[GDS] FEBRUARY 2015 "Terribly Suspicious" - Critiques

@DifferentName Thanks!

When I saw the other games submitted I didn’t think I would win. When I read this Challenge I was intriqued by it and somehow got to think of a theme first - where people work together on some spaceship but with different agendas. I kept thinking on the documentary “Particle Fever”. Well from there I felt i was fairly easy to get more ideas - but the really hard part was to put it on paper in a good way. When I started read the other submissions I found it hard to visualize some of the game mechanics - and I immediately felt my game must have the same issues. I felt I had used too much space on describing the game parts and maybe confusing because I failed to tell the story. But it seems like you did get it anyway. Here is my comments

Gold for Jewelry Thieves because it sounded really fun and was described very vivid and clear to me. (and I just played battlefield hardline beta :-). The only thing I missed was more on how the heist rolls and security cameras worked. Great idea.

Silver to Widget Factory. Some parts was hard to understand but I loved the overall idea with goals on other players outcome. So I agree on this part :”This creates an interesting balance between worrying about everyone else without ignoring yourself."

Bronze to Energy Crisis because the theme sound fun and the way you affect the resource value towards your secret goal. I was not sure if there was a common/co-op goal for the players

Anti Thrustlooks like it has been given a lot of thought - but was too complex described for me to really grasp - sry.

At first I wanted Fishes to have the gold medal - it seemed so easy and clever. But I felt it wouldn’t really work - and could have used a few extra lines. What kind of questions would reveal the Shark?

This GSD inspired me to team up with my partner and maybe try to do some more speed game designs. And maybe try to give Project Y some more finnish :-)

Thank you to Rich and Mindspike for running the GDS each month. For me, it is the perfect outlet for my game design interest. I don't have a lot of time available for prototyping and playtesting, but I do have plenty of time for coming up with ideas. I enjoy how it has stretched me on several occasions to think about different kinds of games I wouldn't have otherwise.

The challenges I have enjoyed the most are the ones that have had a clear restriction. Something where you end up saying, "I want to do this, but I can't." I think perhaps the last couple haven't drawn as much interest because they were too open ended. I think my favourite was the month where we weren't allowed to use numbers. It's suppose to be a challenge, so don't be afraid to make it challenging.

Also, I've noticed that the participation in the critiques has not been very strong for most of the last several months. I remember a couple of regulars commented back in the summer about this and they have not participated since. I'm not sure if this a factor or not in the overall participation, but perhaps there are some who feel it is not worth their time if the others participants won't take the time to post critiques. Personally, I'll keep entering every month, so I'm just speculating here.

Thanks to all the participants for making the GDS fun. I always look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with. I look to seeing what next month has in store.

The satellite components and various roles were my favorite parts of this game. I love simultaneous gameplay when it's implemented well, and the negotiation round where everyone's trying to figure out possible builds seems really lively, and gives everyone a chance to participate (or hang back, if that's your agenda). Each role was distinct and interesting, and there's a good blend of reasons for people to withhold pieces until they can use exactly the components they want.

As mindspike had noted, the only downside that immediately stuck out to me was the timeout rule; after being accused, does the Hired Agent just go make a sandwich? Maybe there should be a way for them to overtly sabotage construction after being revealed. Otherwise, a solidly simple concept that has some interesting emergent strategies. This got my silver.

Thanks Andymorris, Mindspike. & Lonebluewolf for the great input - I couldn’t agree more. Interesting idea with the roles overlapping (I guess the only overlap it has now is the common goal to complete the project). And the scoring would probably be more fun if there was several extra common scoring possibilities.

The reason I thought I needed a chief was mostly because I wanted someone with a final say on who could place finished parts on the ship.. but maybe it is more fun if two roles could be racing on building the same part. I thought it could be fun if one player, the agent, did not share goal with others - but then I thought I needed a way for her to be stopped. Great input!

Earlier today I came to think that maybe the part blueprints was on cards dealt randomly in the start. This would make every play more different - but on the downside make it harder to learn to spot other roles … unless something else would reveal them.

Thank you again for the critiques.

I really like the GDS and the creative restrictions that it imposes on the design process. It is always a stimulating challenge that I look forward to reading about every month.

Winning is always of lesser importance to me than taking part. So when I decided to start entering I set myself a couple of additional restrictions, along with an alternative goal. I would enter 12 months in a row with new games that where designed in a maximum of 3 hours; after reading what the nature of the challenge was (2 hours to come up with a game and 1 hour to tidy it up and get it down to the fiendish 500 word limit).

I had a whoopsie over the submittal day one month (the move around challenge), although I did do a design for that month (so I figured the 12 in a row was still sort of a go). The contest with the publishing promise didn’t really appeal to me so I decided not to enter, which nailed the coffin lid shut on the 12 in a row goal. However, that particular contest and the wonderful opportunity it presented was a very welcome addition to the GDS (well done to everyone concerned for arranging it).

My personal reason for not entering that month was that I didn’t really know a lot about the publisher (entirely my fault and certainly not theirs). Obviously, I like challenges and Kickstarting a game would be a very interesting (albeit time consuming) one. So if a game is going to be published via that particular funding route then I would prefer to do it all myself, unless it also offered the opportunity to share the experience with people I had a developed awareness of. Working with fun, interesting and stimulating people always outweighs my fondness for setting and completing personal challenges.

With the 12 in a row failure I will probably take a break from entering for awhile and try again later in the year. I’ll still read each months outline with avid interest and I will probably design a few games as a consequence of the stimulus, but I should really focus 100% on the games I’m designing outside of it.

