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I recently posted a boardgame design idea in the regular games game-making thread that dealt partially with hidden information, though in the context of an RTS adaptation rather than an FPS one. Though most of the points made in the subsequent discussion there echo the ones here, it may add some value/contrast. I'd also appreciate any further input this thread might have 
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Feb 19, 2013 14:55
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:The hidden info thing actually reminds me of an idea some friends had when discussing game design with me. They came up with a Risk-like that used flat counters as armies, with certain values being bigger/smaller counters. You'd put them facedown and only reveal once the counter is 'scouted' or something. They wanted to simulate Fog Of War. I was kinda stoked cause that's a really nice, simple and easy to test game idea they came up with on their first try. I may be missing something from your description but that basically sounds like Stratego. A fun game to be sure, but not quite fog of war as it's commonly seen in computer games. The main problem with simulating fog of war on a board vs. on a computer is the mirroring of the fact that as soon as you lose vision of a region, you should immediately lose all information there except terrain. I may of course be missing something but I've not been able to think of a way to model this amount of information loss in a physical game without a huge amount of logistics such as reshuffling all the counters in that area, writing down orders in secret or some such. Further potential difficulties are the prevention of cheating, a lack of interactive turns as long as both players are manoeuvring outside each other's sight and just general rules hassles. I'm a huge fan of knowledge asymmetry in games, and things like giving closed orders is I think a good way to implement it in physical games.
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Feb 19, 2013 16:20
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Nemesis Of Moles posted:Yeah, they had a lil more to it that made it not quite like Stratego, but it was obviously heavily inspired by it. I didn't say they were highly original in the idea or anything, it was just awesome to see someones first design idea not be like, 30 decks of cards and a bunch of complicated subrule stuff (Like my first game was. Oy.) Sorry, I didn't mean to come off negative about their idea, I was hoping you'd go into the non-stratego aspects, and how they tried to get closer to fog of war a bit more.
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Feb 19, 2013 16:34
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Yeah, in our playtest group the convention is that the maker can force a mulligan with new rules at any time.
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Sep 9, 2013 19:01
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Rotten cookies: What I like: - the board layout (it's an attractive pattern) - the theme (exploring a temple is always fun) Criticisms: - the board does not say entering a temple - it says you are running around on the surface of a ziggurat. This could be a very fun direction! But if your conceit is players spiralling into the centre of an underground complex largely independently, consider working that into the board layout by having actual spiralling tracks, and instead of having left/right etc. just hav inward, outward and 'hop to next track over' - forced movement in disadvantageous directions: this type of thing needs extreme care because it can lead to unnecessary frustration and feelings of powerlessness. Most people I play with at least want to be able to direct their strategy, and your movement system largely prevents this. I hope to come back to this.
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Sep 10, 2013 13:53
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Rotten Cookies posted:What are the design flaws of Munchkin I should be avoiding? For me it's the double whammy of the lack of meaningful decisions combined with being extremely susceptible to kingmaking/having to try to be in second place until the last turn.
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Sep 10, 2013 19:23
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Protostorm, I think there's as many answers as there are players to the fundamental question of what makes a game fun. Some players love politics, some love bidding or bluffing or completely open games of head-to-head strategy. That's even ignoring the life situation aspect: while I adore evening-long bigass boardgames like Twilight Imperium, neither I nor my boardgaming buddies are really able/willing to invest the time to play them anymore. Anyway, I'll just answer from my perspective: - I always want to feel like I can have a meaningful impact on the gamestate. Nothing feels worse than being clearly irrelevant to the game before it's over. - I loathe politics/kingmaking because I feel it takes away from the mechanical game to just become That Wheedling/Sneaking Game - Flavour is at least as important as mechanics to me. It's a huge difference whether I'm rolling a D6 to destroy a skeleton vs. rolling to see how many wooden cubes I am allowed to place on my score track. - I don't mind complexity as long as it's well-placed and fits the flavour/goal of the game. As an example, the WoW boardgame (original edition) is pretty fiddly, but it manages to capture the differences between the classes really well, which I think is the main draw of that particular game for me. Simplicity doesn't really enter into it as much as elegance/fittingness if that makes sense. - Player elimination is a terrible idea unless the game only lasts 15 minutes guaranteed.
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Sep 19, 2013 13:39
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Just got back from Göttingen, pitched two of my games and got some nibbles. I just want to thank this thread for helping to push me towards getting some poo poo out there. It's been inspirational, especially the monster hunter board game was very helpful to make some of my own ideas gel. So thanks!
