[GDS] JANUARY 2014 "Big Ideas in Tiny Packages" - Critiques

Game description is good, and the game can be steered into various directions by filling in the details. Will there be a gameboard? Do I need to transport resources?
When I profit from the research of another player, I tend not to do any research. Researching might need some bonus for the player performing it (victory points, some temporary advantage).

This sounds like an interesting game. Although energy and pollution is definitely an important part of the timeline being reflected in this game, it seems like the game is positioned to include far more than that. I think this entry could have benefited from another couple of hundred words detailing how the GDS theme was integrated into the game. As it is, the GDS requirements seem like they could be a very small component of something much bigger. A focus on historical events and figures (to me) would / could be so much more than energy and pollution, and although they would definitely be part of the equation, evaluating a civilization’s success and failure doesn't really directly relate to their carbon load / pollution level, although it is definitely a factor in overall human health and advancement.

I’m really getting a Sid Meier’s Civilization series feel out of this with its potential for alternate histories, which is definitely not a bad thing.

Sorry, the description for Parallel U was a bit sketchy, as I forgot to send my notes home and winged it. The idea is that nodes are shared points between the universes that keep them relatively tied together. It takes some sort of effort to influence a node away from the "earth prime" timeline and that ties it to the universe making that effort. So, all universes can have Tesla introduce AC power, but only one of the universes will be able to pursue his wireless power distribution. I'm also picturing the controlling universe will be able to tap him for resources to fund other advances.

I intended a set of nodes to be available each decade for bid. Probably number of players + 1. Controlling for historically accurate placement will be tricky without creating a burden of pre-deck stacking, maybe four decks covering 5 decades each.

The fuzzy hand-waving part is just what role the players are in. Sketched in for now is some sort of galactic powers just short of being deities, or something like timelords.

The reset/do-over mechanism is with the idea that they have some fixed amount of energy to experiment with; so, imagining my long term strategy involves controlling Einstein who becomes available in 1920. I reset 1920 and win him and know that the next few decades will be important for me so I opt to completely lose access to 1960. So, I still play through to 2050. Or I could opt to lose 2050 and effectively end my game one turn early.

I started the thought from the question "just how pre-determined is it that we have gasoline powered cars" and discovering how critical Ford was to advancing the efficiency of the internal combustion engine as he had started as a steam engine engineer and might've taken that path instead. It also seems like many aspects of carbon dependence and energy usage relate to overall societal structurals like size of a country to distribution of the population between cities and rural. And then there are critical events like wars that compel society to latch on whatever is handy. I first thought about it from the energy angle and realized the right context (competing parallel universes) could be used to simulate a wider variety of events/outcomes.

I thought the theme was a bit out there for this game challenge, and could have done better to connect with players by just representing a single hypothetical history of energy consumption and development. As for the gameplay, I think the description doesn't do the proposed game justice. I get very little feel of anything but a tech-tree building mechanic here, seems similar to the well-done game Innovation.

As there is very little mechanics to go off other than that, I can't say much more than I have. This is also why this title didn't get my vote.

I was happy to see someone take a shot at using a legacy mechanic in their submission, as it seems like this is a good theme for it. My internal jury is still out on what I think about the legacy mechanic in general - I’ve only read about it, and haven’t played with it, unless you count spilling drinks on my settlers board. It seems like a great idea for regular weekly / monthly game groups - I know a guy who has apparently played RISK monthly for the last 15-20 years. It used to be weekly until their wives got mad about them coming home drunk at 2am each Friday morning.

The legacy mechanic in this submission seems to be well implemented - though some math would obviously need to be done around how many cards are in the resource deck, and how many would get used in a given game. I’m also curious about how the name writing on power plants works - would it be possible to have your name on more than one plant, or to have multiple names on a plant? Also, with this legacy mechanic, I could see there being an issue with players just not wanting to play the game anymore, as they always had fossil fuel plants, and all those cards had been ripped up. That just seems like the end of the game in a way. I don’t know if that is normal or not.

Anyways, enjoyed this submission, great meshing of theme and mechanics. I gave it my silver.

I liked the direction of going towards the destructive (legacy) mechanic. However, the game feels smaller+faster than the real world cost of destroying your cards. But the principle of it does sit well with the Big Idea challenge. Overall, for some reason, I couldn't visualize having fun playing this (legacy or not,) maybe it feels a bit random or that choices will be a bit narrow and rarely interesting; can't exactly put my finger on this concern.

I initially liked this game as well and while I liked the idea of the legacy mechanic, I would opt for a non-destructive way of implementing it. I guess I'm a little thrifty and I would not personally buy or play a game that would require me to destroy its components as a rule. That's just me. I get the "artistic" value of it, but I'm a practical person and even if I were to play this game, sorry. I would not destroy the cards. There are other ways less permanent to implement a legacy mechanic.

Other than that though, I love the flow and mechanics in the game and if not for the destruction aspect of it, it would have been one of my silver or bronze medal games.

