Skip to Content
 

Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

49 replies [Last post]
Scurra
Scurra's picture
Offline
Joined: 09/11/2008
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

seo wrote:
I was surprised my game received two votes. I didn't expect any, not just because there were really good games competing, but because I don't think Four Cards is anything more than mediocre at best. So many thanks to the two voters who beleived in my game more than I did. :-)

Well, I voted for it because it was basically almost exactly the same game I came up with, but you found some solutions to problems I couldn't solve (so I didn't enter in the end.
Now I discover that it resembles a commercial game as well, I'm not hugely surprised as the idea felt a bit "worn" even while I was working on it :-)

Hamumu
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

jwarrend wrote:

The pudding incident: The mechanics don't match the theme; this is a fairly generic fighting game, and I don't see the food fight concept coming through.

That's actually because it's NOT a food fight... I knew doing the pudding business was a mistake, but I was just rushing along (it actually sort of fell into being pudding, I didn't really think about following through on my yogurt-related threat). It goes like this: somebody threw a pudding, this got them all mad (as it says in there, they're all very on edge), and they proceeded to slaughter each other with their magical attacks, no food involved beyond the initial throw which caused it. The players are divvying up the 'school' into two 'cliques' and you see which clique survives the ensuing brawl.

jwarrend wrote:
I felt like the combat mechanic is probably too chaotic: if the crux of the action is wiping out your opponent's current lineup, and his is doing the same to you, then how do you make any kind of plans, if your lineup keeps getting regenerated?

I picture that most of the time, you'll lose 1 of your 3 fighters (which is why you draw 1 card per turn). If it's not clear from the rules, the idea is that every round you lose more than 1 guy, you're inching closer to defeat. Every round you don't lose a guy, you're recovering and becoming less vulnerable (your hand gets bigger). You don't lose by being wiped out (though unless you've gained cards earlier, that would leave you one card from death), you lose by being gradually depleted over a series of battles.

So since you typically only lose one guy, and occasionally two, and never draw more than one, your opponent will gradually come to know what you've got in your hand to an extent, and he will try to counter based on that. Further, you both know almost the entire contents of each others' decks, due to the drafting phase. Now, I wouldn't expect players to memorize that, but you know, if he managed to outbid you for That One Guy, you're going to remember he's got him, because That One Guy is very useful! You also would know the general makeup of their deck - did they go heavily on Fire, or was Water their thing? So you would counter based on that as well. That presumes that they applied some strategy during the drafting phase. If they didn't, well, then maybe you'll win due to their bad picks!

I do see it being pretty random, but with the deck building built into the game itself, there's enough strategy there for a good competition, I think. I think the drafting is a good part of the game, since it's actually possible at the end of it for one player to have a significantly better deck than the other, because they handled it wisely.

I know in the end it's a pretty generic game (VERY generic theme), but I think the drafting is something new, and it just plain sounds fun to me overall. I feel like I really failed on theme, and on rules (and on "know your audience", but I *did* know the audience when I was writing it, I just didn't care!), but I think the actual game would be a fun one if completed.

It's probably more of a kid's game really, where they can get excited over the different abilities and argue over how badly they're misinterpreting the rules (and their moms can breathe a sigh of relief that there's only one box to buy!). I knew it wouldn't do well in the contest, but well, it's what came to mind! Of all my entries in the GDS, this actually may be the one I'm most interested in pursuing a little bit. I'd like to come up with something more original next time though!

Kreitler
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Congrats to everyone, and especially the winners! This month's challenge was surprisingly difficult, in spite of (because of?) the relaxed rules.

I felt about 1/2 the games were very good, with no one standing out from its peers. The other 1/2 varied in quality, still almost all good, but some of which worked better than others.

My top 1/2 were:

Belemmer -- generally, I feel we neglect abstract games in our challenge entries, so I appreciated the fact that so many appeared this month. Of them all, I think Belemmer had the most interesting set of rules, though I'm not sure I could see through its strategies without playing it (which, sadly, I didn't have time to do). I felt like it might be a bit too dependent on the luck of the shuffle, which kept it from being this month's #1.