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Jun 11, 2017 20:25
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Anniversary posted:Congrats on those nibbles! Have you talked about what you're working on on here before? Thanks! Not the current designs, no. I'm going to do a more thorough write-up once I cool down a bit and see what people here think
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Jun 13, 2017 10:41
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Osmosisch posted:Thanks! So of course I ended up putting this off longer than intended, shocker. Trip report and game info: We went to the Spielautorentreffen (game designers' meetup) in Göttingen as a group of three Dutch game designers; I and a friend headed down and picked up the third party on the way. My friend and I each brought one of our own designs, and one game we co-designed, while the third guy had three games of his own. Going as a group was a really good idea as it turned out. It meant we never left all our tables unmanned, and because we each (as it turns out) made good enough impressions that if one of us had a scout at their table and said 'these other two also take testing etc. seriously maybe check their stuff out' it would lead to all three of us getting eyes on our games. This was the first time I'd been to such an event, or even had shown my games off to any publisher, so it was all rather exciting. After a slightly demoralising slow start to the morning, things got up to speed and near the end of the afternoon I realised we'd been talking to people almost continually for quite some time. I found it especially gratifying that the scouts were able to clearly see what we were going for in our games in most cases, and tended to like our core ideas. It's nice to know you're not crazy when you think 'there's something here.' The game I co-designed with my friend has the working title All You Can Eat - it's intended to be a random, light game card game that you play in quick bursts between heavier games, or with younger players. The theme is that all the players are gourmets at a buffet. Of course you'd like all the other gourmets to be gone so you can eat everything yourself, and it just so happens that all players are allergic to something (lactose, gluten, etc). The thing here is that both sides of each cards are important: the backs of cards each have one of the allergy symbols on them, while the front is one of about ten actions that mostly involve manipulating the deck, allergies and players' hands. At the beginning of the game each player is dealt a hand of four cards, and one face-down card which is their starting allergy. Every turn, a player must first play one of the cards from their hand, and then draw(eat) the top card from the draw pile (menu). If you eat something that matches one of your allergies, you're out for the round. So it's got player elimination but because there's a constant acceleration due to people getting more allergies, and quite some random effects, rounds never last long and there's a significant amount of fun just watching how the chips fall. The genesis of the game lies in the challenge we set each other to see what ideas/games we could come up with two central constraints: 1) the backs of cards also matter and 2) a shared draw pile. I came up with this as one of the simplest designs I could think of, and it had enough of a fun factor that we kept developing it. Quite a few scouts liked it, the main problem they tended to have was that the theme is a bit taboo for the German market apparently. But weakening it to 'food you dislike' instead of 'allergy' could be enough. On the other hand, the people I've played it with who actually are allergic to stuff tended to be quite pleased to have their thing in a game, it's not that common. If anyone wants to take this for a spin, we have some print 'n plays available for testing on the condition that you send us feedback My solo game is called Beast Tamers.  First off, I should again credit Behemoth for being one of the main triggers for me starting to think about this game. The other triggers are King of Tokyo's art style, and me wanting to get started on something I'd hopefully be able to play with my eldest kid once it was done. The last part meant nothing too violent especially. The theme is that the player(s) are a team of super-powered zookeepers in a monster zoo. One of the monsters has escaped, and you as a group are trying to knock it out before the backup power to the containment shields goes down. However, the more you attack the monster, the bigger its revenge will be. In practice this means you have a limited amount of rounds to inflict X amount of tranquilisation on the monster without getting yourselves KO-ed. Each player controls one or more characters, each of which has somewhat unique stats/abilities. The board is a hex grid (which can be reconfigured into different shapes with some judicious cuts) and the currently-designed monsters sit on the edge of the board. Each character has several actions, which players can take in any order they decide as a team. Actions can be move, attack or <special> depending on the character. After all the players have used their actions, the monster gets to go. Each monster has its own deck of attack cards. Attacks can be global, meaning they have a picture of the board on it, with some hexes indicated as going to be hit, or can be targeted, meaning the attack's center will land on the attacking character's current location. At the start of each round, and whenever the monster gets hit, a new card is drawn from the attack deck and added to the monster's plan queue. Attacks are executed and discarded in order. Any players standing in a hex that gets hit take a point of damage - too many hits (depends on character) and they're knocked out. The tension between gotta go fast and leaving enough safe spaces on the board for your team to be safe is most of what currently makes the game interesting, besides the theme/mechanics coupling which I'm pretty proud of. The biggest problem is that with a lot of characters and attacks it can get a bit overwhelming to figure out who is safe and who isn't. The fact that it's a cooperative game does make up for it somewhat but there's definitely room for improvment there. Anyway thanks again thread for being an inspiration. Going to keep you posted if anything develops.
