Devlog Has Come to This Town

October 20, 2025

Content warning: This is a game about a plague. There’s basically no way I can’t talk about the current, ongoing one. I try not to look directly at it, here.

Every year I try to do a little something indulgent for Minimalist Jam, or at least try to stub something out that’s been on my mind. So last week, out of nowhere, I dropped Death Has Come to This Town. This was an idea I’ve had for awhile that I held ransom behind hitting milestones on other work, and when the time came to put it to paper it kind of forced itself out of my head and onto the page. I slapped that thing on itch and prepared to not think about it for like a month, and even then as more of an art piece than an actual playable thing.

Then two other devs noticed it, thought it sounded cool, and invited me to actually play it with them. So now I have an actual data point to expound upon. Thanks a lot, jeez!

Let’s talk about Death Has Come to This Town.

What even is this thing? #

(Or: what is this thing right now?)

Genesis #

So I’ve been sitting on this idea for a few months of taking a BOB-like thing where each character and pillar were intermingled: when the character is onscreen the pillar isn’t, they share a pool of tokens, and so on. They gain tokens by having their pillar do things to make everything worse for people and spend them to solve problems, but ultimately each character has the same goal.

This is already not the kind of game I make¹, and the more I thought about this, I figured this needed to be an extremely limited player space, which is also not really the kind of game I make. Thinking about the constraint of three players, my immediate thought was the cult classic Pathologic: three characters, each somewhat associated with something in the town that causes major, direct problems for the other two but not for them.² Each of them has their own background and way of doing things, and has their own agenda in addition to (theoretically) having some investment in curing this plague. I didn’t want to make a direct Pathologic rip, especially because I just don’t like making direct adaptation games, so I thought about a trio of characters that made sense. I came up with:

• The Scholar, someone from outside who came here to write a dissertation about something else and gets drafted into being effectively the town’ doctor, but sees this as an opportunity to continue their research. Their adjoining pillar is The Disease, which can infect people in a scene or show neglect.
• The Agent, a former local done good who had left to pursue a government position and has come back to help their town. However, they see this plague as an opportunity to gain a reputation and further their position. Their adjoining pillar is The Government, which can pass and enforce laws.
• The Firebrand, a local rabble-rouser who had already been agitating for something and sees this as the right time to push. Their adjoining pillar is The Masses, which can agitate for whatever they desire.

Actually makng the thing #

Finally, I hit those milestones and, ransom lifted, we were off to the races. I finished the minimalist jam version in about half a week. Here’s what I came up with along the way.

• A chapter is 3 scenes, one for each player. You have 10 chapters to “win” via someone getting 10 tokens into their Agenda, everyone loses if those pass.
• The BOB Token equivalent is Infuence. Each character and pillar as currently written is about a page of moves: neutral and “spend 1 Influence” for the characters, neutral and “gain 1 Influence” for pillars.
• Things going wrong (and therefore scene starters) are Threats. At the beginning of each Chapter, each player puts one on the board. Whenever a player switches to a pillar mid-scene, they put one on the board. Threats can be mitigated or negated throughout a chapter.
• This is the kind of GMless narrative game where a “win” condition kind of makes sense, which is a weird sentence. It’s already semi-competitive, so give ’em something to compete over. Each of them gets an agenda that they need to complete to “win”. Influence can be spent to further these.
• How about a loss condition? Pathologic/2 has this idea of the local government getting effectively taken over, first by the inquisitor and then by the military; the disease getting worse over time; and desperate townsfolk sabotaging things like water. This felt very gameable AND thematic, and so I came up with some ideas for how to escalate those pillars: at a certain point, you lose access to both your character and a pillar and pick up an advanced pillar. That point tracking is weakness: it’s your fear of how the character loses prominence and the character’s check on that pillar disappears. The Disease becomes The Outbreak, The Government becomes The Occupation, and The Masses become The Mob.
  • At the end of every chapter, you roll a d6: 1-2 means the Scientist’s weakness gets hit, 3-4 means the Agent gets hit, 5-6 means the Firebrand gets hit. Mitigated threats mean you can ignore 1 of those numbers, Negated threats mean you can ignore 2 of them.
  • Once someone succumbs to weakness, it gets dicier: of the two left, one gets 1-3 and the other gets 4-6. Remember what I said about Negated ignoring 2? This is why I phrased it like that. You can’t be fully safe anymore. Once 2 are gone, the remaining one gets the whole 1-6 for every Threat.
  • If everyone hits 3/3 Weakness, everyone loses.