American Revolution -- I loved this game. The description caught my imagination and I felt the mechanics which Jeff explained worked well. However, there were a number of holes he left deliberately open, so I couldn't give it the #1 spot. In particular, how does one resolve battles (now explained in another post); how does deal out casualties if his die roll indicates a choice between cards with different numbers of muskets; is the "Artillery" card an Event or something else; etc. I realize that the GDS isn't necessarily a place for complete rules, but without fully resolved mechanics, it's hard to justify giving a game first place.

Arcadia -- initially, I loved this idea, and I still think it's beautifully original. On reflection, I began to wonder if the gameplay would be deep enough for repeated play. I also doubted that the visual element would hold up well once you started blocking other peoples' icons (when someone places a shepherd over my goat, the image starts to muddy). Ultimately, I had to recognize it based on sheer originality, but I couldn't give it the win.

Bitter Creek -- I also loved this game. The mechanics were very pure and easy to understand. Initially, I docked the game heavily because I didn't think there was much strategy -- you always pretty much know which cards you'll place. After some thought, I realized that the longer-term strategy of gunfigher selection might counterbalance this somewhat. I appreciated the fact that the nature of the cards reflected very specific elements of an encounter at high noon. I think this could work very well as a "mini-system" within a larger (board?) game.

Posit -- another great abstract game. Sure, it's a bit like Mastermind, but the rules offered some neat variation and made the game more approachable for younger kids (via "peek"). The description read clearly. The only flaw: it felt a bit dry and may only offer extended play for hard core abstract thinkers.

Are We There Yet -- I loved the presentation and theme of this game. I liked the mechanics, but felt they were pretty "standard". If the game systems had shown as much flair and flavor as the cards and art, this would have been an easy #1.

Sardini Is Dead -- I liked eveything about this game except the elimination element, which hurt it a lot. It seemed like the penalty for starting an uncertain trick was so great that it would virtually never happen. Beyond that, the game worked well -- the mechanics were clean and clear and well integrated with the theme. I wonder if the "increasing draw" mechanic would tend to favor the same person building the trick over and over again.

Here are the "rest" of the games -- not bad, by any means, but not as remarkable as the top half.

In The Time Of Art -- I liked everything about this game, but loved nothing. The mechanics seemed solid and clear and the art direction fit the theme. However, nothing stood out as exceptional to me. This game deserved better than I gave it, but I just couldn't get excited about it. I suspect that's a problem with me, not the game.

Four Cards -- another good abstract game, but I felt that the choices to be made were too simple most of the time. As others have pointed out, with some minor changes it could be excellent. I hope we'll see more of it.

Pudding Incident -- As with "In the Time of Art", I felt this game was a little generic. However, I suspect that the rules are not the "real" game, here. I have to ask, Hamumu -- were you planting a red herring for Yogurt-philes? It seems like you even went so far as to mimic the voice and format of his first couple entries, not to mention the shameless use of the word "pudding". The game itself isn't bad -- a simple battle game with several interesting ideas (love the cheerleader). I just felt it didn't offer much that was new to the genre.

Nippon -- I couldn't get my head around the rules -- but I almost gave it first place for the photo and design of the box! This is another game that I suspect I would like if I saw it played, but I just couldn't understand the presentation.

Travelling Light -- this totally baffled me. I only had time for two readings of the entries, and after two shots I still had no idea what was going on. Strangely, this one also reminded me of Yogurt, recalling his "packing" rules from Gremlins. I would love to see this played -- I think it's probably very slick. I agree with an earlier post that an abstract deck would have helped me understand it much better.

Haul Assets -- my entry. I wasn't too proud of it. Not only was it unoriginal in them and rife with fiddly mechanics, it also had the world's largest typo in the image (ships should have mileage of 3000+, and the illo showed one with 2000). I tried to include some mechanics to compensate for the bland assortment of cards:

1) Showing every other card to your opponent was supposed to give him some idea of what you held, so you could better give him hard-to-ship freight.

