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fen
Wales
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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So, with Reanimation out of the way (despite the games balance flaw which I can't quite smooth out), I focused myself on finishing a two player card game that would hopefully be fun, involve some deductive elements (as much as you can have in a two player game, although I must say The Thing is surprisingly deductive in the two player game - it's a very different beast to the 3+ games).
As the files are pretty much released (only the rules left to upload and get approved) I thought I'd blog a bit about it.
First of all, the props that have to go out on this one:
Travis Worthington; for convincing me to web publish a few of the designs I'd been working on. Very polite, friendly and helpful chap. I hope to get his game Triumvirate when I can afford it.
Mark Chaplin who's game Aliens: This Time It's War inspired the very bare bones of the design - also I can't give him enough props for designing The Thing which got me to bother relearning Photoshop, I would have done the design very differently if I could do it again. But hey ho, forget about that, Mark is a great bloke and you should get Revolver: The Wild West Gunfighting Game.
Jeremiah Lee; for giving me some guidance on how to stay focused and not burn out. And also for designing the first ever print and play game I played Zombie in my Pocket. Follow his blog on his new design idea, or else.
Sean Ross for Haggis, which refreshed my interest in trick taking games and opened my eyes to the fact that they can be great for two players.
Hmpf, what do you think this is fen? The Oscars? Anyway, thanks where thanks is due. Onto the game.
Yesterday I mocked out an example layout of a game in progress, here it is so I have something to reference:
The game is specifically two players, the theme is loosely centered around the investigations of one Detective Inspector Daniel Graves; and seems to be set in a heavily anachronistic Victorian London (ish). Graves has come to the conclusion that a series of crimes which have taken place (and some which are about to) are the work of one criminal mastermind.
Players each have a 45 card deck, which identical except for the special abilities printed on the cards. Each card has a suit (one of five, thank you Haggis/Sean Ross), a value from 2 to Ace (where Aces are tens) and the 2, 4, 8, and A cards in each suit also have a special ability. With the exception of the deuces the card must be discarded for this ability to work. Deuces always allow a player to change trump suits to match their suit if desired - I have created tokens to allow players to record this, but pen, paper and memory is good enough most of the time..
So each location has a certain amount of time play takes place at (with the possibility of it being lengthened, shortened or even ended early depending on cards and player actions) along with a trump suit and a special ability.
During a turn, a player can play cards from one suit, trump suit cards and discard cards for abilities. Or pass. Graves's deck mostly revolves around using his deck as a resource, while the Mastermind deck works around their discard pile.
At the start of the game, the Mastermind Player secretly draws their identity and takes 6 evidence cards that have their symbol on it (these evidence cards also have other mastermind symbols on them). One of these evidence cards is removed from play by the Mastermind player (tucked under their identity card) and the remaining five are placed with each location (tucked under them here on the image to keep the length of the image down, but they could easily be parked on top of the location cards or adjacent to them - depends how much space you have.
Starting from the Detective Player's left (and beginning with the Detective Player), each location is played in turn. Players have a number of turns equal to the time tokens on the location in which to play cards. It's an I go, you go system where each player is aiming to score the highest total. This is where the thrust of the game is, you're constantly acting and reacting to the cards your opponent plays - you have to decide when is best to play cards. Hold back and you can risk the location ending prematurely, over commit and you could be in trouble later on.
Once time is up (or both players pass in succession) then the location ends and the player with the highest score wins the evidence (which they can look at secretly). That evidence is worth points at the end of the set (in the case of a draw - no-one gets the evidence and no-one gets to look at it).
Once all five locations have ended, it's time for the accusation and the scoring. Each player gets points for the evidence they collected and we move to the accusation. The Mastermind player then decides if they should 'reveal prematurely' their identity. Effectively the mastermind exposing themselves deliberately because they know the jig is up. The Detective Player scores points if this happens. Otherwise the Detective player gets to make a deduction about the identity of the Mastermind by reviewing his evidence and stating who he thinks it is (each mastermind has symbols as well as a name, the rules contain a key for the symbols, but stating 'I think it's the Bowler Hat and Moustache Guy is good enough in my book.). If he's right, he scores higher point than the reveal gives him, but if he's wrong the Mastermind scores a point.