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Jun 23, 2017 13:33
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Anniversary posted:Oh man, these seem really cool. Thanks for the write ups! Thanks! Yeah the zookeepers all have different classes, meaning move rates, health total and abilities vary. The game's extendable/modifiable in quite a few directions (board shape, monster location and attack/ability deck, character classes and team composition which is both really nice and also really irritating because it makes it hard to get a consistent game balance down. Some teams just work better than others, though I actually really like that aspect because it lets players set their own challenge level to some degree.
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Jun 23, 2017 22:48
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So, this may be a dumb question, but why have healing at all? Is it because of the source material? I thought Monster Hunter was more about limited consumables besides a lot of dodging in that sense, but I've only ever played a demo or two. How predictable are monster attacks again? I guess the main problem is that you want to avoid the game becoming too much of a linear "which side gets to X damage first" slugfest. Having actions that have the opportunity cost of not dealing damage but allow for some health/mistake recovery does make sense. I've personally shied away from having much recovery at all, mostly relying on avoidance/prevention mechanics but my monster fighter's ended up at a pretty different place. Also: Is any of you going to Essen this year? One publisher asked me to attend because they wanted to test my game with a bigger group, so I'm going for sure (day unclear, probably friday) and the local game design guild I'm a part of is probably also going to be there. Would be cool to meet up.
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Sep 6, 2017 10:50
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CodfishCartographer posted:I'd love to go to Essen, but alas my travel budget is pretty much shot Makes sense given the low spatial resolution that as long as players could predict what attack was coming they could avoid it. And yeah, instant attacks are not vert interesting. In my game the 'solution' is to have the monster generate an ever-growing counterattack plan during the players' turn based on how much they pissed it off, so that initally they can avoid everything but eventually choices get tougher and people are going to get hit. My main problem is it's too linear at the moment because I've just set a hard time limit. It seemed simplest at the time but I think having only a ticking clock as tension is somewhat lacking. Still, it's something that can vary by monster. Are the PnP and rules in your post history the latest version? I'm going to take a closer look before I spout off more.
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Sep 6, 2017 18:59
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CodfishCartographer posted:Nah those are pretty out of date at this point, I'll be making a new one "soon" but it's low on the priority list for right now. The main similarities are there are still four locations around the behemoth, the behemoth's health is done with its deck, and player decks are premade and determine their weapons and attacks. There's no more timer track system from the old game, there's now dice for damage, players are more focused on bodyblocking attacks instead of avoiding them, etc. Ah ok. Curious to see where it's gone. There's some pictures and a brief summary a bit back. My current plan is to completely remove the time aspect and instead just make the monster 'enrage', performing more and more attacks each turn. I'm also getting rid of the monster's exhaustion/tranquillisation counter and instead making it so that it's attack deck also represents its energy reserves - if it runs out the players win, if all the players are knocked out the monster wins. Goldfishes ok but going to need more testing with real players.
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Sep 10, 2017 11:30
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Checking out the game designers' union might also be relevant :https://www.spieleautorenzunft.de/home.html One of my codesigners was very happy he joined them, helped out with some contract stuff.
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Sep 21, 2017 18:01
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The first game of our design/testing group has been published (Dutch only so far) 
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Nov 14, 2017 12:11
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I have to say that for me making a game about social insects PvP feels weird. Love the theme though.
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Dec 15, 2017 12:35
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I think the question isn't really about co-op but about player vs mechanical opponent - the number of humans on the 'player' side does not seem relevant. That widens the domain of potential answers to solitaire games as well. And to answer, I'm not aware of any such games where the opponent or game does not largely hinge on a random component. Disposable puzzle games probably come closest?
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Mar 8, 2018 13:22
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Codfishcartographer, I think it makes sense to have the main constraint/restriction be the primary element, so if you can only use a card in phases XYZ that should be the most immediately visible element. Assuming reading from left to right, that means the phases should be along the left edge, similar to the spirit island cards. If you're willing to give up space for art, I would simply make it so that each card has one row for each phase, and have the effects in those rows; a grayed-out/blank row would mean playing the card in that phase does nothing, or is not allowed.
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Apr 13, 2018 09:08
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Glad you like it. Let us know how it works out!Foolster41 posted:So, I've been looking again at working on "Lost in the woods". I mentioned it here a long time ago, and I never got super far in the design. One way to divide cooperative games is between those where players portray a unique role with specific abilities/advantages and those where this is not the case. From my reading, your game falls in the latter category for now. This means that you need some other way to make players feel distinct. As an example, Hanabi manages this by making information aysmmetric - you only know the cards that other players are holding, not your own. I think a lot of your design will be influenced by where/how your game falls on this continuum. Are your kids uniquely good at something specific? Is their uniqueness mechanically more involved than getting +1 vs. ogres? Or is it more about everyone knowing parts of the route home, and you as a team needing to somehow piece this together from the players' disparate knowledge? A second question is whether your game is more about having the right pieces to solve a particular puzzle (e.g. Pandemic: can we clear the infection from city X before it overflows? Only if we have a Medic, but how do they travel there, etc.) or is it more about being efficient enough to meet whatever the challenge is without running out of resources? Your game does seem to have a clear goal (get home) so that's helpful.
