reasons*], I generally don’t play prototypes until the rules are almost final, and I finally had the opportunity to play the second edition earlier this month and WOW.

[*I handle our booths at conventions and we like to make sure I don’t have any old, non-final rules jumbled in my memory when demoing!]

Dracula’s Feast has always been one of my favorites in the Jellybean line, but the changes that Peter has been able to implement has truly made it sing. The second edition is a testament to how Peter’s grown and improved as designer over the years and it’s humbling to be able to watch that progress first hand.

Don’t take my word for it -- try it for yourself! It’s not too late to sign up to be a playtester!

If you’re interested, email [email protected] (yeah -- Peter’s email address is pretty neat!) and he’ll send you some files to print out! Additionally, you can record a video of your group learning the rules, or play the game 10 times and answer a small questionnaire after each playthrough and you’ll receive a copy of the second edition for free!

We’re on track to launch this project in mid-January, but we’ll keep you updated with an official date once it’s set.

In other news, this week we launched Jabberwocky on Kickstarter!

Jabberwocky is the sequel to The Lady and the Tiger and features 5 distinctly unique and incredibly fun games in one gorgeous box!

If you enjoyed The Lady and the Tiger (and especially if you missed out!), check out the campaign!

We really appreciate your support and we wish those of you in the United States a Happy Thanksgiving! 

Nicole C. Perry 

The non-blue-bearded non-Australian