Naming A Board Game

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a very well known computer game (in fact, it's a turn-based strategy game! A Civ clone). Ironically, Assault is also a videogame, a very cool arcade game where the screen rotates instead of your tank (and it has tank-style controls with dual sticks, and you can roll your tank over on its side, and tilt it up to lob shots, and and and... man, it's cool). That one wouldn't worry me, but I don't think you'd get away with Alpha Centauri.

Take of that what you will, just sharing the info!

What happened to the Storms? I was thinking "Storm Warning" was quite a cool name (it mentions a feature of the game, but also implies a sudden violent confrontation or a slow build-up to a major event.)

As far as naming games goes, I sometimes have the "right" name from the start, but sometimes it doesn't arrive until a very long way into the process. So I wouldn't worry too much about it. As long as you know which game it is, giving it a "working title" isn't really much of a problem. When you are telling testers about it, the name is the last thing that matters ime... :-)

Hmm....
IF the storms were going to be a major part of thegame, then you could call it Storm World. It'd probably not be based on Robots, but camps of people trying to survive in the storm tossed remains of a world. Kinda like the movie The Day After Tomorrow.

The combat could be simple, maybe boring combat, made interesting with the effects of the storms and weather then comes up randomly, or semi-randomly- maybe you can predict things like tornados if you pay attention to weather patterns to an extent, etc.

This sounds like a whole different game, maybe I'll think about it further. The 'combat' wouldn't have to be normal combat, maybe the different camps fight over limited food and shelter.

Any ideas?

- Seth

Feel free to comment as you will on this:
Well, storms could move as I described before, roll a d6 for direction, if the map is hex based then the storm would move ahead, ahead left, or ahead right. The storm piece could be directional so you know which way it's facing.

This could be a tile exploration game where you're looking for food and shelter. Maybe each player would start with a shelter. You could also be looking for other survivors, which could be hiding out with just enough food and shelter to live until you find them (reveal them on a tile). Then you add them to your camp.

So you'd send out parties to explore. Maybe you decide how many people to 'invest' in your party (maybe you could have more than 1 party). When parties meet they could maybe fight over food or shelter with some simple combat rules influenced by the number of people present, etc. Maybe the people could have types... some good at fighting, some good at finding stuff, etc.

This could utilize a simple fighting mechanic I had talked about a long time ago- a simple opposed die roll, with bonuses for outnumbering, being skilled in fighting (i.e. one of your party is good at fighting- or one more than opponent's party), having weapons, etc.

So what would be the interesting bits? Maneuvering and planning your route around storms which come and go and move around the board. Maybe you can only go so long before your party has to return to camp or people start dying- like you have to bring back food. The more food you bring back, the longer your survivors live. The more Shelter you bring back (or the more shelters you set up, like satellite bases) the more people you can fit in them.

Setting up satellite shelters means you can hold more survivors, but it could be easier to attack (since only a few people would be at the satellite shelter).

Maybe you could build barriers (instead of shelters) to keep people from opponents from attacking your shelters...

So how would you win? Hmm... good question. Maybe a big, fancy shelter is on a tile that is force shuffled to near the bottom of the stack, and the camp that takes that shelter will survive. You want to be that camp... So you have to explore in order to find the special shelter (maybe a spaceship to get off the planet), and when you do you have to bring a big group to it (because there will likely be a fight over it), which means hoarding some food to make the trip.

Does this sound like it's worth persuing?

"Storm World" is a perfectly good descriptive phrase. But it doesn't have any subtlety, implied meanings or depth.
*Shrug* I didn't say it was GOOD, I just said you could name it that.

I was thinking of Kevin Costner's Waterworld, which in addition to being a lousy name for a movie, was 3 hours of my life I can't get back :/

- Seth

Ziggurat is a distinctive, unusual word that you've used in the game. Could that be the title?

Or "Storm Front"?

I would suggest you take a look at sites like

http://www.civilwarhome.com/terms.htm

There are a ton of war based terms that you might be able use in the name.

Such as (and I did not look at your game, so these might not fit)

Storm Lunette
(Lunette - A 2 or 3 sided field fort, its rear open to interior lines, was called a lunette. Lunettes were often named in honor of battery commanders or commanding brigadier generals.)

Point d'appui
(Point d'appui - A fortified or secure point that anchored or strengthened an army's position was called a "point d'appui." The sunken road and stone wall at Maryre's Heights, Fredericksburg, Virginia are examples of this.)

Hope this helps...