Meadowvale: Solo Mode

I have spent some time developing the Meadowvale solo mode. With the absence of player interaction, I didn’t want solo mode to become a puzzle game experience.

We talk about ‘automas’ in games: systems designed to simulate a human opponent. The automa in Meadowvale doesn’t do this. What it does, however, is act as the landscape and the wildlife. The automa brings the landscape to life and makes it more unpredictable. It doesn’t try to win.

It took a little balancing and playtesting to come up with a system that creates a sense of the solo player finding their place within the landscape, rather than being completely in control.

The automa consists of two dice: a direction die and a species die. Each turn, the automa will play a terrain hex at a edge location in one of 6 directions, but still following connective and adjacency rules. The automa starts with one of all 8 species, and each turn it will roll to see if it places an animal, and if it does, in what direction that animal will enter the map. Once animals are already placed, they will move in directions dictated by ecological rules. Hedgehogs will head for the nearest cottage garden, foxes will hunt out rabbits, owls will shift perches for better vantage points.

The automa’s animals can interact with the player’s animals, and vice versa. The player can score from adjacency to automa animals… until they move.

The system is quick, intuitive, and creates a natural rhythm on the map, sometimes working alongside the player’s placements, sometimes subtly blocking or interacting.

So, instead of simulating another player, the system creates a sense that the landscape is developing and moving on its own. What has emerged through playtesting is that each game develops as a different story.

In my last solo playtest, the game unexpectedly ended with animals clustered north of the river, drawn toward a dense patchwork of rabbits and meadow. South of the river, a large woodland had grown, where a few solitary deer were slowly making their way through the trees.

Rather than an automa, the game needed its own identity. Not an opponent, but a presence within the coutryside. Henceforth, the solo automated system will be referred to as the Brass Fox!