Critique the Game Designs -- June 2005 Showdown

Technically, looking back at the rules, I could make an argument that "Pick Up and Delivery" isn't a requirement, since it's not in the list of mechanical limitations.

True, but the\theme requirement is arguably more important than any of the mechanical bits...

Since the votes are now cast, I'll provide details of how I voted. As I'm short of time, this is just a copy of the PM that I sent Brykovian saying how my votes went - I'll post more details later:

1 place - 5 points - 3) Last Stand at Pudding Corner
2 place - 3 points - 10) Moo Juice
3 place - 1 point - 4) The Day the Earth ran screaming

These largely got the votes because they fulfilled the theme and mechanic restrictions. Comments on the other ones (largely so I remember when I write up my comments) were as follows:

1) Missing the 'Tile Laying' mechanic restriction. Marginal 'Pick up and Deliver' mechanic restriction.
2) It didn't really seem to be about UFOs at all.
3) Seemed to all hang together.
4) Marginal 'Pick up and Deliver' mechanic restriction.
5) Missing the 'Moving Shared Piece' and 'Creating a Team' mechanic restriction
6) Missed the 'Pick up and Deliver' and the 'Creating a Team' mechanic restriction
7) Missed the 'Pick up and Deliver' and the 'Creating a Team' mechanic restriction.
8) Marginal 'Tile Placement' mechanic restriction. Mine, so not voting for it.
9) Missed the 'Pick up and Deliver' mechanic restriction. But a very sweet game nonetheless.
10) Unconvinced that there are many non-obvious moves, but it got the mechanics.
11) Wonderfully incoherent, but ignored all mechanics restrictions

I'm in a real rush right now, finishing all my client's last minute jobs before I go on vacation tomorrow, so I can't comment as much as I would like.

I feel honored by the results, and by having catched Yougurt's food fixation ;-)

Congratulations to all who submitted entries, and specially to Kreitler on winning this month competition with a game I really liked (it was my #1). My #2 vote was for MapQuest, and my #3 for Last Stand, but to me it was more about how well the mechanics requests were acomplished than game quality per se. In a free contest it woukld have been a real headache deciding my vote.

Seo

Way to go, Hamumu!
I really, really got a kick out of this one. My votes went as follows:

5 points to Entry #10: Moo Juice
3 points to Entry # 5: Independence Day
1 point to Entry # 2: Earthling-Snatching Spree

Hamumu, you really nailed it. I also want to thank you for your kind words for my entry. I would like to explain my interpretation of the mechanics:

Mechanics Limitations:
· Construct a Team - Players must assemble a team/group of something (it doesn't necessarily have to be people) that is used within the game [I accomplished this with the 3-of-a-kind sets]
· Tile/Piece Placement - The placing of tiles or pieces by the players must play an important role in the game [ I accomplished this by creating a "Concentration"-style layout]
· Shared Movement Control - Multiple players must share movement control of at least 1 piece in the game. [I accomplished this with the noise making phase: sis-boom-bah controls the action]

I presume that enlightenment will descend upon the players at some point, and they will realize that they must cooperate.

I guess I was a little too obtuse. But at least one person gave a thumbs-up! Whee!

Mitch

Man, too bad I missed the whole "Genre:pick up and Deliver" line until it was too late after deadline, otherwise it sounds like Doppleganger might have finished higher. For some reason, all I "saw" was 50's UFO theme with the mechanical restrictions (and I figured I was weak on the team building mechanic).

Oh well, just wait till NEXT month. Wooo-HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Anyway, I've decided to complete the Doppleganger further (with Pick Up and Deliver now added for MORE paranoia!) and clean up some of the nagging issues for me. So it will show up in the Workshop relatively soon in a fairly playable "download and build" format (hopefully).

I'll have some time tomorrow to post my votes and explanations....

Heh, I thought that was on purpose -- a way of making fun of the sorts of people who claim to be abducted. In fact, I even Googled your game name because I thought it might be some pop culture reference I was missing.

Yogurt

It certainly would have got my vote - it was high on my list before I did my usual winnowing process of reading through all the entries, and checking that the rules had been followed. And since, try as I might, I couldn't find the pick up and deliver, it got cut out (and even then, it was in contention for third place).

Hooray for the end of Yogurt's reign of tyranny! I feel so honored to get this recognition from people who seriously know gaming. Makes me feel like I should keep up some effort working at this sort of thing! One note on my game: I completely FORGOT there was a pick-up and deliver element to the challenge. It was just pure luck that that's what my game totally centered around.

I voted for Men In Black on top, putting me in the "Love It" camp there apparently. I think the whole concept was great, having a game where it's your job to explain away UFOs. I also get the impression the author was still hung up on the last contest a little with that UFO tile-laying gadget.

My second goes to Doppleganger, then Earthling-Snatching. I had three others I really wanted to reward as well, but you only get three, so I juggled them around to come up with these results. The other two I really liked were Ubducted and Pudding Corners. Ubducted was just such a simple concept, I felt like it would really work, I love simple games that are just quick and fun. Pudding Corners was a really interesting pod people kind of thing, and hits all the sci-fi movie cliches very hard. What's really lacking in it though is the #1 point of pod-people type scenarios: the paranoia of just who IS an alien. It seemed odd that with such a theme, the players were completely aware of who was who the entire time. But to incorporate that element would require many players and a whole different style.

Doppleganger does have that element, and I'm a complete sucker for that kind of paranoid gameplay. Other people who pointed out that Doppleganger kinda misses on some of the rules are right though, I wasn't really thinking about that stuff as I read through entries.

