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Struggle: Kickstarter Coming!

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StruggleBG
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Struggle: A Game of Deceit, Betrayal, and Zombies is a game that my co-designers and I have been working on the past few years as a hobby. As gamers we have always had a passion for tabletop games and are now making strides to make our own games professionally.

Struggle is a zombie apocalypse survival game where you, and up to five other survivors work together to survive until help arrives. While the shambling dead always persist, the real threat are your fellow survivors. Not everyone may want you to escape, or you might have your own agenda. One of the core aspects of Struggle is that you can lie, bluff, and deceive your way to win the game.

Struggle is a game where you must rely on fellow survivors to make it day to day. A dynamic that Struggle uses is backpacks that act as personal inventories which will hold resources everyone needs to survive. Backpack resources are hidden from your fellow survivors, Which allow everyone to lie about what they truly have. Your role as a survivor is to meet your own personal objective and escape alive by any means necessary. This may include killing other survivors by allowing them to starve, become sick, or pretending not to hear their screams as the dead tear them apart. Be careful who you betray, because the dead take grudges to the grave.

This is just the start of what can be done in Struggle. You perform various tasks such as trading, scavenging, and even extortion. All is fair in the world of Struggle.

Players: 3 - 6
Play Time: 90 - 150 minutes
Gameplay: Dice Rolling, Resource Management, Bluffing, Strategy, Voting.
Contents: 6 Screens, 6 Handouts, 126 Cards, 250 Tokens, 16 Markers, 1 Board, 2 20 Sided Dice, 1 Rulebook, 1 Reference Document, 1+ Backer Document.

When the kickstarter goes live, I will be asking for $20,000 to produce the game. Your investment will get us professionally created art assets for the entire game, including manufacturing and shipping. Your pledge will help make Struggle into a reality, and in turn help us to start a company to design more board games and expansions for Struggle.

Please visit our Facebook page Here

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Struggle-A-Game-of-Deceit-Betrayal-and-Zo...

Visit our website Here

http://www.struggleboardgame.com/

How to play
http://www.struggleboardgame.com/how-to-play.html

The Kickstarter will launch on 6/25/2015! Please like and share us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @StruggleBG

Soulfinger
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You lost me at zombies. Best

You lost me at zombies. Best of luck though at finding a foothold in such a saturated market.

adversitygames
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Sounds like it could be interesting

Soulfinger is right in that there is a massive amount of zombie games out there. It'll be hard to stand out of the horde.

But I can't think of any examples of a game that combines the features you've got there, which will help. Keep focused on what stands out about your game when trying to get support (hint: zombies are not going to be the thing that stands out about your game :P)

From your "How to Play" guide, you've got a lot of phases there. Just looking through that it seems like you could streamline it a bit (eg trade and donation phase could be combined into one).
Also why is the trade phase happening before all the other phases, rather than being in with the other inventory-changing phases (donation/yield)?

StruggleBG
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Yeah, I agree that it is an

Yeah, I agree that it is an over saturated market. Truth be told I started development when the second season of the walking dead began and have been slowly working since. Now the main focus of my game is the struggle of the survivors.... We'll surviving each other. With personal inventories and everyone having their own private objective, the real part of the game isn't about the zombies. Now the reason why the trade phase is so players can trade medicine, food, ammo, and aggro tokens before any are spent during their turn. So players could have food or medicine to treat when that part of their turn comes. I thank you all for the feedback!

wombat929
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changing theme?

How does this game compare to City of Horror? I haven't played it, but descriptions of it sound like it has some of those same issues.

Regarding the theme, would it be possible to re-theme? If you're focusing mostly on survival and struggle, it could be bees or mist or an ape-ocolypse or something.

ElKobold
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No offense, but it was

No offense, but it was literally like this for me:

"Struggle: A Game of Deceit, Betrayal, and Z..." < stopped reading >.

Can it be ANYTHING else, but the zombie thing?

fayinsky
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ElKobold wrote:No offense,

ElKobold wrote:
No offense, but it was literally like this for me:

"Struggle: A Game of Deceit, Betrayal, and Z..." < stopped reading >.