Players then switch decks and replay the locations with a fresh (random) mastermind and the roles reversed. Player with the highest score after both sets is the winner.
It's fast, lightweight, relatively balanced and I find the interplay decision at the end to be a lot of fun. It's rather nerve wracking to be sat there as the Mastermind trying to decide if the pieces of evidence that my opponent has will give him a good enough idea of my identity. Should I give them the points for sure? Or should I let them go for the deduction and have a shot at winning a point for myself? (At the risk of the Detective scoring three points).
So that's it. The question is, is it any good? Well I bloody well hope so and I wouldn't have spent so much time testing it and creating the graphical design for the game if I didn't enjoy playing it. But time will tell. It's gone down well with my wife also, which is an achievement because she's very particular about games and seems to instinctively distrust games I design myself.  Now if only I was allowed to print out the full colour versions instead of having to use the black and white prototypes. 
I guess only time will tell. Well time and feedback that is. 
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fen
Wales
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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So the previously untitled Zombie Survival Game has gained a name and an entry. Just about all the files are uploaded, I'm waiting on the start cards to be approved, but it's almost all there for someone who's interested in PNPing the 1st edition.
So I give you:
Reanimation: A Zombie Survival Game
Reanimation's Black and White draft has reached a point where I'm happy that it's playable and (fingers crossed) balanced. As it's a card game and I haven't played it hundreds of times I can't be entirely sure that it works out everytime, but at least when I've tested it out the games have often had that feeling of impending doom as the masses of zombies pile up.
I'm rather happy with the risk you have to take grabbing new survivors, you need them to hold weapons and thus increase your defense, however picking one up doesn't immediately increase your defense (unless you have a weapon stockpiled from a previous turn).
The defensive values, especially for the shelters, I'm still not sold on. Sometimes they seem spot on, other times they seem too high and then occasionally they seem too low.
I am very happy with the reanimation rule, which is where any time a player has a survivor killed from a zombie attack another zombie card is drawn immediately. This has a few benefits, it makes calculating the zombie strength a little harder for the players attacked later in the turn. It also shortens the game - by increasing the strength of attacks in a sometimes domino effect and by hastening the appearance of the end of game card, it gives a little 'take that' for the player who has just lost a survivor (which softens the blow) and it encourages people to help their weaker neighbours.
It also had an odd mechanical effect which I rather like, I have seen on occasion a team deliberately fail their attack (by not using weaponry) and sacrificing a low VP value survivor with the intent of hurting players who will be attacked later on. This rather devious move made me chuckle.
All that's left is pretty much a public beta test, where hopefully people print it out, play the game and get back to me about any scavenger cards which have numbers that are either too high or too low, along with sorting out unclear text and so forth.
I think the game is rather good, of course I'm biased. If people really like it I'll make a set of full colour cards for the game and set them up on Artscow.
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With Reanimation basically 'in the can' barring tweaks and a 'pretty' version I'm moving onto two projects, the first is for two players only and is a 2 Player trump/trick taking game themed around the battle of wits between a mastermind and a detective. It's had quite a few games on the table between myself and the wife and it's pretty exciting, the games are always close and both sides have pulled off many exciting upsets. I'm just working on tweaking the cards that have proven to be rubbish and refining things a little before releasing it.
I do need to get back to doing my redesign of The Things (see here) which is close to completion and complete my redesign of the special play cards for Blood Bowl as well.
But the 4X 'lite' game is scratching at me, I have the broad sweeps of the game figured out already and I just need to sit down, design the cards and then find 3 other people to test it.
