Every town has one. Everyone in town avoids it. Stories have been told; sleepless nights have resulted. Haunted houses terrify everyone, young and old alike. In your town the local haunted house has a legend associated with it. The mansion was once owned by an eccentric recluse who has long since passed away. While he was alive there were rumors of dark magic, murder, ancient mysteries, and odd habits. Was the inhabitant a vampire? Or a scientist who had finally cracked? Maybe he was a paranoid conspiracy nut, afraid of… well, everything. But one thing was common among all the legends. The crazy old man who lived there was fantastically wealthy and had hidden a Treasure in the abandoned mansion.
Since the man’s demise several have braved the ominous mansion on the outskirts of town, only to return frightened, mad, or never to return at all. With each visitation occurrences around the house become more and more bizarre. Lights are seen in the windows, despite the electricity to the building being turned off for years. Strange sounds, screams, thumps, and groans can be heard from the building nightly. Birds, squirrels, and other creatures are never anywhere around. On some nights you can hear classical music, or cackling laughter, even though the house is dark. Most are content to experience the house’s haunts from well beyond the property line, but a few have been brave enough to enter the house as far as its grand foyer. Those that have entered are never the same again. But that legend of a great treasure is calling, taunting you even. You and several friends have decided to take as many precautions as you can, prepare a base camp protected by the latest paranormal investigation equipment, and explore the mansion to find the Treasure rumored to be hidden somewhere in one of its peculiar rooms. So one evening you set up a small camp in the large foyer of the house and set off in search of adventure and Treasure. But beware! The house is protected by more ghosts and spirits than you realized. While you hunt for their Treasure, they will hunt you down and attempt to scare you away or even attack you outright. If you stay too long you may just meet your demise, but you are determined not to leave without the Treasure. But remember the old saying, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” With the last of your sanity gone, you may get scared to death. Should you perish you’ll be doomed to join the ranks of the spirits cursed to protect the house and its secrets. You’ll then be cursed to work against your former friends to make them share the same fate as you.
Object
Polter-Heist is for 2-4 players, ages 6+, with a playtime of 45-60 minutes or more. The object of the game is to explore the haunted mansion, uncovering rooms and searching for the hidden Treasure. Along the way you’ll make discoveries that can help you out and encounter ghosts that will deplete your courage or hinder your search. Occasionally you may encounter a benevolent spirit that will help you along the way. Be careful though, because if you get scared to death you’ll become a ghost that can chase down your former friends! You win the game by acquiring the Treasure and getting it out of the house. The ghosts win if everyone in the house gets turned to a ghost. You lose if you are a ghost and one or more players are able to make it out of the house with the Treasure.
Comments
Prototyping can be very
Prototyping can be very tedious! One trick I found was to design what I want on the tiles using a program like Power Point, printing it onto a full sheet shipping label, cutting out the tile, and then applying it as a giant sticker. This can look nice but can get expensive fast. Here are the shipping labels I am talking about: (http://www.amazon.com/Avery%C2%AE-Full-Sheet-Printers-TrueBlock-Technolo...) .
Good luck with the game! It sounds like fun.
Yeah, that's what I used for
Yeah, that's what I used for the front of my tiles. And my local Walmart has them for a lot cheaper than Amazon. I also use printable business card sheets for my game cards. That way they're all exactly the same size and I don't have the tedium of cutting (I cut all the cards for my first two games). I've also found that craft stores are great for little things like pawns, wood cubes, etc. And I found a brand of paper punch that has been working great on matboard so I can make nice chips and stuff. These EK Tools punches work great (some other brands don't fit the matboard or aren't able to cut it): http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0090JVBP0/
I have no problems making home-made prototypes, but if there was someplace I could go to have them make 5-10 copies quickly that would save me several weeks of time and I could get the copies distributed a bit locally.
nice theme man! you know what
nice theme man! you know what would be more exiting? if you could add mysterious clues that would lead you to the treasure. maybe those will be delivered by the spirits or hidden somewhere. you know something like a scavenger hunt.
anyway, let me know when this game is out for playtesting. i would surely give it a try!
Thanks!
Thanks for the encouragement. I'll think about the ideas for leading players toward the treasure. That might add more complexity that I'd like right now though. I'm hoping for a fun, low complexity family game. I've got one prototype that I've been playtesting with friends and family and so far it's gotten great reactions. So much so that I've created an expansion for up to 8 players.
I'm currently looking for a source to make additional, higher quality prototypes so that I can get it into more people's hands for play testing and reviews and hopefully someday, publication. However I'm not really sure where to go from here. I've looked at The Game Crafter, but the board and pieces aren't standard sized and I need to create actual artwork for the game...
You don't need to worry too
You don't need to worry too much about that. Just use a program that has some basic features. You don't need to go for full professional looking artwork right now as if your planning on publishing your game from a game publisher they will be doing the complete artwork. Just let the artwork be clear and showing all things required to play. I did most of my game- Stealth's artwork on powerpoint and paint although it took me a while.(My game is just out for playtesting By the way)
That's just an advice though. If you want to make it professional, You can download some programs from the internet. Or you can ask an artist to do it(you're really gonna have to struggle to get one though).
Yeah, I'm not worried too
Yeah, I'm not worried too much about the artwork for right now. It's using clip art from Word and the web for the cards and the rooms that you explore are just blank squares. The mechanics work great, but the visuals are lacking, but that hasn't stopped anyone who has played it from having a blast.
But each piece in my prototype right now is hand made. There are 35 room tiles that are hand cut, 10 hand painted pawns, and the boards are hand made. It takes me about 5 days and $30 of materials to make a copy and it's still just roughly made (tiles aren't exactly the same dimensions, tile backs are hand-gridded, etc.). Plus I just developed an expansion so up to 8 can play and that adds another deck of cards, 30 more tiles, another game board, and a number of other pawns and tokens. That adds another 3 days of work and $20 to the materials cost... If I could have a printer print directly onto the tiles and cut them to size that would help immensely, so I could get some additional copies out to game stores and friends in the area for more play testing and exposure, but I'm not sure where to go to get that type of work done, or how much that would cost...