Need some advice on an enemy mechanic

is there any game that has all of the enemy units controlled by draw or a form of 'AI' though?
as this has been what me an my friends have been trying to tackle as well

I was working on a game similar to this before, but we ran into some troubles. However, you might consider the scaring/haunting to take place as part of exploring, or based on indicators on spaces of the board or tiles.

For example, if you have a game of upside-down tiles that are flipped over for exploration, then the ghost might some bursting out towards the player and travel in a specific direction shown on the tile afterwards. It always comes straight out at the exploring player (just as in a real haunting...?), and could also haunt some other players in the path.

You could also have a symbol deck too, and each tile or space has a symbol that is drawn by the deck, with some symbols drawn more often than others (correlating to the tiles with the creepy artwork). The ghost/ghoul/ghast/whatever could move according to the paths indicated on the card after the ghost starts on the symbol card.

I could not find the post about another designer's mechanic - but I'll paraphrase it and try to explain the *effect* he was trying to achieve.

So instead of NOT knowing where the Zombies are, players KNOW EXACTLY where they are... But the trick in his game was trying to not "attract them to yourself". Zombies moved *towards* where they heard noises. If they line-up with a player, that would increase their rate of movement.

The key difference in his game was the tension that occurs because player try to *evade* the Zombies as they move around and play the game. His mechanic was cool - because he did not worry about players knowing the positions, his goal was to try to inspire fear when they were nearby and a sort of tension was built from it...

Update: I found the thread = http://www.bgdf.com/node/13296

The OP tells about using a *Thread System* for the Zombie AI... I had posted some ideas regarding the mechanic he was trying to design...

Note 2: His AI was that the Zombies always move towards the CLOSEST player OR the LOUDEST... I'm not sure how it all worked out, but no harm in sending him a Private Message (PM) and ask his how things worked out for his Zombie game...!

If it's tile based you could design the tiles to function together with a series of arrows. Each time a player does a certain action they will have to roll a die to move the monster and the arrows on the tile will correspond to the dice roll. Also in Firefly the board game there is a deck of events called the "Aim to Misbehave" deck, where there is a balance of risk reward options available. So ideally the more cards you draw from this deck the more likely you'll run into a situation you can not get out of. This would work well for survival horror in much the same way.

For example going onto a certain tile would require a player to draw two of these type of cards.

They draw a card that gives 3 options:

If a player has a weapon they may discard it to continue
If a player doesn't have a weapon they may be given a fear token and continue
or if this player has 2 fear tokens already, move the monster to an adjacent tile not occupied by another player.

Another idea is to have 12 cards face down all with a picture of a door, only one will have the monster on the other side. Each time a tile is explored the player must flip over one of the cards. If it's the monster it is moved to the player's tile.

Last idea is a track system. Each room has a path or track that the monster will move along. After a player takes an action they roll the die and the monster moves along the track or path and stops if it enters a room with a player. Risk/Reward type stuff is good for survival horror.

Hope any of this helps! I've had the same trouble with a game idea too only it involved rescuing a hostage and terrorist moving around the board.

Had the same issue with a game I was thinking about. I ended up making it so the players choose the action for the enemy player. They have a choice of moving the enemy a square closer, allowing it to gain a momentum token (moves a number of momentum tokens per turn), or for it to howl and demoralize the players (and other effects). If momentum gets to be too high, the enemy has two turns in a phase and loses all momentum tokens.

Whether the zombies are visible or not, what you are trying to do as a player character is to EVADE the enemy. And there are things that you can do to increase your chances of avoiding an encounter, and things you might do that make an encounter more likely. Come to think of it, this is what you're doing if you're hunting as well!

The mechanic that best simulates this experience is a die roll. However, it's not quite right. What is missing from a set "Roll 15 to save" is the dynamic tension between what the player perceives to be their odds and what they actually are. A straight die roll is too nondeterministic, thus lacking tension, and thus lacking fun.

You could have double sided tokens that represent bonuses and penalties. A player can do certain things that add bonuses and penalties. You can have event cards that throw another bonus or penalty into the ring. Each bonus or penalty has some range of values it could be. Alternatively, you could have 2 piles of dice, one for bonuses and one for penalties. Math doesn't require adding numbers up, either. A deck of cards where the number of cards you draw changes based on bonuses and penalties can be a way to do let the game design take care of the math for the players. Either way, what you're doing is adding a mechanic of limited and uncertain player influence on the outcome, but always that tension of not knowing how good your odds truly are.

One thing that's useful about doing it this way, is you can have the same draw allow you to be attacked by zombies or see the zombie without getting noticed, taking care of two game elements with one mechanic.

I hope that's useful. Good luck!

Maybe check out Fearsome Floors which has an automated moving mechanic for the monster.

http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/7805/fearsome-floors