I have the card designs sorted, the planets and ships are 100% 1st draft designed and all I need to do is sort out diplomacy/politics and technology/research before proceeding to games design.
Finding someone to collaborate with has proven to be the hardest part so far, I'm happy to share design credit/work with someone else because it keeps me focused and on target. Also I really believe that you want more than one person working on a game to get extra viewpoints... Sadly, I haven't found anyone local who's a good fit.
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fen
Wales
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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A few more pieces to look at, interspaced (haha! Pun), with some thoughts about how I could use them by creating an cut down version of the 4X Genre using 4 decks of cards and dice.
Before we start, here's a habitable planet:
So I figured you can boil down most decent 4X games to four basic elements, Exploration, Combat, Research/Technology and Diplomacy/Politics. Create a deck of cards and a way of using each together and you've got a workable 4X game that comes in an tiny box.
You with me? Good, here's another planet. I like to call this one 'Overly Dramatic Planet'
I've already figured out how I'd lay out the exploration. Players would draw cards and place them in a diamond brickwork pattern around their starting homeworld. Each planet would have resources and a defense value. Different resources would grant access to the three other decks (Ships, Technology and Diplomacy). Defense value would be used as a baseline for invasions, players wouldn't have physical fleets in this, so there needs to be a more abstract representation of how difficult a planet is to take over.
I have the planet layout for the game worked out in my head already. All planet cards are used in a landscape format. Players start with their homeworld which is placed in the middle of their playing area and possibly a couple of other planets (not sure yet if that's required). When they gain a new planet they place it either in their center row or on any further out row (both directions) that doesn't exceed the range of the rows before out (the diamond shape I mentioned earlier). Planets are only vulnerable to attack if they are on the outskirts of this layout (i.e. there's not at least one card in a row in front protecting it) Here's an example of a developed planet tableau with the vulnerable systems highlighted.
This allows players to protect their homeworld and also create an abstract form of defense, they can place less important planets (when gained) on the extremes of their tableau and the rest can be placed in positions that will get protected in later turns.
This has the added benefit of effectively making the cards into hexagons (without requiring hexagon tiles). Something that would be useful if I switch to using physical representations of fleets later on in the tinkering of the design process.
I have vague ideas what to do for the other parts, but until I get the zombie game uploaded onto the geek I don't want to delve too deeply into this.
I do know I want to include an Asteroid gun. At least after I just drew this picture I do...
Still technology designs are a long way away.
Got this far? Great, here's your reward. The Crucible of Worlds and the art I would probably use as the Planet card backs.
(I did craft another picture, but I'm not releasing that one as it's a gift for my wife, it included Gas Giants, but I guess we'll have to wait for another time.)
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fen
Wales
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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I intended to work on my digital paint skills to allow me to put artwork together for any one of the three games I have ticking away on the back boiler. But instead I ended up messing about making planets... Oops. At least I learnt a few new things that will help in the future.
They have no home at the moment, I guess I will need to come up with a natty planet/space based game at some point (perhaps I'll re-skin Galactic Emperor tiles with larger versions). However until then here's the bits and pieces I created today.
A Galaxy - it was rather fun to do, not perfect but not bad for a first attempt. Looks rather 'computer game' in appearance.
This was the first planet I had a go at, also decided to practice backdrops and rings at the same time. Rather like it, even like the lens flare
Second Planet, no backdrop and a plainer piece all round. Just done for the practice and to reaffirm what I learnt in the first one.
Third planet, I really like the planet and the moon. The backdrop bothers me, fortunately I can rectify that at some point in the future. Once I've had more practice
A variation on the third planet, closer up with an alternative atmosphere and no backdrop.
So there we go. No really game design progress, but some 'art'. Whayhay! Next time I play a little more with graphic design I'm going to work on Earth like planets and gas giants.
Till then, Boosh and or Ka-kow!
