Hey BGDF world,
Right now I have lots of ideas in my head for games, and this is my first time attempting to actually get one all the way into small-scale production. Right now it's all still at the theoretical stage, with no prototype yet.
I'm hoping to make a game that incorporates these aspects: Co-operative play (though traitor aspect intrigues me), Hand and Resource Management, and perhaps a sort of "crawling" aspect as you progress from room to room or situation to situation, but that part is less certain.
Themes I have thought of so far are these:
Space/Sci-Fi:
- You and your friends are contracted by a seemingly benevolent coorporation to explore an alien monolith on a distant moon.
- This would have either tiles or cards that are revealed as you explore new "rooms," having to deal with situations which present themselves in each one. So there would be decks for Room cards, resource cards, and individual player mats keeping track of your health, sanity, energy...
- Downside: having health makes it an elimination-game.
Science Lab
- You and your friends are just having a normal day as interns in a laboratory when things get a little crazy. Either work together to develop cures for diseases and clean energy solutions, or use science to make even crazier things happen and become the greatest individual scientist of all time!
- This would also have tiles that are revealed as you explore new "rooms," as you gain both individual skills through research and improve workstations so that anyone who uses it gets better items.
- Still need to work out how events would happen in a situation like this; it seems to be heavily economically focused.
- There wouldn't be stats for players, since it would be a non-elimination game.
- Biggest problem for me with this is that there isn't really a "bad guy" or "bad situation" you have to work together to overcome, so you would automatically be competing individually from turn 1
Secret Base
- You and your friends must join forces to take out the evil plans of the evil genius. Work together as Hackers, Captains, Thieves, Grifters, etc. to recover the plans before he can carry out his evil plan. Oh, but you're all from different organizations and agencies, so you wall want the plans for your own agenda.
- Makes the first half co-operative and the second cut-throat. Anyone know of any other games that do this that I can learn from?
- Would encourage hand management (using items now as a team, or using them for yourself later) and deception
- Can work with either tiles or cards or a board. (As you discover new rooms, new obstacles come your way and you must place your character card on the situation you want to handle first, whether that's disabling the lasers or distracting the guards or fighting the goons or shielding your teammate, etc.)
No matter what, I would like to have all of these be an edge between comical and gritty, not overly dark or violent but feeling intense the whole way through. I feel like the Science Lab, while fun, doesn't have what it takes to fulfil this atmosphere, whereas the other two allow for it.
Any thoughts?
Comments
Theme
Playing to theme is so important. It can inspire design meaningfully and it helps paint engrossing gameplay. However, there seems to be an over-reliance on theme here. It may be too soon to focus on it.
In each proposed concept, I notice that you want a tile and room mechanic where each room presents new challenges. That's the core of whatever you want to make. That's what you should focus on. How do you want this to play out? Attacks, HP, Magic, etc.? How do you "disable lasers," "distract guards," or "fight goons"? Once you discover HOW you want the game to play, theme can be derived from the mechanics.
Also, don't force your mechanics to come together in an unnatural way. Maybe the way you devise engrossing gameplay with tiles doesn't lend itself to cooperative gameplay. That's fine. It's then up to you to change either your vision or your core gameplay.
Hope this helps,
Calvin
Thanks for all the insights,
Thanks for all the insights, Calvin!
I think I have been focusing a bit too much on the theme, and I have been unnecessarily trying to constrain my mechanics to fit whatever theme I'm leaning toward at the time. And the tile and room mechanic is definitely at the core of it.
I'll make sure to post more as more ideas come up.
Thanks again!
Kyle
Interesting Ideas
You have a lot of interesting ideas, but it doesn't seem like they are fully formed. You mentioned resource and hand management, but what does that look like in the game? What are your hand cards and resources used for? What kind of management is there? Moving from room to room: Is this one move per turn, or do you get multiple moves per turn? You do have a lot of ideas to draw from, and just from the three examples you have given, there's a game there wanting to be designed. ;)
If you mixed all three, this is what I see: A coop game where each player is from a different faction, sent to investigate a recently discovered alien base hoping to gain a benefit from the scientific artifacts within. They each have a pack of items (starting hand), a class (Abilities) and a secret identity (Goal). As they explore the ruins (by placing room cards) they can find items that can help, artifacts that need researching, or challenges that need to be overcome.
The cards in your hand are items that can be used to overcome dangers or research artifacts. Some items are used then discarded, and others are roll-to-use, hoping to beat a certain number. Each player gets a number of actions each turn, but if they fail a challenge, their turn ends. They don't have health, so there's no way for them to 'die', but they could get unlucky and not progress as well as the others. Hand management/Resource management would be worked in through the ability to gain/use/trade cards. Trading would be important, and also bluffing. Each player with their secret identity would be trying to achieve a secret goal, one which they can't reveal to the other players. Before the game you could show the roles before they are randomly dealt out, so all players know all the goals, but not which one each player has.
The core of the game play would be a get card -> use card mechanic, as well as player specific abilities. I don't think it has to be more complicated than this, but the fun of the game would come down to how well you could design the challenges and item cards. The end game would be getting the right cards to use on the right pieces of the board, so that the players can fulfill their secret goal. If they are too blatant about it, the other players will start hoarding the cards that player needs. If the players are smart about it, they'll keep what they need a mystery and/or try to collect the cards they need before going to the location on the board. Really smart players might try and collect other player's cards, hoping to force a negotiation situation, but that could also limit their abilities, as collecting cards they don't need takes time.
I'm going to stop now, otherwise I could go on all day. Any of this helpful?