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sean johnson
United States
avon
Indiana
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As the blog title suggest, my goal is to create a game that exist in the BGG database and thus earns me a game designer badge.
The past several posts have outlined my ideas for a light space epic game. The game I have an idea for is more of a 2X game (Expand and Exterminate) than a true 4X game. The game idea spawned from me wanting to make a game centered around Starship combat that my wife will play with me, and one of the core ways I plan on doing that is making it a dice fest.
Instead of making a game that has a lot of stuff supporting that main concept, I am going to keep it simple, and focus on a game that is only my core concept. I also plan on doing this in a couple of weeks.
Yesterday (September 1st) a new game design challenge began: Iron Game Designer Challenge. The idea of this challenge is that people have to use two of seven given elements to create a game. Like the Iron Chef show, this is done under the intense pressure of limited time. The contest ends at midnight on September 18th. Using a lot of what I already have in mind I think I can make this happen.
I will be using several of the given elements, including: Classic Sci-Fi movie theme, battle card driven, area control, and dice rolling. I can not think of many things more iconic of Classic Sci-Fi movies than star ships fighting, so I am already in that theme.
This will be a two player only game. Each player will have a pre-set deck of cards. I am going to begin with 26 each and see how it works. Between the players will be five planets, and the goal is to gain control of three of these planets. The majority of the cards, players will have will be various ship cards. There will be three major areas where players will play and move these cards between. In front of the player is their home area. Cards are deployed here, and can be moved from here to the next zone for any of the five contested worlds. The next zone is "in system". A card here will be more committed to a planet, but not fighting for it yet. The final area is "in orbit". When any number of a players cards are "in orbit" they are vying for control of the planet. If at any point a player finishes a round (both players have had equal turns) with ships in orbit of three planets unopposed they win. Until ships are in orbit, they will be hidden from their opponent. This fog of war should allow for bluffing and trying to figure an opponent out.
When two players are both in orbit around a planet, the only way to get rid of the opponent is through combat. Combat will be done using the system I outlined in my last post. . The only difference to the system is that a battle card element will be added. The game 1776 has a battle card mechanic that I love, where before a battle both players pick a tactic card and find out who gets the upper hand. Each player will have five battle cards, and they will essentially interact using the rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock mechanic. These cards combined with the fog of war should really create a lot of tension in a two player game, as is seen in Yomi.
This idea feels really doable and maintains everything I want to see in the game I want to make. Plus, the quick deadline gives me added pressure to get to it. I bought the dice I needed today, and I hope to be play testing a very rough prototype tomorrow night.
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