Done.

Basically.

We had a 3p test at Spielbany that was interesting.  With two new players and myself playing, the game took about 90 minutes.  The idea to front-load the decision about where you're going to go between turns so you can execute quickly when your turn comes up didn't really work; the new players still took some time and the decisions took a while.  Even so, the game took 90 minutes, and I think, were we to run it back, 75 minutes would have been easily achieved.  That's about right.

I won the game handily, which almost never happens in any game I design, ever.  It makes me think the game has a learning curve and that I've started to climb up it.  I don't think this is bad but it does show that players don't have a great sense for how much hubris to take, how many green cubes to need, etc.  There is a player aid that gives the math but the rules and the components need to do a better job providing this info and helping them to progress more quickly from figuring out what to do to preparing well for the temple.  We all had decent info and preparation, but the newer players didn't bid aggressively enough in some cases, but bidding/auction games always take some experience and maybe it's similar here.

Unfortunately, neither of the other two players liked the game very much.  They felt there was too much going on, but this may have been a matter of taste, and they said as much.  I think changes to simplify the game further are worth contemplating, but I don't think the game is that much more complicated than v7 was, and we never felt that was too complicated.  I think it would require a big redesign to simplify this to be a sub 60 minute game, and at this late stage I'm not inclined to embark on yet another major change like this.  I'm more inclined to see whether, in its present form, it can find an audience (and a publisher).  I just ran a 2p solo test today, and found once again that players in my solo tests are coming within a space of each other on the temple track, and are coming down to the final roll to see who wins.  I think the game is therefore fairly tight.

That said, it does still need a cycle of development.  I'm not sure the experience is uniform across player counts, or that there are enough cards.  I'm not sure whether it's too hard to survive the temple and whether this needs to be loosened up a bit.  I'm not sure the game couldn't still have a few rough edges sanded off.  But to me, those are development level changes.  From a design perspective, I am calling it done.  After 13 years, and almost 10 years since v7, that is a good feeling.