2) Since hand size depended on Freight held, you could risk holding more freight in hopes of shipping some for certain, in exchange for the danger of getting stuck with something unshippable.

3) The transfer pile (in conjunction with showing cards) was supposed to give you a way to grab new cards to help ship tough freight, but allow your opponent to skim off potentially useful cards.

It didn't come together very well, and after submission I realized the certain events could really help the game (like a card that forces you to lose $$$ for every Freight card in your hand, which made holding lots of Freight risky).

I found two comments interesting: "it should be a full-blown board game", and "it reminded me of Mille-Borne, but didn't live up to the potential". The seed idea for A$$ests came from another pick-up-and-deliver game I've prototyped called "Big Rig", which plays like a board version of Mille-Borne, so I guess *that* game has some promise.

Anyway, another great contest, with a good show from everyone. See you next month.

K.

Kreitler
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Hamumu wrote:
I didn't really think about following through on my yogurt-related threat).

...

It's probably more of a kid's game really, where they can get excited over the different abilities and argue over how badly they're misinterpreting the rules (and their moms can breathe a sigh of relief that there's only one box to buy!). I knew it wouldn't do well in the contest, but well, it's what came to mind! Of all my entries in the GDS, this actually may be the one I'm most interested in pursuing a little bit. I'd like to come up with something more original next time though!

First off, we posted at nearly the same time, so I missed the bit about Yogurt. Sorry to have misinterpreted that.

Second, the game is much deeper than I realized, which is usually the case (I did the same thing to you with "Little People"). I should've known, most designs are. I should bump "Pudding" up to the top half of my list...

K.

Hamumu
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Kreitler wrote:

Pudding Incident -- were you planting a red herring for Yogurt-philes? It seems like you even went so far as to mimic the voice and format of his first couple entries, not to mention the shameless use of the word "pudding".

Actually, I had no intention of aping any style! This was pure me (except the fact that it mentions pudding). I think I need to take that as a compliment! I think you give me a little too much credit for depth, though... it is a really simple game, and I think fairly belongs in the bottom half. But hey, you're certainly entitled to your own opinion, who am I to stand in your way?

I still like the name of the school though. There's a terribly inappropriate children's book series in the making there!

doho123
doho123's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/21/2008
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Okay, going over my notes:
#1 Posit: A nice simple game that can be easily played by amost any ages, with a deck of cards, in the back of car while moving. Even though there might have been games with a little interesting theme, or depth, or play mechanics, something about the simplicity here captured my attention. And, conceptually, it's a game that clearly works.

#2 Bitter Creek: relatively simple, nicely themed, and doesn't seem to take up too much room on an airplane tray. (Maybe gotta get rid of the dice rolling and put a random number on the corner of each card or something to concerve space).

After these two, I had a hard time finding a third favorite that met my criteria. I finally decided on:

#3 Haul Assets: Primarily because it was fairly straightforward, even though it's sort of familiar (Mille Bornes). And, for some reason, the theme didn't really appeal to me this much (but it didn't scare me away either).

The runner ups:

Belemmer: Pretty much was disqualified from my voting based on the amount of table space required.

Four Cards: I felt that there were no intersting decisions to be made. However, it's probably a good kids game.

In The Time of Art: This falls into my category of "overly complex," even though the actual rules are simpler than my first reading of them. Probably a graphic example of the caards would've helped, especially the project cards. in addition, the table size requirement scared me away.
American Revolution: I was bouncing back and forth betwen this and Haul Assets for my third choice. I decided on Haul Assets instead because of the CCG-like elemets this game had (each leader and location card having it's own ruleset), dice rolling, and numerous card stacks started to seem to make this game un-wieldly for travel play.

