[GDS] DECEMBER 2013 "The Gifting Season" Critiques

The holidays wreacked havoc on my feedback posting. Anyone who missed a response from me to their game can ask for one by PM or invite me to submit to a fresh forum thread of their game if they so desire. :) I should be back to my regular schedule tomorrow (December 27).

A difficult theme. My personal opinion is that most countries in the world can do much more than they are currently doing to help refugees. A bit of a stretch... but maybe the U.N. is interested in a game with this theme to bring the refugee problem. That game should have a lighter mechanic though. Enough about the theme, onto the mechanic.
The game seems somewhat dry. Moving refugees around, and try to remove them from your own country. It will certainly suffer a bash-the-leader effect. The U.N. actions must be selected carefully, they can easily unbalance a heavy calculation game.
At first I thought refugees belong to a player as well (at least, some of them) but... they do not. That means that the single-avatar prerequisite is met. The giving element is not really good. The present is always bad news for the other player.

It's definitely a hard subject matter, but the fact that you got from gifting to refugees, was enough reason to give bonus points to theming and originality. The game ended in the mid-range scoring-wise, because the sheer number of actions mean remembering all possible actions (and where to take them) give the game a steep learning curve and might possibly bore some people.

Secondly, the movement paths between the countries were a bit vague to me. You don't want things to be too dependent on neighbors, especially if they carry a grudge. A little more detail on the connections would be appreciated.

Also, the bash-the-leader-effect means unless you remedy it with special cards, it might be impossible to win with refugees constantly being shuffled around -- much like in the real world.

FUN: 7
Theme: 9
Mechanics: 7
Contest limits: 7
Cohesiveness: 6
Bonus: 7
Total: 43

Edit: Since richdurham suggested the gifting might offer a surprise, I didn't consider it a requirement...

Thanks all for the feedback. This is my first GDS and was a really interesting challenge. I look forward to future GDS, and developing my design skills further.

Some responses to the feedback.

Gifting – I based my use of gifting off the original GDS posting “... a core mechanic players must give some component to other players. The receiver does not need to know the exact nature of the component  “. I interpreted this as the component being given could be known, or could be not known. In the case of my submission, the receiving player obviously does know (as there is only one thing being gifted - refugees). I may have missed some subsequent clarification of the gifting mechanism.

Theme – I didn't think people would focus on the theme so much when I wrote the submission. But after reviewing and providing feedback on other people's submissions (a great exercise in itself), I realized how important the theme is to a game, especially when doing a 500 word write up / overview. When I chose the theme, I was sort of trying to be a bit contrary to what I thought the other submissions would be like – I was expecting a lot of presents, santas, cookies and other holiday themed stuff (especially with the mechanic and GDS writeup). I thought going for the less mainstream (but some may argue more important) message of the holidays – good will to others, peace on earth, world peace, and a reminder that there's other people out there who have it rough, might be an interesting thing to present. But after my recent revelations regarding the value / importance in theme, I really see how limiting this may be to actually marketing this game. When writing it up, I also considered an intergalactic / planetary theme instead of countries, with players trying to find homes for settlers / colonists / whatever. This would help lighten it a bit, but at the same time I could see pushing it into something more comical, and have the game themed around races of intelligent space hamsters or animals and zoos or something less serious. Overall, thanks for the feedback on theme – it's got me thinking a lot more about this.

Options / Cards – I'd imagined the options / cards would be pretty limiting, but the feedback raises some interesting / valid points. Sonofman – I'm really interested by your suggestion of just selecting actions each turn – this would remove the luck aspect that the cards introduced, and seems like it would change the overall feel of the game. I think I might take a shot one day at re-drafting this with straight options, and see how that looks.

Overall, great GDS experience, and thanks all for taking the time to provide feedback, both to my entry and all the others. It's been a great learning experience, and I look forward to participating again in the future.

See you in the New Year!