So, how did that playtest go?

How the playtest went #

The good parts #

Setup was great: it took half an hour and by the end of it we had a pretty good picture of who we were and what was about to go down. Neither of the other two players had read it and they grasped it pretty quick. Everyone enjoyed themselves.

We used Miro as a VTT of sorts and that was perfect. Basically just need sticky notes or index cards, really.

I’m saying this first to preface all the negative shit I’m going to talk about it following. The bones are pretty good, I think, and we had a good time playing it. I think it largely works as-is. Unfortunately a game is a bit more than bones and I think I can aim for better than working.³

The less than good parts #

The pacing is weird. I’d envisioned this as a one-shot but we called time at like 4 hours, 3 chapters in. Scenes kind of meandered, which is not a bad thing as such because we all seemed to enjoy said meandering. This is at least partially because “is a threat actually negated” is a really interesting thing, here: the way it’s handled in game is that the player who wants to solve it asks the other two and if 3/3 of you agree that it is or 2/3 agree but the player spent Influence doing it, it’s negated; if 2/3 agree, it’s mitigated. Almost every threat got mitigated because 1 of the 3 of us (not even one person in particular, it went back and forth) was kind of iffy on the solution.

In most BOB-ish games, you can go back and forth with your tokens while playing the same character. Here we have a situation where your “gain” state (the pillar) is inherently different than your “loss” state (the character). This lead to a fascinating situation where in some cases, none of us wanted to be a character, so we had our three powers that be kind of going at each other, which was completely unexpected. For similar reasons, I didn’t feel like we had a great sense of character interaction: again, in most BOB this isn’t an issue.

One thing that was noted was that both the powers that be and the characters (but especially the former) have a bit of a limited palette. (The primary reason is less “intent” and more “I kind of ran out of time and juice.”) Spending influence felt like a very insular kind of thing - making problems for other people, then spending them on yourself or your priorities - but even that palette is only so big.

Finally, we definitely got comedic with the tone over time, if only because…well, it’s a game about a Familiar Situation, to some extent or another. This is partially because the other two people didn’t read the text to gain the vibe, but partially because that’s just who the third (me) is as a person. Some of the characterizations of the powers that be got through, but not all of them. This is proably the least important one because in theory a good and diligent group could fix this, but a game about a serious kind of thing that only hits the tone with a perfect group is not ideal, and as you can guess by the title, it’s not intended to be a goof-em-up.

What do I want to emphasize going forward? #

Let’s back up a bit. I don’t often come into development of something with fully formed Capital-T Themes. A game tells me, over time, what it’s about as I make it: certain things leap out of the brain-soup and put themselves onto the page, over time. Now that it’s a bit more crystallized and I’ve seen it played at least once, I can kind of solidify what I want out of it.

Gravity and Tone #

In replaying Pathologic 2, one thing I’ve noticed is that it’s quite funny at times. It’s especially aware that you likely played the original, of which it’s a partial remake; and that it’s a game, and gives you fourth-wall-breaking options occasionally. (I’m a huge fan of the part where the Changeling curses you to not be able to talk to someone and you can reply “yeah but the game usually does that anyway”, which…is correct lmao.) Despite this fact, it’s largely considered a bleak as fuck game where you basically have no choice but to get half of everyone killed because you don’t have the time to do anything else.

Right now, we don’t have things like its incredible visuals or the impeccable soundtrack to lean on. Layout will help a bit partially - I hope - but I want to try to solve problems without it first given that a. it’s a MinJam game and b. it’ll lead to a stronger product overall. (Forcing a soundtrack onto every game is beyond my paygrade, probably.)

Basically, I want players to kind of feel it a little. Black humor is somewhat inevitable - especially given that as a society I don’t think we’ve all really reckoned with what happened - but I want that to feel like a transgression against a straight tone rather than a built-in feature.

