Playing Dinner in Paris

[Loenix34]

Hello !

We hope you will enjoy our game Dinner in Paris, the BGA adaptation of the eponyme board game.
This game is designed to match the real game as possible and help you to discover what our game is.
If you like it, please have a look on the physical edition and play with friends.

We developed it with all the game features of the base game but we can not reproduce the exact experience of the physical game.
Please, consider this game is not supporting mobiles, it's designed for computers and large screens only.

This limitation is due to the large game board and the fixed size of assets, for consistency and animations.
We may improve the game by removing this limitation in the future, the discussion is open, this is the appropriate thread to talk about it.

About me, the developer of this numeric adaptation, I am a french and a professional web developer since 2012. I'm as passionate about web development as I am about board games.

See you soon on a game table !

[iris1]

This looks like a nice game and I have several turnbased games going on.

So far I struggle with graphics and info. Normally in BGA-games we get larger view of assets with mouse-over. Found out that we need to click on them to get info? Yhat feels a bit scary since clicking normally is for choosing.

Wish to be able to zoom in on board. Not able to see cost of terraces etc.

[Newt1977]

How do you play a pigeon card?

And what are the ways to get new objective cards?

[Newt1977]

Normally in BGA-games we get larger view of assets with mouse-over. Found out that we need to click on them to get info?

To zoom in on your individual player board, click on ghosted eye in the bottom right of it.

[Mope-dman]

Great game but I have two zoom issues:
(1) No zoom on the main board. I understand the need for animation means the main board can't be zoomed in, but a work-around for that needs to be made. I recommend having cards off the main board. I know the developers want cards on the board to replicate the physical experience, but I'd sacrifice that for the ability to zoom in.
(2) When the player board is zoomed in, I can't view cards in my hand so I don't know what's needed to build restaurants. I recommend showing cards in hand when the player board is zoomed in.
Unfortunately, I don't consider the game playable unless these issues are addressed.

[yomikoma]

Yeah, I feel like the legibility is a real problem. Especially since so much screen space is spent on the charming but non-game-relevant art around the board.

[sorryimlikethis]

I really hope you take this feedback into consideration. Dinner in Paris is a fun game that I would love to play more.

Being unplayable on mobile has huge downsides. You are eliminating a large percentage of BGA users from playing. Because of this it increases queue times for the people that can play it. No one likes sitting in queues for over 5 minutes, so it has a cascading effect. No one plays so queue times are long - queue times are long because no one plays.

The last time I played on my laptop I remember struggling to see the board as well - having to zoom my browser 150%+ just to see a card.

I realise a lot of hard work must have gone into this already. But the game will not succeed in its current state. And it has a lot of potential to succeed.

[gametool]

I agree with the comments on legibility. I managed to get through a game but honestly I would never play it again on BGA unless the interface is completely revamped.

[Umbrageofsnow]

I hate to pile on, but I have 2 more interface gripes.

1. Most of the score is tallied as you go, but the majorities aren't calculated until the end. With the large number of points in the game, this wasn't clear, and made the ending of the game quite a surprise. We weren't counting for the majorities because we assumed those were included with the other running tally. It'd be nice if this were either included, or it were made more clear that it wasn't somehow.

2. This might be a BGA issue rather than a Dinner in Paris issue, I'm not sure. After the game, when trying to figure out what part of the score hadn't been included in the running tally, when we clicked "See Final Board State" and then tried to go back to the score, we couldn't find it. We were able to briefly see it when clicking "Replay from this move" but it didn't stay on the score sheet. Instead, the game hid the score again after a few seconds. It took many tries to figure out what the scores actually were, once we'd clicked away to see the board.

(3. The pigeons are very cute in the physical game, but you can't even make out what they are here.)

[Baron Frog]

I'm afraid that I am also going to gripe about the fact that the game is not really playable on BGA as it stands.

I really do appreciate all the effort that went into designing the game in the first place and then in implementing it on BGA - all three of us agreed that it was a really nice game, but not one we want to play again on BGA, which is a real shame.

Apart from the difficulty of seeing what is actually going on, what things cost, what cards you have in hand, etc, there is also a lack of undo options (for example, you should be able to undo terrace laying because it's too easy to get that wrong, especially working out how much you have to spend and what placements will cost (though obviously placing on a pigeon space will lock in builds up to that point)).

After I'd finished placing terraces the game seemed to let me play a pigeon card for a coin and also let me play the one that let's you build adjacent to another player. Not blocking this seems daft. It would never happen in a face-to-face game.

I really do hope that you fix the implementation because I'd love to give it a second play.