Arcadia: I found my self not being able to vote for this game because the main gimmick of the game is borrowed too heavily from Gloom, but also a few other things bothered now now that I looked over my notes. The scoring system seems overly complicated and would require a notepad. Also, upon reading the original concept, I envisioned a more strealined ruleset (which I'll have to post in another thread). AND the additional CCG Wanderer guys bugged me, just to complicate things more.

Travelin Light: I couldn't wwrap my head around the rules to this the way they were decribed.

Pudding Indicent: (as you can see from my lists above) If the CCG elements of some of the above games bothered me, you can imagine what this game does.

(more to follow eventually)

Challengers
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Calling All Hawk-eyed Members!

doho123 wrote:
Okay, going over my notes:
#1 Posit: A nice simple game that can be easily played by amost any ages, with a deck of cards, in the back of car while moving. Even though there might have been games with a little interesting theme, or depth, or play mechanics, something about the simplicity here captured my attention. And, conceptually, it's a game that clearly works.

Thanks for the kind words, doho123! These challenges inspire me to improve my presentation.
doho123 wrote:

Arcadia: I found my self not being able to vote for this game because the main gimmick of the game is borrowed too heavily from Gloom, but also a

This comment, along with several others in this thread (including my own, wherein I stated that I had never seen transparencies before), got me to thinking about how cool it would be to have a Forum dedicated to helping designers see how original their ideas are. Before I spend a lot of time creating a world domination board game using 3 dice for attacks, 2 dice for defense and a deck of cards for earning bonus armies, I would like to know if anybody here recognizes my "idea" as being too close to an existing game. Having this information, I could abandon my project, or I could study the existing game(s) to see how I might differentiate my incarnation.
I see replies in other forums that do this on an ad-hoc basis, so I know that nothing stops us from giving out that advice. However, unless you have loads of time, or a post headline catches your eye on the home page, you won't see many "Next Great Game" posts. By the same token, the Next Great Game Designer won't have the benefit of the broader membership's advice.
Normally, a suggestion like this would lead to a whole bunch of drama about copyrights, NDA's and whatnot. I certainly don't want to stir up that hornet's nest. So, I just want to say that if you think this idea sucks, your reasons ought to be technical (such as, it duplicates the purpose of another Forum). After all, the best way to keep your ideas secret is to keep them to yourself. I'd like to hear comments on both sides of this idea.
By the way, this has nothing to do with GDS, just designing in general.
(In fact, I have this idea for a game ... I'd like to share it in an appropriate thread. Which one is the preferred Forum?)

Regards,

Mitch

doho123
doho123's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/21/2008
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

(and now, continuing)

Nippon: A fairly extravagant attempt, I must admit. Given that the game fits everything in a little box, is impressive. Somehow, the sophistication of the game leads me to believe that either this game was somehow fleshed out prior to the contest and squiched into a little box, or the designer is quite mad in attempting to do something like this given the constraints of the contest. But again, the CCG and lotza lil tokens, and general fiddlely-ness of the game removed it from my list of being playable on a bouncy car ride.

Are We There Yet?:This would be a fun multi-player game game around the table, I imagine. But, I'm guessing, not a good two-player game, which was sort of the target goal. Sort of reminds of something that Cheapass Games would put out. Also, having to leave each player's stacks of cards out with the addition of dice rolling probably makes the playing area to un-wieldly.

doho123
doho123's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/21/2008
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Quote:
Doho123, could you describe the idea you had for a transparent landscape game? I liked the concept for Arcadia, but it was hurriedly executed, so it doesn't surprise me that other smoother possibilities would leap to mind.

My initial reaction from the first couple of paragraphs was something like this:
Landscape cards start with raw material.
Transparent cards show inhabitants: villages, farms, factories(?)

Cards generally have only 2 or 3 icons on them.

You can play cards on top of others as long as you cover up none or only one other icon. you can not rotate the cards as icnos that are face up to you indicate that those inhabitants are yours.