(If you do want to use these in anything, please let me know before hand, thanks)
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fen
Wales
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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When I first had the idea for this game the kernel was little more than the following (taken from my idea book, well as best as I can read it):
Card Driven Zombie Game. (Easy to transport).
Central Pool of Zombies that attack all players.
Players scavenge for survival tools and then have to survive an attack (Day/Night)
Winner is last surviving team or highest VP after certain time.
2-4 (Maybe 5) Players
Needs to be tough to survive, but not impossible.
Semi-cooperative, semi-competitive.
Punish players for not helping other players out (How?)
KISS (Which I'm sure you know means, keep it simple stupid - just a reminder for myself).
With these, the first part of the game was to set a baseline. I decided very quickly that the zombie deck should set the survival standard for the game. In short I would get that together and then try to tweak everything else to match.
Next time I'll write about the survivors and shelters and how they interplay.
Inspired by the various 'act based games' out there, in particular 7 Wonders - I figured that I could create a semi-random pool of zombies that would become more dangerous as time passed. This would give players the time to amass survivors/weapons/barricades/food (I had food as a resource at this time) without dropping out attacks randomly that would be completely un-survivable.
With this in mind I wrote out the zombie deck as follows:
Each Act contains a 7:1 ratio of Zombies to Events (I tend to work in eights due to the card template I use). A certain number of cards will be removed randomly at the start of the game from each act to keep the number of turns close despite the number of players and to also keep things from being completely predictable.
I opened with 24 cards per act and here's the rough design.
Starting Zombies
No Name STR Special
2 Zombie 1 Starts the Game in Play
Act 1
No Name STR Special
8 Zombie 2 None
4 Zombie 2 Draw an additional zombie card when played
2 Event - Zombies do not attack this turn
1 Event - Nothing Happens
2 Shrieker 3 Draw an Extra Zombie Card each turn
1 Zombie Horde 4 None
1 Screamer 1 Must be killed first, draws 2 Zombie cards when killed
1 Screamer 1 Draw 2 Zombies Cards when killed.
3 Zombie Mob 3 None
1 Fetid Zombie 3 Can only be killed by Ranged, Destroys one food when it comes into play
Average zombie Strength drawn per player in act 1: 2 (Not considering the card draw zombies)
This means that to survive an average attack players need to gain a little more than 2 points of defense per turn (if they start with 5 defense) or the ability to kill 1 zombie per turn. There are two different versions of the Screamer as I wasn't sure which one worked best (still not sure).
Act II
No Name STR Special
8 Zombie 3 None
3 Zombie 3 Draw an additional zombie card when played
2 Event - Kill a Zombie (weakest)
1 Event - Reduce Ammo
1 Zombie Horde 5 None
2 Screamer 2 Must be killed first, draws 2 Zombie cards when killed
3 Zombie Mob 4 None
1 Tough Zombie 3 Must be killed twice
1 Fetid Zombie 3 Destroy Food. Immune to Melee Weapons
2 Fast Zombie 3 Destroy Defense. Immune to Ranged Weapons
Average Zombie Strength Revealed per player: 2.75
I didn't want to aim for a gain of over 3 STR per player here because of card draw zombies, the random nature of the scavenge deck and I only wanted a reasonable increase in pressure. Also players should be able to gain defense to just about match this.
Act III
No Name STR Special
6 Zombie 4 None
1 Event - Everyone loses 1 survivor
1 Event - Zombies kill 2 survivors if they breach
1 Event - End of Game (placed in the bottom 4 cards of the deck)
1 Zombie Horde 6 None
1 Zombie Horse 7 None
1 Patient Zero X X = Number of Zombies in Play
3 Lurker 2 Discard 1 Weapon or lose 1 survivor
2 Zombie Mob 5 None
2 Tough Zombie 4 Must be killed twice
1 Fetid Zombie 3 Destroy Food. Immune to Melee Weapons
2 Fast Zombie 3 Destroy Defense. Immune to Ranged Weapons
Average Strength Per Draw: 2.9 (not taking into account losses from Lurkers/Fast Zombies/Events and Patient Zero) - Definitely tough enough for a cumulative total.