Can it be ANYTHING else, but the zombie thing?


Haha, I had the exact same thought, except that I didn't have the courage to write it as a reply.

Since it is about survival, there are so many themes to use. It really isn't necessary to be a zombie/apocalypse game in my humble opinion.

StruggleBG
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wombat929 wrote:How does this

wombat929 wrote:
How does this game compare to City of Horror? I haven't played it, but descriptions of it sound like it has some of those same issues.

Regarding the theme, would it be possible to re-theme? If you're focusing mostly on survival and struggle, it could be bees or mist or an ape-ocolypse or something.

ElKobold wrote:
No offense, but it was literally like this for me:

"Struggle: A Game of Deceit, Betrayal, and Z..." < stopped reading >.

Can it be ANYTHING else, but the zombie thing?

fayinsky wrote:
ElKobold wrote:
No offense, but it was literally like this for me:

"Struggle: A Game of Deceit, Betrayal, and Z..." < stopped reading >.

Can it be ANYTHING else, but the zombie thing?


Haha, I had the exact same thought, except that I didn't have the courage to write it as a reply.

Since it is about survival, there are so many themes to use. It really isn't necessary to be a zombie/apocalypse game in my humble opinion.

I haven't had the pleasure of playing City of Horror, however reading up on it my game is somewhat similar. Everyone tries to escape and ends up backstabbing each other for... reasons. However Struggle is based on the interaction of the survivors, not the zombies themselves. However there are one thing that cause me some some issues with changing the theme around. When players are attacked by a zombie and fail to fight it off they are "Grappled" aka held down by the zombie and need help to fend them off. This can be easily done by another player killing it, however if no one chooses to save them they will die. When the player dies they come back as a zombie to attack the remaining players. What theme could I take to keep this core mechanic and with the idea of players returning to the game? Thank you all for your feedback, all of this feedback helps so much. Even if you don't like the theme I still encourage you to at least read the rules and go over the website in the original post to see how the game plays.

fayinsky
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Not sure if any one already

Not sure if any one have already proposed this theme yet or not, but here's one that I think can perfectly mimic zombie world (where people can be killed and return as a zombie). The idea is somehow inspired by movies: The Matrix, and Chappie.

Ok, here it comes:
Future world where robots are mass-produced (no surprise here). They are mindless just like zombies with default set of orders. Someone implemented true AI in some of the robots in a lab (or whatever scenario you want them in) and such robots are deemed as outliers. Other non-AI robots are sent to "correct" such "error" by wiping the AI off and installing the "normal" operating system on those robots. This is somehow similar to how Smith infected everybody in the Matrix to make identical copies of himself that can fight for him. If such correction is successful, AI robots with newly installed OS will join the non-AI side to hunt down the rest of AIs.

ElKobold
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StruggleBG wrote:When players

StruggleBG wrote:
When players are attacked by a zombie and fail to fight it off they are "Grappled" aka held down by the zombie and need help to fend them off. This can be easily done by another player killing it, however if no one chooses to save them they will die. When the player dies they come back as a zombie to attack the remaining players. What theme could I take to keep this core mechanic and with the idea of players returning to the game?

Option 1: Players are a crew of a ship crashed on the alien planet. Full of hostile alien life-forms.

Option 2: Players are a crew of a ship in an age of sail, shipwrecked on an island. They can be attacked by the jaguar. If killed by the jaguar, they stay in the game, controlling the hostile Indians who have just landed on the island and aim to kill the players.

Option 3: Players are a group of hackers, inside the virtual reality of a mega-corporation network. If captured by the security programs, they are conditioned to work against their former allies.

etc. etc. etc. ;)

chris_mancini
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Do you see?!

I agree with most on this thread that the typical zombie theme is exhausted...it may once have been popular, but I think Dead Of Winter pretty much perfected the genre...no need to take it further.

What about an "Event Horizon" or "Alien" theme, set in space on a "dead" space station? Players still must survive, and there can easily be a sinister alien presence which provides the threat and preserves your mechanic (players become "possessed" by the alien force like Event Horizon or literally turn into aliens through human incubation) but the sci-fi theme and setting offers so much more you can do.

Perhaps now you can have secret enemies...perhaps a player can become "infected" without the others knowing, now working against them in secret...which would create some fantastic tension and growing paranoia between players!

"You know nothing. Hell is only a word. The reality is much, much worse."

fayinsky
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ElKobold wrote: Option 2:

ElKobold wrote:

Option 2: Players are a crew of a ship in an age of sail, shipwrecked on an island. They can be attacked by the jaguar. If killed by the jaguar, they stay in the game, controlling the hostile Indians who have just landed on the island and aim to kill the players.

I love Option 2! Can't wait to be the Indians. Can I die on purpose? :D

Oh, this reminds me: In Struggle, if I become a zombie, can I still win? If so, can I purposely get myself killed by a zombie in case if the objective after becoming a zombie is easier than the one in hand? (Sorry, I know there are a lot of IFs...)

wombat929
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Bees!

I still like the bees. If you get stung and don't get an epinephrine shot, you go mad with bee fever and start helping the bees to break in.

StruggleBG
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Thank you everyone for the

Thank you everyone for the ideas and constructive criticism! After foregoing and reading your suggestions I've been thinking between a few options to keep the concept of the game without changing many of the rules, but bringing in a new theme:

Option 1: Mutants. There has been a series of nucular attacks across the country, causing fallout to rain over it. Fortunately, our players were not near any of these explosions. Bad news is that many of the citizens of the city they were caught and mutated by the fallout, driving them mad. Players will be hiding inside a fallout shelter waiting for help while fending off the mutant army.

Option 2: Supernatural. A supernatural army has overtaken the city! Werewolves, Vampires, Mummies, and Frankenstein Monsters!Survivors must fend off and hold out in a haunted mansion until help arrives! And hope you don't turn into one of... them...

Option 3: Alien Invasion. Aliens have invaded the city turning humans into mindless husks! Players must hold out defend themselves against the alien invasion until the military arrives! If they even stand a chance!

Option 4: BEES! Yes I actually enjoyed this option and could make it hilarious. Giant bees have invaded the city, attacking and stinging people to death. However these are not your ordinary giant bees, these bees implant their victims with deadly larva and turn them into more killer bees! Players must wait for help to arrive, but who can stop the bees?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYtXuBN1Hvc

Again thanks for the input all! It is much appreciated.

Soulfinger
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StruggleBG wrote:When players

StruggleBG wrote:
When players are attacked by a zombie and fail to fight it off they are "Grappled" aka held down by the zombie and need help to fend them off.

Pedophiles!

Well, my original thought was hillbillies, Deliverance-style, but seeing some of the other suggestions, I have some recommended reading/viewing to get you started:

Mutants: The Hills Have Eyes (film), Tokyo Gore Police (film)
Supernatural: Monster Squad (film)
Aliens: Puppetmasters, Robert Heinlein, The Body Snatchers, Jack Finney.
Bees: The Thaw (film), Blood Glacier (film)

fayinsky
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In addition to Soulfinger's

In addition to Soulfinger's recommended reading/viewing, I would like to add the TV series "Falling Skies" to the Aliens list. It's about an alien race controlling another one (turning them into drones) to invade earth. They capture human children and brain wash them. They are also capable of capturing human beings and use certain machines to control them, again, like drones. One of the adults under control eventually became the leader of the invading army.

wombat929
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Yay Bees!

Yay, Bees!

I don't know whether this would add to your plan to change theme or detract from it, but there are two other high profile zombie board game kickstarters that will be running already on June 25.

Z War One
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1519152481/z-war-one

zombicide black plague
https://www.facebook.com/GuillotineGames/posts/816375098448527

So on the one hand, you'll have strong competition from one established company and one company that's already met its funding goals.

On the other hand, this perhaps indicates that not everyone is tired of zombies yet.

But BEES, now that's where it's at.

chris_mancini
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If you want to play a game about bees...

check out Waggle Dance: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/158572/waggle-dance

Not awesome mutant killer bees...but still kinda cool!

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