Critique the Game Designs -- May 2005 Showdown

Well, I suppose I should post something about the challenges. I'm going to do this in three posts, one to fill in the details of my entry that people asked for, one to talk about my entry from scratch, and the third to talk about the other entries.

So, first, my own entry. People wanted to know about the manufacturing process. In my view, each machine would have a list of between two and five things that it could make, looking something like this

A + B = M1
A + C + D = M2
? + B = M3
? + ? + E = M4

(only with the little pictures of the resources instead of letters, and pictures of the manufactured goods instead of the Ms).

When selling goods, I imagined a sliding scale of prices, with each good in one position. When someone sold a good, it would be removed and placed at the bottom, and all the other goods slid up.

4 3 3 2 2 1 0
A B C D E F G

(someone sells good B for three)

4 3 3 2 2 1 0
A C D E F G B

That said, this is all stuff that I'd expect the first playtest to change completely, and indeed, may well have been replaced by placeholder systems the first time I playtested it. (Pretend you can manufacture stuff - I'll make sure it all comes out right - I want to test if Mr Crinkleworth wandering about works). I therefore didn't bother to include details - I was sure people could fill in the holes.

There were three other comments / questions I would like to address:

Part of the point of the game is that you won't be able to earn much money. Money is essentially actions, and if you have unlimited actions, the game will break. Don't forget, that at the end of each week, you get pay of 2 pennies (this may have to be increased to three as a result of playtesting, but it feels about right)

Moreover, you're supposed to be penniless workers making pointless goods to satisfy the nutcase in the top hat. You being able to make a profit on top of that would just be out of keeping for the game ;)

I wonder if you understood the rules correctly - during each turn, play goes round and round the table until each player has passed - therefore there is a bit of turn order effect, but it should be marginal because each player has the chance to do multiple actions. In fact, I think the advantage may well be to the players going first, becase they will have first dibs on the goods in the chute

I suspect I'd need to introduce some mechanism to deal with turn order (first person to pass gets the 'first player' marker?), but this is minor twiddling rather than crucial decision.

This is a valid concern, and I suspect after the first playtest, I'd have replaced the current scoring with some sort of majority scoring in order to deal with this (the player with most / second most goods get X,Y - the player with most / second most resources lose V,W). But it's hard to say without playing it.

If you have any other questions, please ask.

In this post, I'll discuss the other entries.

When voting, I eliminated all entries that did not meet the challenge, and all the entries where either the manufacturing or the gadget felt as if they were tagged onto the game. These were the following:

4) Skyscrapers/Windcatchers
Eliminated - although the gadget was interesting, it felt horribly gimicky and added on at the end.

5) Payload
Eliminated - the manufacturing to give you the rocket doesn't sensibly work, and being given a card at the beginning of each turn, and being allowed to trade does not, in my opition, satisfy "Players must take part in both buying and selling things in the game." The wonderful gadget did earn considerable brownie points, though

6) Zoastro
Eliminated - is there any manufacturing, buying or selling? I didn't notice it. Again, a wonderful gadget, and one which got my 'best gadget' vote.

7) The Cupcake Lords of Camp Legume
Eliminated - the game would be exactly the same if the manufacturing was removed. Therefore the game does not meet the manufacturing requirement. (I'm not entirely convinced that the auction machine, while cool, would actually provide any interesting decisions - it all seems rather random.)

Then, I looked at what was left...

1) Patent Office
The gadget plays no roll that a five sided dice could not, and I am unconvinced about the rest of the game - it seems to be who is lucky enough to draw a couple of starts and ends first, and get patents in before payday, both of which are purely random events.

2) Brewster’s Mullions
The gadget would be impossible to use sensibly, because of the fact that the words will be upside down, and sideways. We weren't told how the resources were supposed to make the items, so I haven't a clue how the game's supposed to work. I just don't think that there's a game here.

3) The Factory of Mr. Crinkleworth
The gadget plays no roll that some other randomisation device couldn't deal with cheaper, and the manufacturing isn't all that exciting. Besides, it's my entry, so I couldn't possibly vote for it.