Patient Zero is the only 'character' zombie in the deck and something I wanted to include to punish players who have been avoiding killing zombies. The Lurkers are very nasty, but I intended for survival in the third act to be tough, player elimination should happen in this genre. I did however scale down their strength from 5 to 2 to take into account that players were losing defense value (or VPs) when they hit play. They're still brutal.
A few other notes:
Note 1:
The preliminary card random removal was decided as follows:
Act I + II (All cases turn length is approximate)
2 Players - Remove 10 Cards (7 turns per act)
3 Players - Remove 6 Cards (6 Turns per act)
4 Players - Remove 6 Cards (4.5 turns per act)
5 Players - Remove 4 cards (4 turns)
Act III
2 Players - Remove 8 Cards (8 turns)
3 Players - Remove 3 cards (7 turns)
4 Players - Remove 4 cards (4 turns)
5 Players - Remove 4 cards (4 turns)
I'm still not sure if the number of turns is right, with 4-5 players it certainly seems a reasonable length, however I'm still not sure about the length of game for 2 players - there will be a lot less happening per turn so it tends balance out in play time.
Average Game length in turns:
2 players - 22 turns
3 players - 19 turns
4 players - 13 turns
5 players - 12 turns
I'm still pondering the length of time for the three player game. It's a pain when you play a game which outstays it's welcome.
Note 2:
With the exception of the tough zombie every zombie, no matter how strong it is, can be wiped out with a single kill result. This is because players have to discard weaponry/items to gain kill results
Note 3:
VP values for zombies had not been decided at this time, but I included them later in order to make the zombies more enticing to kill as players had to lose VPs (discarding weapons) to generate these kills. Adding VP gave an extra element of cooperation to the game.
Note 4:
There are no card draw zombies in deck 3, this is to keep it's length predictable so players can calculate how long they need to survive. Call it length of time until the army arrives and the rescue operation takes place.
Note 5:
Killing zombies happens before they attack, all players have to decide if they are going to use kill weapons. This forces players to help others and prevents selfish plays like 'After they've attacked you, I'll kill 3 zombies.' The zombie killing is the main cooperative element in the game. After killing Players face the zombie attacks in clockwise order starting with the current 'first player'.
Note 6:
It was decided fairly early on in the play testing that any survivors killed by zombies (not events) would result in another zombie card being drawn from the deck and increasing the strength of the horde attacking all remaining players. This increased cooperation a great deal and made sense thematically. It also hastens the end of the game and helps make things tougher for any possible leader(s).
Mon Feb 20, 2012 10:15 am
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fen
Wales
Cardiff
The Vale of Glamorgan
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Lately I've barely had a day where an idea for a board game hasn't popped into my head. The problem I have isn't that I just think "It would be nice if there was a game where players did X and then Y." and then look for a game similar in my collection. No, a whole bunch of half formed possibilities arrive shortly afterwards - sometimes in the space of a couple of minutes and I end up scrawling stuff down that I can sometimes hardly read. (My handwriting is terrible, I rarely know what I have written).
In an effort to see if I could toss it out, I went through my little design notebook recently and found that I had nearly twenty games in various stages of design. So I thought I would start by trying to get these ideas to fruition and then that would allow me to go "Rubbish" and dump them into the recycling. Lets face it, there's a lot of designs already out there, who needs more?
It hasn't really worked, in fact it made things a little worse, three of the more recent ideas have even gotten themselves almost to a final release form. What follows is one of them:
A while ago I worked on a 2-4 player semi-cooperative zombie survival based card game. It used a mechanic to represent scavenging where players would compete for the possible cards/resources/victory points each turn and then everyone would face off against an increasingly dangerous horde of zombies. Players could kill these zombies, however killing a zombie would normally help everyone.