However, I will continue to vote and offer critiques when I can. I don’t always get the time to post critiques promptly and when I do have the time it’s usually the case that the other perceptive designers have pretty much covered any points I would raise, making them somewhat redundant. Not commenting makes me feel bad, like I’m letting down the team effort in some kind of way, so it will be nice to step in and out of things without feeling uncomfortable if I can’t contribute fully.

I also tend to be a little blunt in my opinions and long winded in some of my alternate suggestions. It’s a consequence of being a straight to the point and say what I believe northerner. And I suspect this might not be to everyones liking, because designers can be delicate individuals. When I do offer alternate avenues for thought I’m certainly not stating that I think the particular design I’m commenting on is a bad design or that it really needs to be changed. They are simply suggestions that could be play tested for validity and worth, function as a catalyst for idea generation or dismissed outright as being of no value. Any of these outcomes work for me.

In respect to this month I will admit that the “player screen” restriction didn’t excite me a whole lot. It’s a very boring and predominantly functional piece to work with. But, as Rich said, that is one of the points of the showdown. Forcing designers outside their comfort zones and developing their mad skillz.

I did design a game in my allotted time frame and I think it’s quite a good one. However, it didn’t use the player screen in a creative and original way so I wasn’t that impressed with its suitability for the showdown. It was also my Birthday during the week of the showdown so I got distracted with events around that and never bothered entered it.

After reading Richs comment I had another go and designed a game that sort of did use player screens in a reasonably novel way. I’ll probably post this second design after the critiques are done if anyone would be gracious enough to comment on it after the event.

And I will comment briefly on the games this month over the next couple of days.

I love a good heist! This got my gold. The idea of having to work together on a high stakes task, where you're absolutely suspicious of everyone and essentially have to put in just enough effort for it not to fail, did the best job of capturing this month's theme, in my opinion. I also liked how simple it was, in using a deck of playing cards.

The only thing I would've wanted to see more of was to make the player screens more integral, somehow. It wasn't completely clear to me where cards ended up as they were being dealt with, or how exactly they were returned to the deck for the next, bigger heist. I would love to see a fully fleshed out version of this concept!

I voted bronze on Widget Factories. It was kind of tough to wrap my head around the theme in this one. I can't control my workers, or my factory, and don't benefit from my factory, so everything that you say is mine doesn't feel like mine. The game dynamics could be interesting though, working with/against other players to try to get an economy going on multiple factories.

I could see the screen being used for something very unique, if the factory can only function by using resources that are behind another players screen. Like, if I choose to mass produce some widgets, and it turns out the player doesn't have all the parts required, or can't pay the workers, then my action was just ineffective.

I voted a silver for this entry. I like the secret teams element. I like the secret allocation of people. I like that you pass the people around. I wasn't totally clear on what the goals are and how you achieve them, but overall I thought it sounded like an interesting concept. Good job.

The rules were pretty hard to understand on this one, and I think it's because there were a lot of unanswered questions. There aren't really any examples of the goals or of how the merger affects the game. I understand through the theme that I would be trying to figure out the other players corporation, but without understanding my goal, it's not clear what benefit I get from this information. What does HR do? Why would I want to give away agents?

I think these were probably just problems with the word limit. Corporate espionage fits great with the suspicion theme, moving agents around between corporations, and using game abilities to figure out another companies goals. There were just too many details missing for me to wrap my head around the gameplay.

I voted Silver on Energy Crisis. This game has some fun ideas with manipulating the market, but some of the ideas seem to conflict with eachother. It sounds like you get points only from a single resource type, but your goal may be to make that resource less valuable. Having a secondary goal to make a resource less valuable could be fun, but if that's the only resource you get points from, the goal seems self defeating.

The tug of war with multiple resources makes me think of Hare & Tortoise. In that game, players have two racers they're trying to help, and can keep an eye on other players to try and figure out which they might be trying to help. I bet having a couple resource goals, would be funner than just one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjHyHDKi66A

I like the central mechanism in the game. Choosing which cards to take and which ones to discard would create some interesting decisions as you watch the overall values. I'm not sure about the guessing element. It doesn't seem like there's a lot to base the guesses on and I'm not sure what it implies thematically. I think it's interesting that it is a game where you collect resources, but you don't ever have to spend them. While that qualifies as different, I don't think it feels like an energy crises if you don't have to worry about burning your fuel. Overall an interesting concept, but I was left a few more questions than the entries I voted for.

This game makes me think of an upcoming game called Spyfall, which I'm excited to try sometime soon. In spyfall, one player is a spy, and everyone asks questions to figure out who the spy is. But the key in Spyfall is that everyone gets a card with the same location on it, except the player that gets the spy card. So the questions you ask are based on shared information, trying to figure out which player doesn't know the location, without giving away too much information about the location you're in.

Suspicious Fishes seems to be aiming for a similar mechanic, using your wit to figure out who's going against the team, but what kind of questions would you be able to ask to figure out who the shark is? It wouldn't really come down to wit, just whether the shark has a good poker face or not.

I like the core idea of Suspicious Fishes, but it would also be helpful to clarify some of the rules, like when you can make a guess of who the shark is, or the penalty for getting the guess wrong. As written, you can just guess everyone one at a time till you get to the shark. You also gave no details on the sharks ability to take more fish. They could just dump out the fish and win instantly. Showdown entries don't always need all these details, but you had the spare words available, so fleshing out some of these details could be helpful for us to imagine how the game would play out.