At some point, like when a stack shows, I don't know, 8 inhabitants total, the stack "countryside" is fully maxed out with the amount of inhabitants it can support, and then points are totalled based on things like "farms score a point for each wheat", "villages score a point for each wood and water", "cities score a point for all materials", etc.

This gets rid of the color-coded villagers, the stacking heirarchy of what can go on what, a lot of the obtuseness of the current scoring system, and no need for player aid cards.

I guess you still need a pad of paper to keep track of points, however.

Hamumu
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Several people have called out Arcadia as being a rip off of Gloom (not that harsh really, but "too similar"). Now, I know Gloom uses transparent cards and all. But when I first saw Gloom, I thought that concept was so cool and I immediately started thinking of what else could be done with it. Are we really supposed to throw out the idea of transparent cards because one game has already used them? Should we disallow dice in games since Yahtzee already uses them?

Or am I misunderstanding (not having seen anything of Gloom beyond a listing on a game site), and Arcadia actually PLAYS similarly to Gloom?

I think there are many miles of game design territory to be covered with transparent cards before they're used up. I would love to see them as a GDS rule one of these months!

Anonymous
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

About my entry, Traveling Light. Yes, a custom deck would make it work better, it's intended to use a custom deck. I started with a regular deck to work through basic gameplay problems. What I submitted was basically a sketch, written in a form that's mostly for me to check the mechanics.

The game is simpler to do than to describe. A diagram would help. What I'm aiming for is a game with memory and strategy elements that flows very quickly. The 'repacking' rule gave me lots of problems, it took a while to find a repacking method that was easy to do but didn't make the game trivial. When I work out the remaining problems, I'll write it out more sensibly and post it somewhere.

About the other entries... I'm really not sure how to vote, because I had questions about many of the entries, things that are unclear or unspecified. But there's no way to ask questions, so what I'm left with is judging the presentation, which isn't an aspect that interests me much. So, here are the questions from my notes.

Belemmer. Can you choose placement during setup or is the order fixed?

The American Revolution. How do you change leaders? What happens if you have more than one card that matches the casualty roll?

Bitter Creek. If I play all my fire cards, do I have to play out my aim cards before reloading? When I reload, do I lose cards for Nerve again?

Arcadia, do cards have 2 orientations or 8?

The Pudding Incident. It looks to me like a hand will tend to keep Earth cards and lose other cards. What happens when both hands are all Earth cards and no attacks can succeed?

Nippon. When you draw a card, do you have to show it to your opponent?

Hamumu
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

As far as judging goes, I feel like you fill in the blanks yourself. You're really judging the basic idea of the game, not the details of implementation (as many people keep trying in vain to tell us all, you're really only supposed to submit a rough idea in the first place!).

grayscale wrote:

The Pudding Incident. It looks to me like a hand will tend to keep Earth cards and lose other cards. What happens when both hands are all Earth cards and no attacks can succeed?

It's interesting how people come at the games from different directions and come up with different issues! You make an excellent point that could end up a balance problem. I actually did think about what would happen if you got down to having two teams that couldn't hurt each other and had no more cards in their deck to draw (best answer I had was that you continuously battle at that point - they both attack, they both attack again, and keep going until SOMEBODY drops dead).

The flipside is that, in theory, most Fire cards should be able to defeat most Earth cards. So you may want to hold on to a mighty Fire card to use to cut through a 'turtling' opponent. And the nice thing is, even if your Fire guy isn't strong enough to do the job, being so weak on defense, he's fairly sure to die in his attempt. That means that your second string will also get to attack, so the addition of even a weak second attack makes his leader almost sure to die. In fact, that might be the answer when your opponents' team is just so high on defense that you can't seem to do anything - move a guy with low defense into your front row to sacrifice him so that you get two attacks.

The other saving grace in that issue is that whoever you are using as a cheerleader is almost guaranteed to survive, so I think you'd find a variety of cards always surviving, not just Earth cards.