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Apr 13, 2018 14:26
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Much cleaner, looks good. I'd tone down the border a little but otherwise fine.
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Apr 14, 2018 13:27
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Anniversary posted:Wow, yeah I really like how that looks. Please up the contrast between text and background. If you absolutely must have coloured (or even grey, ew) backgrounds behind text, at least apply a white outline to the text. Also as a mildly colourblind person, any game designer who doesn't distinguish things by more than colour alone goes on my enemy list.
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Apr 14, 2018 23:12
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CodfishCartographer posted:Thanks! I made the border a little thick because I generally chop up the cards with a big paper cutter in huge chunks at once because I'm lazy, and so the thick borders help avoid making it obvious when I gently caress up I meant around the phase abilities, but sure once you're used to thick you don't go back If you want, once you're ready to have foreigners knock your game about i can try it in my test /design group. If anyone reading wants to test my cooperative monster fighting game drop me an email at my username @gmail. I've got one monster and a set of zookeepers I'm pretty done with and I'd like to get fresh eyes on it.
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Apr 15, 2018 08:59
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I have to say that I've never played and enjoyed a game where you're supposed to cooperate but also gently caress each other over. I don't mind either, but the combination of both factors makes each of them suck the fun out of the other. I don't like worrying about backstabbing when I'm thinking about how to deal with a problem collectively, and I don't like feeling like I'm making our odds words when I think of a cool way to mess with opponents. That said I like the theme idea of preparing for Ragnarök, there's some interesting ideas there. I wouldn't do it with genetic power level requirement though but more specific things like having to fight the wolves that eat the sun etc.
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Apr 27, 2018 15:01
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The game is coming dangerously close to being just a reflection of our current reality
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May 1, 2018 12:17
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I'd probably need odds of two thirds to call something likely but I'm maybe on the conservative side.
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May 1, 2018 21:16
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I love that art and design. Excellent.
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May 14, 2018 18:16
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It looks fine (but busy indeed) except the hexes with triple values, that's just headache - inducing.
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May 22, 2018 22:01
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100YrsofAttitude posted:This seems to be the best place to ask though if I'm wrong my apologies. I like Characteristics of games a lot as an abstract, unifying book.
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Dec 5, 2018 13:54
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100YrsofAttitude posted:Cool, this looks good but is it as academic as it seems? MIT Press doesn't look like accessible reading. I found it quite approachable but I do have an academic background. The book of Lenses is also quite good, as is the Kobold's guide to board game design.
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Dec 6, 2018 15:51
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One thing to add would be to some explanation for people not familiar with American football, because I'm having a lot of trouble parsing the players' actual goal s out of all that yardage. As I read it you're trying to get further down the field than the other player and the die plus some reserve points determine this. That also makes me wonder where the game part would come in. Apologies if I've missed something obvious. Isn't a lot of American football about predicting the opponent's plays? I would try to work that in somehow.
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Feb 26, 2019 12:52
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Super cool, congratulations! German boardgame dudes are super cool in my experience, so don't sweat it too much. Good luck!
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Mar 16, 2019 00:21
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We have only so many workers to place, after all.
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Jan 31, 2020 13:27
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"The local government bans sales of hydro power to mining operations. This Is Good for Bitcoin because..."
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Feb 28, 2020 16:57
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Gilgameshback posted:I am looking for playtesters for The Feast of Pikes, a hybrid deck building game set during the French Revolution. I've done in-house testing and have the engine working, but I would love to get feedback on everything.
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Mar 22, 2020 22:54
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McKilligan posted:I made a simple single-player farm-themed puzzle game designed for elementary school students - this isn't meant to be published or used anywhere, the pixel art is mostly lifted from Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley, I just recolored it. Our lessons were remote so it was designed as a set of A4 printouts - the kids received a grayscale version of everything, but I colored my examples digitally. I may have missed it in your explanation, but it it correct that there's exactly one of each tile? You have a small text error (the pig's text is missing a 'to').
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Jan 7, 2022 09:42
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 01:36 |
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On that note, if anyone needs their rules/components proofread, I'm always happy to do so for hobbyists! PM or mail me (username at gmail). I've got a local game design group where I also provide this service so even though I'm not a professional, I've had plenty of practice.
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Jan 7, 2022 13:33
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