Does the current game accomplish this? #

100% of the games I’ve played with it didn’t succeed at this goal, admittedly with a sample size of 1, so I can’t confirm it really works. I think if you read the book you’ll get the idea but I’d bet 10 to 1 that 2/3rds of people whow play it will be taught by the last 1/3rd.

Impending Doom and Cooperation #

Even in situations where someone “wins”, this is inherently a game about a lot of people dying. Nobody really wins at the end of a disaster that’s finally been mitigated unless you’re only operating at a very high level. Every victory is inherently bittersweet. Something new and good might come of it but it’s going to be built on the backs of everyone debilitated or killed by it. And it’s very likely to end in total ruin.

Despite having their own agendas, the characters in question are intended to largely all want things to be better, just in their own separate ways. This frequently involves alliances of two against one, but it could also be, after one gets discredited or barred or whatever, the remaining two trying to hold everything together. Priorites shift when the situation does…if only for a time.

What I want is to have a sense of that mounting doom. Even if one player “wins”, I want it to be plenty pyrrhic once we zoom back in on the town and see what’s left.

Does the current game accomplish this? #

This one I think I kind of whiffed on, if I’m going to be perfectly honest. In an effort to try to bring some kind of closure, I think I made the “win” conditions a little too narratively easy, if not like difficulty easy. If you fill an agenda, everything’s fine. It needs to feel like an ending without feeling like everything’s fine now and being really selfish was good, actually. We had precious few scenes with multiple characters who meaningfully interacted, but when they did show up I enjoyed them quite a bit.

Speaking of…

Ambition and Rivalry #

In thinking about Pathologic’s setup in light of having been through (the most active parts of) a pandemic, I came to a terrifying conclusion: in many ways, it’s a little optimistic. Every doctor really is trying, in their own way, to actually solve the thing. The government actively listens to the most credentialed one of them. Various people and groups do shortsighted things but usually they at least feel bad about them or think they’re doing the right thing. As a citizen of the USA in 2025, it’s a little hard typing all of that out.

One thing I really want to tease out that the source material didn’t really have the focus or interest to get into is that most everyone with influence on a situation is either very single-minded or prioritizes different things than public health. It’s not that they’re strictly against solving the problem, mind you. But disaster capitalism (and disaster governance, generally) is a thing. Everyone’s got their eye on the prize, and the prize isn’t what’s happening now: it’s whatever comes afterwards and what this can do for them.

To that end, I want players to get into that mindset. Part of that is encouraging that kind of self-interest as opposed to purely cooperative problem-solving: this isn’t Pandemic and I don’t intend for it to be. I want everyone playing to feel like their character is in it for #1 first and foremost, with the town at #2 and possibly #3. Beyond that, I want them to feel a little of that rivalry. People don’t act like perfect rational beings, like, at all; especially not when they feel like they have a lot of power and are scared or stressed or mad. If someone screws them over, I want them to take it a little personally and hit back. This is extremely realistic as far as character actions, as well as the actions of the powers that be: when a person or force feels threatened by something, they frequently overreact and cause other problems in the process. If this ends up making them neglect their theoretical shared goal of stopping the plague, even better. Same situation as above, though: we didn’t have much direct character interaction.

Does the current game accomplish this? #

Half and half. I think it’s a little too easy to act self-interested. I built that in for sure but I think I both did a little too good of a job and think it needs to go further: there isn’t really a way to have something blow back on someone who isn’t you, for instance. I do think the nature of how “petty” certain decisions are well reflected in the plurality/consensus mechanics: if 2/3 people agree and 1/3 don’t, then that left out one builds resentment, and if someone gets knocked out because someone else didn’t solve a problem then they’re suddenly given the tools to enact revenge. In much the same way, though, I think they don’t quite go far enough and aren’t quite as pointed with it: it’s kind of hard to be nasty to someone or screw them over directly in a way that would really get their goat.

Takeaways and Tweaks #

Given that I listed 3 goals here and none of them were a rousing “yeah I nailed it” in addition to the various kinds of playtest feedback, I’m going back to the drawing board on a few things.

