We built test night around Mike Petty and Stephen Glen's TreeO project this week. Our goal was to get "almost" off the game's "almost done" status report and I think we've finally accomplished that.

TreeO will be the first Atomic Sushi project to be released in full color. It's still a Sushi project. So expect single sided printing, medium weight card stock, and our standard re-sealable poly bags. And of course, the reasonable $5 price tag :)

TreeO's been a fun post-origins project to work on, in large part due to Mike and Stephen themselves: they are smart, fun guys to work with. Their game was basically printable (though not without room for improvement) in it's prototype form. It's mostly been an issue of getting testers to a table and seeing where balance can be tightened, and where motivation and psychology could be clearer.

That isn't to say the game hasn't changed significantly along the way. In fact, the game has changed enough that we may even release a final draft of the original concept as a separate game.

Mechanically, TreeO is a cards with numbers game. Like Zombies of LMH and Get Bit, players lay down cards simultaneously, and take actions according to the relationships of the numbers they play. However instead of simply netting a auctioned card or avoiding a shark, TreeO's numbers net the player a specific action. An action may net you a public card, or a hidden card, or even your own card -- what is best for you, and how you do that is up to your take on what your opponents need most and what they will play to get those things.

I was surprised when Simon pointed out that many of our games employ this blind play mechanic. Our goal has always been to make games that use different mechanics and since each game has been pretty different so far, I hadn't noticed our tendency to use this core mechanic.

It shouldn't be surprising I suppose… single card bidding uses a lot fewer cards than open bidding, and since Sushi projects are limited to the 50 card range to keep the cost down. Bidding itself can offer a lot of variety, and is one of the easiest ways to give players interesting decisions to make, without being whole unfamiliar or difficult for new players to understand. Still, something to keep an eye on considering TreeO and the next two projects are all bidding style games…

More images to come during the week (depending on David's schedule).
G