It's all theoretical of course, I've only even come up with the contents about 4 cards.

buthrukaur
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Nippon

I figure I'd own up to Nippon.
It was designed box and all on a boring Firday night after the contest started and kept me up to about 4 in the morning. It was originally a war game idea I had (with islands and characters vying for control through various abilities like honor vs treachury blah, blah blah) so that is where the card trait idea came from. I have been able to playtest it since then and the rules as written have been simpliefied a bit.

The idea was that the counters would all be little flat plastic chips not the cubes as pictured which I stole from another game. The cards are always presented to the other player so you can alway keep in mind what the other player is holding.

If anyone is interrested you can check out the original Playtest cards at
http://www.geocities.com/buthrukaur/nipcards.pdf

Caliani
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

"Are We There Yet?" was my entry, and the first time I've ever designed a card game myself all the way to prototype :) Thanks to everyone that gave me a vote, I thought all of the other entries were great and it was hard for me to narrow it down to three. I'm definitely the neophyte here!

I really want to thank those of you that took the time to comment on the game. I am pretty good at coming up with theme's and adding flavor to games, but I'm just starting on the actual mechanic design. In fact, I know next to nothing about that right now. I plan on diving down into every one else's entry and looking at their mechanics in more detail to try to learn. The resources on this site have been great, but I'm still plodding through them all. Anyway, if you have feedback you didn't want to share in the forum, please PM me with it even if it is negative -- it's all a learning experience for me.

Anyway, AWTY? was my attempt to come up with rules after coming up with half the cards. It turned out to be more of a kids' game than anything else, but I have to say that it is very playable and I didn't run into any real problems in the half dozen games I played with my wife and a friend. My friend is much more knowledgeable than I in the gaming world, and he really didn't find any mechanical problems with it... except the fact it is a bit boring :)

I also was one of the ones that concentrated on needing a small area (we easily played on a small TV tray) rather than in a car.

Some comments to comments:

Quote:
I think the die-rolling Mommy thing is unnecessary (especially if you're trying to play in a car!), though it has great flavor to it, so it'd be sad to remove it.

Yeah, I wanted to keep away from only being able to play one type of defense for one type of offense, so the Mommy! card was meant to be the catch-all defense that doesn't always work. It worked, but was much cooler in my mind than it turned out for real.

Quote:
A fairly typical “take that!” game.

Yeah, the "take that" factor was the hook. I couldn't come up with anything more complex, but give me time...
Quote:
Unfortunately, like all “take that!” games, it’s almost certainly broken

In very limited playtesting, we really didn't find anything "broken". I think that is mostly due to the very limited options each player has... which is why the game is a bit boring.

Quote:
I liked the mechanics, but felt they were pretty "standard".

Yep, no arguement. But teach me o' gaming masters and I shall learn. Heck, lead your Padawan to the dark side if that's what it takes, I look good in black.

Quote:
This would be a fun multi-player game game around the table, I imagine. But, I'm guessing, not a good two-player game, which was sort of the target goal.

Yep again... the two player was a bit bland. Although I did get my wife to play several times, which means she had a little bit of fun at least (she even helped me come up with some card ideas to replace some of the not-so-good ones). Never got to try it with more than that but I hope to. In fact, once I get my wife the Xylon laminator for Christmas (for "scrapbooking"... yeah, that's it) I plan on making a nice prototype (cards already created in Photoshop with MS Office clip art) for posterity since this is the first time I followed through on an idea. Maybe I'll spring it on the in-laws over the holidays. Or better, on my neices since it really turned out to be more of a kids' game.

I wish I could do a good critique on the other games since there were many that I thought were great. But I need to learn a bit more before I can start disecting other peoples games in public (ooh, that sounds dirty).

Anyway, sorry to ramble on. I really want to thank the people who gave detailed feedback again. And thanks to the Admin for running the contest. Hopefully you'll see me enter more of these, and I'll get better as time goes on.