Mechanical/General Tweaks #

• Powers-that-be is very Pathologic but is also extremely unwieldy to say. I need better terminology in general because what I’m doing is a little weird, most games like this don’t view playbooks as a package deal so to my knowledge there’s no real pre-existing word for like, a set of playbooks that go together.
• Add more moves for each playbook/set of playbooks. Prior to this I’d viewed each of them as needing to fit on one half-letter/A4 panel: I think I need to expand each out to its own folded letter/A4 page.
  • Maybe it makes sense to have each playbook have its own BOB-like +/neutral/- set as opposed to characters only being able to spend and powers-that-be only being able to gain. It probably makes this less mechanically distinct as such but I’d rather have it be good than distinct for distinct’s sake. Need to pull from Lures and “give an Influence to someone else”.
  • Easy answers for powers-that-be moves that I can’t believe I didn’t think of earlier: at the beginning of the game you characterize some things about them, at least one move should be expressing that in the scene. I’m sure some will present themselves.
  • I want at least one way for a character to confront their power-that-be.
• Limit the number of times you can gain Influence off of “raise the stakes” style actions from powers that be.
• Right now powers that be add a threat to the board if they join a scene mid-stream. Trigger this the first time they join a scene - which is to say, from the beginning as well as mid-stream - but also give players 1 influence the first time a character joins a scene.
• Threats currently leave the board after being rolled and can become “mitigated” or “negated” prior to that. I think they need to start at the “mitigated” stage, and if un-negated, advance to the current “normal” state, either with random chance or reliably.
  • Threats need to advance to something Worse occasionally. More on that in the next section.

General Process Tweaks #

• Add in three Acts as a superstructure around Chapters, bookended by 1 of the 3 playbooks succumbing to their nastier power-that-be. This adds a few interesting shifts and incentivizes players to aim for different goals.
  • The current pacing is a little too long in the tooth as a one-shot…but I think this would make a fantastic three-shot, so my goal with this is partially to provide easy bookends for a formalized 3-session game.
  • Act transition could just be a number of chapters thing, a “how bad is the town getting” thing, or a “one character gets X weakness” thing.
  • Threats that exist on Act transition should advance to something Worse: maybe something that acts like a Threat but can’t be actually resolved, it’s just a reality now.
• Explicitly require some kind of motivation for scenes for powers that be, characters, etc. I think it’s interesting when you have something to specifically work with, one issue I had with scene pacing is that there was really no incentive for players as the various powers-that-be to be “fair” (e.g. accepting a solution) and I do think putting that on the table to some degree helps.
• I want to experiment with types of scenes: solving a Threat, two characters meet, all three characters meet, etc. I don’t think this needs to be Firebrands level of specific but I’m glancing in that direction a bit.
• Think about “unscene” style things: I didn’t hate the scene we had where every force in question got together without characters, is the thing! I just wish we did it with a little more intention.

Gravity and Tone Tweaks #

• Add more ritual to the proceedings. You can certainly do all the black humor you want but
• Make sure the layout sets the tone and that the writing continues to set that tone. I have a tendency to both insert humor into things and be extremely functional in my language and I need to hold back on those.

Impending Doom and Cooperation #

• Add a measure of how much the town is deteriorating, much like Weakness for the playbooks. (I’m thinking “Ruin” or “Dissolution” or something like that. Goes up whenever)
• Think about ways in which characters can explicitly help each other. Some of this comes down to moves and some comes down to scenes.
  • Act transitions are a great way to inspire this: if every player involved doesn’t want to start the next act and one of them’s about to start it via Weakness, helping them not do so is to everyone’s benefit.

Ambition and Rivalry #

• Think about ways I can make something blow back on certain characters and not others. Maybe the Threats established at the top of a Chapter are character/force-specific and go 1-4/5/6 or 1-3/4-5/6 (which would tie into rivalry too, if that player chooses who gets the 4-5 and who gets the 6).
• Think about conflict resolution methods to foster rivalry between players. Expand upon the plurality/consensus stuff: like if two powers-that-be clash, the 3rd player decides who wins.
• Think about other ways to foment rivalry. Regarding “help” or “cooperation” style scenes, maybe some of those can be “one player cuts the cake, the other person chooses” in the sense of “the first player makes an entreaty, depending on how the scene plays out (and how the other player wants it to play out) we decide if it was accepted for mutual benefit or rejected”.

When’s the next version coming? #

I don’t know. I have a lot of balls in the air, right now. Soon, maybe. Or maybe not. Who can say.

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