The working title, Life Heist, definitely makes little sense to a third party. My buddy Andy and I are brainstorming a "heist" game. He loves "Lifeboat" (singular), and there you have it.
Life Heist is not any of the similarly themed board/video games that have been released recently (Ben Marshalkowski's game, the Munchkin-esque heist game, Monaco, etc), in theory. We have been actively scouring the market to make sure that we aren't duplicating efforts.
The idea of the game is, as you might have suspected, crooks going on a series of jobs/heists. Each player takes the role of a crook. I wouldn't mind player agency being that of a gang boss or something, but Andy thinks that abstracts the action too much. He's probably right.
The "feel" of the game is taking calculated risks, negotiating with other players, looking out for yourself - yet passing it off as benevolence...
Lot of deception, bluffing, etc.
We've been juggling various mechanisms, thematic integrations, decision trees, and so forth. Hopefully a prototype will emerge in the next week (though Easter might delay things a bit - Thanks, Jesus! Literally...)
This is my first journal on BGDF, so I'm not sure what all to put. Will read up, and update as needed.
Comments
It's amazing how few heist
It's amazing how few heist games there are considering how many people seem to be working on them! I have one as well, posted on here a bit over a month ago, and it is in the playtesting stage right now. There are a number of different ways to do it, and I would love to see what you two come up with!
Heist is looking good!
Your latest rules draft really nails the One Night Ultimate Werewolf/Saboteur feel. I'd definitely like to try out a PnP when it becomes available, as ONUW is one of the most-played games around here!
LifeHeist has, for now at least, each player committing exactly one card to each of the various facets of the job (somewhat akin to your police chase and double cross phases).
We're still working on the main feel/mechanism, so I'll keep you posted!
Something along the line of
Something along the line of "conman" then sounds more appropriate :)
Re: Conman
Indeed. Obviously it's just a working title, but we'll certainly have to move away from "heist" in particular if/when we get that far.
I kid you not - within minutes of posting this journal, a guy named ANDY posted on the C&BG Designers Guild (on Facebook) asking about HIS heist game!
Not the same Andy, not the same game, but you wouldn't know it by looking!