Well, we've made some pretty good progress over the last few days.
After completely changing how HAND IN HAND works, I've been spending a lot of time testing the new independent-town system with other players.
We've now got multiple mayors joining the same region, each starting with their own parcels of land and building their own towns.
I've also been working on making sure the land ownership rules actually work.
Players shouldn't be able to build on another mayor's property, and they shouldn't be able to build outside the land they own either.
That part seems to be working pretty well now.
So with everyone able to build their own towns independently, it was time to tackle the really interesting part.
How do we bring those towns together?
When Two Towns Meet
The idea I came up with is pretty straightforward.
Each mayor starts with their own territory and expands by purchasing or claiming additional parcels of land.
Eventually, as towns grow across the shared region, two municipalities might end up next to each other.
Their borders touch.
And that's when something new becomes possible.
A merger.
Rather than automatically joining the towns together, I want the mayors to decide whether they're ready to cooperate.
Just because your town happens to grow beside somebody else's doesn't necessarily mean you want to give up control of everything you've built.
So I decided the merger should be voluntary.
Both mayors have to agree.
Putting It to a Vote
I've been building a new Region menu to handle all of this.
The idea is to give players a place where they can see information about their own town and the other municipalities in the region.
I'm also adding a Merge tab where mayors can initiate a merger vote with another eligible town.
The process works like this.
Once two towns share a border, one mayor can propose merging with the other.
The other mayor receives the proposal and gets to vote yes or no.
If they vote no, nothing changes.
Both towns continue independently, and everyone carries on building as before.
But if they vote yes?
The two municipalities become one.
Their land is combined, the towns operate under a new name, and both mayors gain the ability to build and manage the newly merged municipality.
Suddenly, the game returns to the cooperative building experience that inspired HAND IN HAND in the first place.
Except now we've each had the opportunity to build something of our own before joining forces.
And I think that makes a big difference.
One City, Two Mayors
What I really like about this system is that merging changes the way players interact with each other.
Before a merger, each mayor is responsible for developing their own town.
You decide where the roads go, how the neighbourhoods grow, and where to put your industrial areas.
Other players can see what you're building, but they can't interfere with your plans.
After a merger, that changes.
Now both mayors have access to the combined territory.
You can work together on roads, zoning, services, and future development.
Maybe one person concentrates on expanding residential neighbourhoods while the other develops industry and infrastructure.
Or maybe you both work on the same part of the city.
The point is that you're choosing to cooperate instead of being forced to share everything from the beginning.
That feels a lot closer to the game I've been imagining.
Does It Actually Work?
Of course, coming up with the idea and getting it working in multiplayer are two very different things.
There are a lot of moving pieces involved.
The game has to recognize when two municipal borders touch, determine which towns are eligible to merge, handle the voting process, and then combine everything correctly when both players agree.
And all of that has to work while multiple people are connected to the same region.
I've been testing the merger system across three different regions so far.
And I'm happy to say that we've managed to get it working fairly consistently!
There have been some adjustments along the way, but so far we haven't encountered too many major problems.
Two mayors can establish their towns, expand toward each other, initiate a merger, and successfully combine their municipalities.
That's a pretty exciting step.
For the first time, we're actually testing the complete idea behind the new cooperative system.
Start independently.
Grow your town.
Meet another municipality.
And choose to build together.
Now for the Real Test
There's still one fairly important thing we haven't tested properly yet.
What happens when there are more than two mayors involved?
So far, the successful merger tests have been between two players.
But HAND IN HAND is intended to support up to four mayors in the same region.
That means we need to find out what happens when a third town connects to an already merged municipality.
How should the voting work?
What happens when several mayors have a say in whether another town joins?
And can we keep everything working correctly as more players share control of an increasingly large city?
Those are the questions I'm planning to tackle over the next couple of days.
There's still plenty of testing and tweaking ahead, but I'm starting to feel like this major redesign might actually work.
A week ago, I was wondering whether changing the entire cooperative structure of the game was a crazy idea.
Now we've got independently owned towns growing toward each other and successfully merging into shared municipalities.
For the first time, HAND IN HAND is really starting to deliver on the idea of building independently and then coming together.
And I can't wait to see what happens when we get all four mayors involved.