The Good: The players felt they progressed in power well. At this point players were getting enough food to make real strategies.

The Bad: The players still wanted more time to set up their decks before the game ended. Due to the limit on the number of queen cards there were a lot of bad hands (getting both your spawn cards on the same turn).

Changes: I moved to unlimit the number of queen cards that can be played each turn to help eliminate some bad draws, and I don’t think it will break anything. I also extended the area of influence for the armored mandible reaction card.

The Good: Players felt like there were a lot of choices.

The Bad: The players weren’t able to collect enough food to buy cards this round. They felt like they couldn’t make any of all the powerups relevant. Dan was overwhelmed by the number of cards and didn’t want to read them at the start.

Changes: Further simplified the card types to make the game easier to digest. Got rid of Shed and metamorphosis. These extra deck culling cards where adding unnecessary complexity, so I just extended the usability of Moult to cover the roles.

The Good: Defense played a huge role in this game in fending off aggression. There were some huge moments of needing to draw a reaction card to stay in the game and getting it! Lots of strong tactical gameplay that led to a fast paced and fun round.

The Bad: Early aggression still seems to be a dominant strategy. Since you can force the queen away from her workers to disrupt food delivery for the opponent while also threatening a kill it’s very strong to rush.

Changes: I further added obstacles to the center of the map to slow down the rush. Additionally I brought back the two food spawns closer to the queen start so she doesn’t have to be as far forward for a strong opening production strategy.

The Good: Players said the game was a good length and that the cards were enticing. There were a lot of emotional moments of the game, Wakko went on a rollercoaster of emotions.

The Bad: At this point most of the feedback was on usability of cards and the map. The labels on the cards are inconsistent (bug, queen, movement, and reaction), the bug colors are hard to tell apart, and there is room for iconography on the cards to make them more usable.

Changes: I wanted to play some more rounds before making any usability changes because the game feels close to complete right now. I also wanted to test if neural beacon and Moult were as powerful as the appeared

The Good: The game was one of the fastest. The progression was quick with lots of cards being purchased. It seems like the game is much better at a higher level than just starting out. There is no obviously best opening strategy in terms of queen placement or starting cards to purchase. I did a super fast accelerating strategy I thought was broken, but Caleb played well and beat me.

The Bad: The game might go a bit too fast right now.

Changes: I increased the cost of Neural beacon to two, it just accelerates you way too fast. Webbing seems really bad so I’ll try it pushing someone back instead of canceling a movement card.

The Good: This game I tried out buying an early moult and getting a hyper efficient deck and it worked pretty well.

The Bad: The early moult looks to be a bit too strong since you can upgrade any discarded card.

Changes: Moult cost increased to 3, and a maximum of 3 cards can be culled with it. This way it’s still strong, but you can’t upgrade your whole deck in one round and you can’t get it too early. I also added range onto webbing.

The Good: Caleb and I finished up our third round mostly because we wanted to keep playing, that’s a great sign.

The Bad: Usability hasn’t been addressed yet so there’s a lot of room for improvement in card look.

Changes: I went from bug, queen, movement, and reaction cards to action, reaction, and movement card types. I added icons for the workers, warriors, and queen to show who can use each action type. I added text to the rulebook indicating that queen actions are unlimited while worker and warrior bug actions are not. The cards were also cleaned up to be more readable and consistent with the shape of the playing pieces.