I'd got the game to a shortened test version, played it a few dozen times and then boxed it away. I forgot about it until I read Cheeve's blog on his rough design 'Dead End'. It sparked things back up and I felt it was time to break it back out along with the rough sketch of the rules.
A few test plays again and I remembered why I enjoyed this game, I couldn't bring myself to place it on the scrap heap, so I expanded the game to it's full list, refined it and took it for testing. Apart from my appalling writing it was a bit of a hit. Not the greatest game of all time, but the theme worked very well with the mechanics.
So I've shot back to the computer and worked on the visual issues along with refining a few bits and pieces. The game is very close to a finished form and I'm considering making it my first PNP release here on the 'geek. (That would be an achievement in itself, most of my life I abandon projects just before they're finished).
What follows is a rough outline of the game:
Each player starts with 3 survivors and a shelter as follows:
(Two player's teams are shown here)
The important information is almost all kept at the bottom of these cards. In the case of survivors it's their scavenge value (number of gas cans), which is used to 'bid' for new cards, their victory point value (in the star) and the number of hands they have (normally, but not always, 2) which are used to wield weapons in defense/use tools for scavenging.
The shelter is likewise rather similar. It has an occupancy limit (the House symbol) which is 4 for the starting locations, a defense value tentatively set at 5 (the shield) along with more VP points.
You can have as many scavengers as you have room for, so a bigger shelter is helpful as more scavengers = more weapons held and scavenge points to spend. However larger shelters tend to have lower defenses as there are more potential points of entry to cover.
First of all cards are turned up from the scavenge deck and players compete to get them. Players can get a maximum of 2 cards per turn (2 scavenging parties are sent out, no more, no less), however some turns they might send everyone they have to get a single card as they really need it.
Scavenging cards look like this:
(Yes Sticky Joe's clip art does look like familiar face!)
It's all pretty self explanatory. Weapons take up hands to use and are tucked underneath the survivor who's using them (or placed in a stockpile for later access).
The Zombies:
The zombie deck is the baseline for the game, I'm balancing everything else around it. The zombie deck throws out 1 zombie or event per player per turn and it's set up in three acts, each one getting increasingly more difficult to survive. Here's some of the act 1 zombies.
Very self explanatory again, they have an attack strength, a possible VP value and maybe a special ability. Their attack strength is totaled against each player's defense value (one at a time, starting with the current first player) and if it exceeds then a 'breach' occurs and one survivor dies (creating a new shiny zombie for others to deal with).
If other people have a tough time surviving, your survival chances drop a little as well. So this creates a scenario where players may sometimes kill zombies for no reason other than gaining VP and stopping more zombies turning up.
Game ends when there's only one survivor team left, or once the zombie deck is exhausted (in which case, highest VP wins). At the moment the game plays around the 45 min mark - depending on the scavenge phase as that's the part which takes longest.
What's next?
The two areas I still have to refine and once it's done the game will probably be released (and then mocked as a cruddy design ) - these are the balance between Zombie strength and defense. I need to tweak until the game 'feels' right, I need to get it to a point where survival is tough, but not impossible and the game length is acceptable. Plus I need to decide if the additional survivors are mixed in with the scavenge deck, or delivered in their own separate phase, at the moment survivors are high priority items - the bidding system I believe keeps this in check, an early survivor might be the only card a player gets in a turn because they are very desirable.
Some days I lean towards that, seeing if the way the game plays will keep the value of survivors automatically in check (supply and demand).
I've also worked on a full colour version of the zombie cards. As sort of a test to see what the game might look like once 'finished'.
The next step is to finish up converting my horrible crabby handwritten cards into clean black and white digital versions, create a printable pdf for it, test the game further to tweak the tension, decide about the survivor and then pop it onto the 'Geek. I'm also rather keen to get some feedback from people outside my usual circle of 'testers' playing group(s), but one step at a time.
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