Yogurt
Yogurt's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/09/2009
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Hamumu wrote:
Or am I misunderstanding (not having seen anything of Gloom beyond a listing on a game site), and Arcadia actually PLAYS similarly to Gloom?

I hope not. As I say, I haven't played Gloom either. What I know of Gloom is that you play numeric bonuses/penalities on top of family cards, trying to reduce the value of your family members or increase the value of your opponent's family. I think you may be able to cover some bonuses with others, but I'm not sure if that's as common as it would be in Arcadia because there seem to be fewer icons on each card.

The main difference would be that in Gloom, the stacks are not shared, but are yours alone. In Arcadia, the lands are shared and scoring can benefit both players. (I'm not sure this aspect of Arcadia works well yet. A lot depends on how well villagers could affect the scoring. If both players could earn the same amount by electing to score, then the game becomes quite shallow.)

Other differences: Scoring takes into account the current state of all stacks in Arcadia. In Arcadia, you have limits to how you can place the cards. It becomes harder to add cards to stacks that have a number of cards already.

I'm looking forward to trying Gloom in a week or so. Maybe I'll be surprised to see what else they do with transparent cards.

And Doho, thanks for your take on the concept. Getting rid of the coloured villagers would be a welcome change.

Yogurt

Anonymous
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Hamumu wrote:
As far as judging goes, I feel like you fill in the blanks yourself. You're really judging the basic idea of the game, not the details of implementation (as many people keep trying in vain to tell us all, you're really only supposed to submit a rough idea in the first place!)

That's what I have problems with, because for me the basic idea of a game is the experience of playing it, what it "feels" like. Mechanics has a large effect on that, but it's often easy to adjust the mechanics to change the feel of a game. Not many entries describe what a game is supposed to feel like, whether the designer wants it to be quick and chaotic, slow and thoughtful, or whatever. And it's not that easy to guess intent from incomplete and provisional rules. These after-voting explanations of design motivation are often more interesting than the rules themselves. Maybe entries should be more like design notes than rulebooks?

jwarrend
Offline
Joined: 08/03/2008
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

For anyone who's interested, I've uploaded a slightly more fleshed out rulebook to my "American Revolution" game (but it's still only 2 pages). Gone, for now, are the Event cards, but most everything else is the same. I think I'll continue trying to move ahead with the game, as I'm trying to get into designing two player games, and I think this one will be fun to work on.

The rules are here.

-Jeff

Kreitler
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Critique the August 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

grayscale wrote:
These after-voting explanations of design motivation are often more interesting than the rules themselves. Maybe entries should be more like design notes than rulebooks?

The more showdowns to which I submit, the more I agree with you on this. The only problem is that, for me at least, it's much easier to describe the game I'd like to make than to put together mechanics that actually produce that feel. A lot of people have great high concepts for games, but can't work out the details at the end.

Your suggestion of submitting entries that are more like design notes would allow for a gradation between mechanics descriptions and explanation of intent. I like this a lot, but I fear that most of us (including me) tend to zero in on mechanics during judging. Look at what happened to Jeff's American Revolution. That was a great game, but a lot of us docked it because he left some rules unexplained.

K.

Kreitler
Offline
Joined: 12/31/1969
Re: Calling All Hawk-eyed Members!

Challengers wrote:
I see replies in other forums that do this on an ad-hoc basis, so I know that nothing stops us from giving out that advice. However, unless you have loads of time, or a post headline catches your eye on the home page, you won't see many "Next Great Game" posts. By the same token, the Next Great Game Designer won't have the benefit of the broader membership's advice.

Great idea, Mitch. I've been stung by the "oh--that's already a game" problem many times. Generally, some helpfer BGDFer sees a journal entry and PMs me about my mistake. I'm guessing that most of us only read others' journals when we have lots of free time, which means, as a safety check on duplicate designs, it's less than reliable.

A dedicated thread would certainly help that -- assuming the number of designs didn't get too huge. I can imagine a lot of content hitting that board, making it hard for auditors to read everything...

Mark

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut