Great suggestions ponimayu.
Although it may seem unlikely in real life to find an unlimited supply of items in one room, I think for now it might be best to leave that as it is in case someone is stuck in a single room and cannot move on. At least they have a chance if they find something useful. Let's see how it goes with more players and re-visit that thought after a few more tests? The only player that actually found something useful was luvabi. I was actually worried that we were not finding enough gear. Yes, I found the torch which SHOULD have been useful, but when searching I rolled crappy and just found more zombies! I was hoping to distribute some better weapons with my extra searches, but it just didn't materialize. In the end, we won anyway, but that was because we didn't need to get back out of town!
As for finding 'nothing': the current ability to find useless items such as rice and flour are almost the same as finding nothing, so in effect, finding nothing is already in the game. Basically, the chance of finding a zombie is 50/50. Then finding something useful is further reduced by useless items like flour, water and rice. Do we really want to make it even harder by finding 'nothing'? I purposely made the first game easy so that it can end quickly but still give us an idea of how difficult it would be. Can you imagine what would happen if a HULK is found in a search? Most people would not be able to hurt a hulk, so things could turn very ugly very fast if that happened. What if 2 Hulks show up? We were just very lucky I think.
Yeah, you're right. Though the purpose behind finding nothing was lowering the chances of finding a zombie, not to lower the chances of items being found ^^
Point taken.
If things get too rough, I can change the search to have a successful search be rolls of 3-6 instead of 4-6. However, if we didn't find all those zombies with searches, the game would have been too easy. It is always a balance: make it too easy and without a challenge it becomes boring. Make it too hard to win and people give up in frustration.
What was your impression of the risk factor while playing the game?
I think the first round was pretty easy, but mainly because there was only one objective and we didn't have to leave the map. I have a suspicion the next rounds will be harder, so you'd have to evaluate again after the next ones.
Agreed. Then again, the game can fluctuate in difficulty depending on the luck of dice rolls and items drawn from the card pile. In order to accurately determine the difficulty level, it may take several runs through the game. This time we need to get out, so that will make it more of a challenge. Let's see how it goes...