Until I got to Ataraxis that is! I loved it and I do think it's a good game, it's just so wacked out that it stuck out like a sore thumb and I immediately thought of the rules and how it didn't fit them much. I actually spent some time wondering if it was a joke, but the rules were really good and held together. It's not a joke, it's just a funny game.

Earthling Snatching, not much I can say about it. It was just nifty and elegant, and I probably got suckered in by the stylish art too.

And for the other entries, I honestly really liked them too. Map Quest and The Day The Earth were the others on the brink. I like a lot of the elements of Map Quest, and I like the logic puzzle element to The Day - I like those kind of "programming" type challenges.

So, the drinks are on me! This feels a lot better than my 14th place result in the one-button computer game contest.

True, I spent a lot of time trying to incorporate it, but in a game with 4 mechanics already, adding bluffing proved too much. I felt a weight lift when I thought "maybe just the townspeople are fooled, and the heroes see through it."

Sidenote: Looking over BoardGameGeek, it's amazing how many paranoia pod-people games already exist -- even one with tile-laying ("Beest") -- and yet none of them really nail it as far as I can tell. So perhaps the definitive pod game remains to be made.

Congrats again on designing such a solid game, Hamumu. I hope you have a chance to develop it further. (I think I'd have to lie to people about the theme though. "We're collecting WHAT, dad?" "Milk, dear. Mars needs milkshakes.")

Yogurt

Well...as much as I'd like to claim victory...Hamumu submitted the winning game. I was a distant 4th -- which I admit, is better than I thought I'd do with a game that had no "delivery".

I'll post my reviews for everyone's game after I get off work.

K.
Duh! My last neurons are collapsing already. :-/
I meant Hamumu. Hats off to Hamumu for a great game.

Ok. Back to work now.

Seo

As I've sated previously, to me, I was looking for the games that I would want to play being the highest requirement; fulfilling the mechanic requirements, while nice, was secondary to the way I voted. Also, another big thing to me was looking for creative takes on the whole UFO thing, as opposed to flying UFO's around and abducting things (which is probably why I didn't vote for the eventual winner, even though the game play seemed pretty sound). Finally, a big thing for me is a simple ruleset, but with a enough depth to make it interesting.

The three games I voted for were (with details), but maybe not in the correct order:

Men In Black: I liked the fairly straightforward rules and the small thematic twist of trying to cover up alien activities is enjoyable. Mechanical toy UFO is cute.

Independence Day: I thought that having essentially three distinct sub-games linked together to form one larger game I thought was pretty bold, even though there might be problems within each sub game; but those could be worked out through playtesting, and the avoidance of the 800 word limit on the rules. It would be fun to try and do this where different designers are assigned merely "here's some starting stuff and the game ends when this happens," that can ontinually link to the next game that another game designer is working on independantly.

The Day The Earth Ran Screaming: I liked this idea a lot; trying to predict whether the bi-polar robot will be friendly or angry when it comes your way. With enough paytesting, this game could be a lot of fun without being overcomplicated. However, there is a much room to add various levels of depth; probably has the most potential of all the entries in terms of coming up with something REALLY interesting, not to mention expansions and such.

Of the games I didn't vote for:
Map Quest: Seemed to be quite "fiddly" with a lot of pawns, and possible "analysis paraysis" possiblities:"You may move any pieces available to you. The pieces available to you are: Any neutral or federal agent human pawns, brainwashed pawns of your own color, and your scout ship "

Earthling Snatching Spree: In a sort of interesting take of the ongoing "graphics/no graphics' debate, the snazzy abstract circuit-board graphic is quite possibly one of the reasons I DIDN'T vote for this game, since it lost all sense of theme to me. Funny that I don't mind the "drawn in Excel" graphics however. Also, some potential "analysys paralysis". And, a basic take on the Alien Kidnapping story, which, thematically, I was looking for some more.

Pudding Corners: I liked the approach on the theme. However the game seemed fairly complicated, what with leaders (with special powers!), pod people, special safety tiles, equipment, bonus action counter, etc. However, with some playtesting, I'm sure a lot of "addition by subtraction" could make this a cool game. I'm guessing that a lot of this was probably inspired by the Zombies game (just a guess since I'm not that familiar with it).

Destroy All Humans: I don't know, there's nothing that inspired me on this game for some reason. Maybe the rules needed a re-write, for some reason I had a hard time understanding what was going on.

Ubducted!: Actually, this could turn out to be a fairly nice kids game. "Guess what you are capturing, and you keep those cards". If the requirements were to design a kid's game, this would get my vote.

Moo Juice!: Looking back, maybe I should've paid more attention to this one. Maybe the silly name made me not look deeper into it; I do remember that this was the fourth game in my top 4 picks, for what that's worth. I probably dropped it out of my top 3 for being the least creative with the theme.

Heh, I thought that was on purpose -- a way of making fun of the sorts of people who claim to be abducted. In fact, I even Googled your game name because I thought it might be some pop culture reference I was missing.

Yogurt

Hmm, If I ever make this game I probably would keep the name misspelled. It is kind of funny, and gives it a bit more character.

With the player interaction, I thought the idea of shared movement of the UFO was enough. You can kind of steer it away from where the other people want it, (unless a majority of the players want it there), and you won't want to move to the edge of the board if you think the next player can win by moving it off. I might make this one and try it out. If there isn't enough interaction I will add some things. Thanks, I tried to have my submission clean and simple.

This could make a good kids game.

I liked the ideas behind 'Doppelganger' and 'Ataraxis' but I felt they were too much off the guidelines for my vote.