8) Hot-Rod Mania
The gadget plays no role that a dice and couple of replacement cards couldn't do - and in fact, I think the game would be better (as in producable) without the gadget. I wasn't entirely convinced by the game due to the fact that it's got too many numbers in the manufacturing given the simplicity of strategy I think it would provide.

9) Poseidon's Fury
This game had a very cool gadget which were totally integrated into the manufacturing side - empty lobster pots, plus time produce full lobster pots (at least, that's how I interpreted it). Completely impractical to produce, and has nasty real time elements, and not all that much interaction (I suspect) are pretty big disadvantages, though.

10) Smooth Operator
The gadget plays no role that replacing the fruit with a deck of cards couldn't do - and indeed, would probably be more producable without the gadget. The rest of the game seems relatively solid, though.

Then, I decided what to vote for:

First place: Poseidon's Fury
The fact that the gadget and the manufacturing were unique and tied together nicely overweighed the practical problems that the game would have to be any good.

Second place: Smooth Operator
Of the games that met the challenge, this seemed to have the most solid game behind it.

Third place: Patent Office
I'm not sure I shouldn't have voted for Hot Rod Mania, or one of the eliminated entries, but hey, it met the constraints, and besides it's only one point ;)

I'm really interested in any feedback you can give me.

It's hard to say - this, as with all the voting and so on, is all based on intuitive feel as opposed to actually having played the game, which in my opinion is essential. I suppose that my main complaint is that the multiples feel all wrong. $700 is an awkward number to pay as a base price. You only use $50 at one stage in the game, and that's the end phase. I just feel that you're going to be passing around an awful lot of paper money meaning that the game's going to be focused on that rather than on the cars, which is where the focus should be.

Throwing ideas into the air, I think that a base price of $500 would be better, because that means that you get the $500, and one $100 for each price that matched, giving a perfect price of $1,000. At the end, each set of four parts gives $200 (this avoids needing $50, and means that ensuring you have more than three at the end would be interesting (possibly ;) )).

[Regarding mono-strategy, you may have problems with this, but I can't really tell without playing, and there are numerous fixes, from increasing the 'perfect car' bonus, to rewarding the best car sold each round. You may want to have some mechanism by which you can change the fashions during the course of a selling round, too (pay $100 to change the fashion to one thing of your choice). All the bits in this paragraph are purely speculative, though, so I'd take them with a big pinch of salt.]

Yes, but the point is that the 500 is an easy point to start the calculations. $500 for the car, $100, $200, $300 for the mods. And these calculations don't just have to be done when a car is completed, but each time one of the players considers what their strategy should be. As said, it may not be a problem.

Hey, guys! I missed the submission deadline for this one, even though I had a game designed for it and all nice and written out! Well, Seth knows what I'm talking about, since I discussed it with him the week before the deadline. I actually found the contest to be strangely liberating, designing a game that I knew would never be produced. I went to town with the physical components, since cost was of no consequence! Real Life swamped me, suddenly, and I haven't been near my PC for weeks! Well, better luck next month!

I was surprised at the variety of game themes, and found that to be pretty interesting itself. Also, reading the descriptions of the gadgets was another thing I was looking forward to, since description of a physical object that performs some game function is pretty difficult. I admit, I had to read a few of the descriptions two or three times to get what, exactly, the item did for the game, but it was cool to see all the ideas.

Congrats to the winners!

Oh, and I lost a bundle on my bet that Yogurt would threepeat!

Glad you liked my game. :)

I think Brewster Mullions might replace the gadget with three piles of cards (prefixes, roots, sufixes). Each card would have some materials (eg: "scope" might have "lens", "crystal" and "glass") and you build your prototype by combining one resource you choose from each card. That would give you a fixed target to acheive (you decide if it's kept secret or not), based on which cards you draw, and some sort of logic linking the randomly generated names with the resulting prototypes, while it gives room for variation. As I said before, I really liked the game idea, I'm sure it has potential for a great game.

Seo