Hi everyone, I hope you all had a wonderful Festive Season. I’m back in the New Year and I’m so excited to be able to tell you all about version 4 of Gay Sauna the Board Game.
In a recent playtest, we had a serious discussion about the playability, namely the matching process and the player cards. Combined with the results I’ve seen about the manner in which to introduce the game to new players, I’ve taken a long look at the game and decided it was time for a full visual remake.
The new card design has taken a slightly more modern game look, without the strong borders, the colours now flow to the edges (I just hope I can get the print job done right). The most important thing about the new designs is that the cards line up next to each other to be able to see whether you can match with the visitor, and what you have in common.
I’m showing you here sample player cards, please note that I do not own the rights to the images used here, this is just used as an example. Please contact me if you would like to have your images removed.
I’ve also done a little bit of modelling for the game pieces, as I’m seeing the current set of tokens and boards are a little tatty from being just paper. I’d like to do a lot more of this and I will certainly update all the tokens for this version.
The rules have had also had the biggest change since the very first version with the long narrative being removed. While it always remained a popular part of the game process for playtesting, it always took a huge amount of time to get through and may not add enough to justify this. This kind of content will remain in the game though, with some being delivered in the box as background fluff and additional reading info and some will be presented in a video that I think needs to be a part of the final delivered product. The rules themselves are now in a very short setup and winning section, with a “Hookup Guide” attached that players should go through together if playing for the first time. This is then supported by each player getting a “Gay Sauna the Board Game Sauna Guidebook” that provides details about all the sauna specifics including rooms, attributes, cards and of course the types, kinks and roles.
Version 4 still has a lot more to be done for it, including the player boards, rooms and event and action card designs. All of that for this week, it’s going to be tough, but I’ll make it in time for the next Playtesting session this coming Sunday 13th. It’ll be a really fun day, and the first chance to get to play the version that I expect to be the final one I make myself without an artist!