I found this design only tangential to the core challenge which I saw as being focused on fossil fuels with altenerative energy concepts. That's about all I have as the designer doesn't seem to be active in the critiques

I apologize for not being active in the critiques as I have been on vacation (but mostly cause Ive been sick). It looked like there were a ton of people participating anyways. I had no idea that my absence would be notice (thanks Corsaire). I hope to be more active in the comments on future challenges.
Baberahamlincoln – Your analysis was spot on, one of the strategies- as nuclear silos get close to meltdown- is to dump cards that would hurt in the next phase of the game. However, these cards would also gain less victory points. So, its up to the players in how they want to play their hand. After a card is played, the players will draw up to 5 cards. It would be quite difficult to finish the game in Nuclear winter as each player wants the game to finish faster (so as not to lose more victory points).
There are some strategies (like holding on to maintenance cards) where players will want to cause a meltdown.
Bike – I had to put in the secret silo selection to give players an incentive to use the maintenance cards. If the players aren’t invested in the power plant, they would use their higher risk cards causing a meltdown faster. If this were the case, there would be too much luck involved as players who draw the better cards will have a higher score going into the second phase. Thanks for the critique.

I think I understand where the choices come from in this game, which is to decide whether or not to take time building renewal energy centres, which allow players to play renewable energy cards, or skip that and just go for points through selecting non-renewable fossil fuels. This does touch on the GDS theme, though I feel like it does so very lightly, reflective of the relatively simple mechanics of the game (pick / play a card). I’m not really sure how much actual player input there is here - it would seem like a certain strategy would emerge as the best strategy over time, and that players should always choose to go all fossil fuels or stock up on renewable energy centers early game. Without any real player interaction, and a short game length, there doesn’t seem like an opportunity for players to adjust to other people’s play style, or make different choices based on what is played. Even if a best strategy did not emerge, it would seem like the best strategy would be to fully commit to one or the other (either fossil or renewable), and hope that the cards you want come up during play.

This is a hard game to judge. I love the mechanic of trading cards at the end of your play to the next player and the way your hand travels to the end of the game giving everyone the ability to make use of all the cards in play in a sense. I'm not sure if this necessarily favors the last person in the round or not. I am assuming a different player starts each round to assure fairness, but then again if the game only lasts three rounds it seems arbitrary and doesn't give all players a chance unless there are only two or three playing. Perhaps it would be good to let each player go first to balance it and then end the game.

My issue with this game is the theme is irrelevant. I'm not sure what is "special" about this game that would keep me from stripping away energy types and replacing them with some other dual theme. This simply seems like a fanciful version of a spades style card game where the theme could be almost anything.

If we didn't have to judge on theme and the game was made more even by allowing perhaps everyone a shot at going first this game could be interesting, but I just couldn't give it a medal.

Philosophically I like where this went with the intent of a lower age education focus. Also, the idea of it being a print and play, something one could make available through an education website.

As to the gameplay, I think being on gamer boards has heightened my prejudice against roll and move games. The shifting "can I move mechanic" is an interesting approach, but also creates the unfun equivalent of missing a turn. My eight year old is most unhappy when he is stuck on the same space for more than a turn (played Cranium on Friday night and he was getting frustrated.)

I think I get the overall flow - use goods to build power plants, use the power plants to grow the station, grow the station to get more meeples, use the meeples to make goods, rinse and repeat. I like it, and it’s a logical flow. However, I sort of get the feeling this game might be stronger without all of the different power sources, as they all seem to do the same thing - generate power. As written, I don’t see any significant difference between the power sources, except their initial cost, and whether or not they need fuel (maybe impacted Event Cards?). They all have the same effect, and and I don’t think the game benefits from having 8 different types, so think this could be reduced for simplicity.

Likewise, expanding the goods to have a bit of variety might add a new dimension to the game, as well as different components to your station. This might add to the interaction between players, and allow for specializations by different players, contributing to different strategies. I know this isn’t related to the GDS specifically, but I feel it could add to the game.

Perhaps the addition of specific goods could work with the power sources? For example, maybe players could expand their station to get access to a coal mine or chemical lab, that would allow them to create / obtain the material needed to power their bases, or make steel to allow them to build the power plants in the first place. Using renewable / passive power sources would allow players to free up their meeples for other tasks (like making fine china, or food or whatever else). Using non-renewable power means meeples are required to spend time obtaining fuel for the power sources (working in the coal mine), though would maybe be worth it in terms of higher energy output and faster growth.

As there doesn’t seem to be any difference in the power sources, besides initial cost and how long something can operate, so although it seems to work with the theme, it’s not as strong a fit as it could be. Yes, there’s lots of different options, but I’m not seeing a functional difference. Again, maybe this is where the event cards come in (Solar Flares! Wind Storms! Coal Robbers! Chemical Spills! Nuclear Meltdown - half your meeples die!). Overall, I like the game and think it has lots of potential, but in my opinion not a great implementation for the GDS requirements.

I liked this game is designed to fit into a magazine and be easily playable. I like that it is focused on educating young players on energy types. Considering the targeted audience, I think the roll and move mechanic is a good one. Not all games need to be focused at hard core or older gamers and that shouldn't detract from the consideration of the design as I think the world needs all kinds of games.

The only downside to this game which is aimed at younger players is that as the game progresses, it would seem to me to become harder and harder to move and while I understand why this is happening to a degree, I think it would frustrate the younger audience the game is aimed at attracting. I do get the idea of switching to sustainable energy to keep going, but from a practical standpoint, I don't think we can ever be totally removed from fossil energy sources. After all these computers we are using weren't made from solar power when you get down to it, there is a lot of oil in these here machines.

Anyway my only concern is the increasing difficulty to move forward and the frustration I think it might cause, but playtesting could determine how to balance that. Overall, it wasn't one of my medal winners but I liked it.

A game about efficiency/economics with theme energy. The relation to the fossil fuel/sustainable energy discussion is weak, especially since it takes place in the galaxy, and not somewhere on earth. This does not mean the game is bad, but not too relevant for this GDS.