[GDS] AUGUST 2014 "Immortal in Time" - Critiques

I was away on holidays, so this is my attempt to catch up on the reviews. I haven't read the other comments yet, so I apologize if there is repeated information.

Monument

This game is number based. The tallest monument is the most blocks. Therefore, it didn't place in my medals.

My Dad is Immortal

I like how the game invites creative matching of cards to make superpowers. I really like that mechanic, but I am not a fan of how the challenges work. I’d like to see players have to add one more card for each boast. Then it becomes almost a story telling game. Anyways, I think this game has potential, but it missed out on medals because it doesn’t meet the requirements for the challenge (immortalized – not immortal)

Raido

A simple storytelling game. It is fine, but doesn’t seem that original or interesting to me.

Mosaicus

This game feels more like an abstract game than a thematic game. So, I couldn’t give much points for immortalizing theme.

Infamous

Ok, so this was inspired by Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog? I just don’t feel that this party game was that inspiring. There is not enough game here.

Pinfall Olympics

Thematically, I don’t think this feels much like a wrestling match. The mechanics don’t revolve around moves and counter-moves. I don’t see how the tokens are needed. Why cant you just discard cards? Also, winning a wrestling match isn’t exactly imortalization.

Temple of the Gods (my silver)

There are A LOT of cards to this game. It looks like a pretty solid game and thematically matches the challenge.

This sounds like an interesting game that would give players lots to think about. I felt like there were too many numbers to consider it for a medal. Especially where you need four of the same colour. One thing I'd suggest is you might want to start with two actions per turn and let it increase from there. Moving from one action per turn to two is doubling whereas moving from two to three is only 1.5. Allowing someone to have twice as many actions as someone else early in the game can make it difficult for the other players to catch up. I ran into this in a game I was testing at Protospiel and was given this same advice.

Thanks for the feedback so far, everybody. I appreciate the comments that the token system may be fiddly, but I'm struggling to see a way to work the game mechanically how I want to without them. Allow me to explain:

I wanted to separate this game from card games like Memoir '44 by only having 1 card as hidden information. Thematically, I think of this display of information as a wrestler examining his opponent for tells, thereby getting an idea of what he might be about to do (4 face-up cards), but not being completely certain (1 face-down card). It's important to me that the majority of each player's cards can be seen, and the best way I saw to do this was to have them on the table face-up, with one face-down.

Problem: With all the cards on the table, how do I go about making the players choose the card they're using simultaneously? If each player merely points at the card he's going to use, one is bound to point first, and then the other, if he has a counter card, will respond by pointing at his counter card.

I need a mechanic to ensure simultaneous selection of what move each player performs. I was reminded of the Game of Thrones board game, which uses face down tokens. Placing a token on each card, with one meaning "okay, this is the move I select" was the best fix I could think of.

From there I developed the idea of the Keep and Discard tokens being placed, and placing these at the same time as the action token is another factor of my design that I consider important because it forces the players to think harder. I don't want players to pick an action, see the results of the action (e.g. "Okay, position change; I'm on top now"), and then discard cards accordingly (e.g. "Okay, now that I'm on top, I'm going to get rid of all these bottom cards because I don't need them"). I want players to have to think about what the outcome of the action they selected will be and then discard cards based on their estimate ("e.g. okay, I think after this turn we're going to end up in the neutral position, so I'm going to discard these bottom cards in hopes of getting some neutral cards because I don't have any right now; but I guess I should keep one bottom card just in case I'm wrong...or maybe I shouldn't? How likely is it that I'll remain on bottom after this round?"). This is why players can't simply discard cards.

I would like to think of a better system, but I'm struggling to find a solid alternative.

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Earlier this week I playtested the game, and I found that it seemed a bit too luck based in its current form; too often a player would, despite discarding a good number of cards, only end up with one card that he could use next round, so he had no choice in the matter of which card to place an action token on. Games also have the potential to last a very long time, with a lengthy back and forth between positions and/or a lengthy "neither action was successful" stay in the same position.

The fix that I'm intending to implement and test soon:

1) Players draw 2 cards per card discarded, then play half of the cards drawn and discard the rest.

2) When a player runs out of cards, he loses the game.

My hope with these changes is to make the game more thoughtful: Do I want to discard a bunch to have solid options for next round (and thereby risk losing the game by running out of cards faster than my opponent) or do I want to keep most of my cards and risk not having anything good enough for the next round?

However, a system of acquring fatigue tokens is pretty interesting and something I'd like to play around with. I'm thinking there could be a zero-sum fatigue track similar to the scoring system in Twilight Struggle): A fatigue token would be placed in the center of a track that looks like this: -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5. Whenever a player becomes fatigued, the token moves up one space in the direction associated with that player. At -X, the player places X less tokens than normal (so a player with -2 will place 3 tokens instead of 5). If a player gets to -5 fatigue, he immediately passes out and loses.

I feel that Pinfall Olympics, with more special effects, has potential as a game where players build their own custom decks (For testing I built two very simple identical decks). With this sort of fatigue track, a player could build a deck that has fatigue as its intended win condition.

I did notice the comments about numbers, but my understanding of the design challenge was that there should not be numbers used to score or quantify by comparision one person vs. the other. The numbers in this game do not do that. The number of actions you can perform is not compared among players and the sets are static--a set of four is a set of four. They don't compare to each other and don't make one superior to the other. I think this is the difference in my understanding of how Rich explained the challenge. If I misinterpreted it, then it was my mistake, but I would challenge the idea that it violated the number restriction.

@DiffertName: Those are interesting ideas that I'd also like to play around with. Thanks.

You mean I could have made a game based on the naming of the leotard?! :p

Godhood

This month’s challenge was for something to become immortalized, not immortal.

End of History?

My list of questions is longer than the entry... no medals from me.

These were the notes I made while choosing medals. I apologize for the crassness and truncation

I think the way clouds are compared with the tokens didn't quite fit for the challenge restrictions. I think the card layout and alignment system is interesting, but I think you'd need more rounds to provide enough chance for strategy.

I voted bronze for this game. I was a bit torn if the different number of cards per row violated the challenge restriction. I think it probably does, but I had a hard time picking a bronze. In my opinion, although the contest was full of creative ideas, there were not three entries, that had a strong fit both thematically and mechanically for the challenge without exceeding 500 words. What appealed to me about this entry was the fluidity in putting together the rows of the temple. I liked the gameplay, so it rose above the others I considered.

Godhood

Lots of numbers required to win in this one. The materials for building the pyramid are pretty strange too. Building a pyramid out of people, immaterial things, and other buildings? Just felt like the theme broke down a little with that.

I like the part about determining the position of the pyramid layers as you go. So each time you place a new element, you narrow down your possibilities a little bit more.

The End of History?

This entry was way too short. While the game rules don't have to be complete, they should have rules that give players a good idea of how the game would be played. This one was little more than an idea. Your choices of words were a bit odd too. Coded faces facing each other?

I'd like to thank those who commented on my game idea. It's brevity and difficult wording are mostly a consequence of taking the word count (500 words) seriously, and the assumption that entries would be necessarily brief and vague given that limitation. Clearly, the accepted word count is more in the order of 3000-5000 words, and maybe the contest guidelines should reflect that.

I'd like to comment on someone's note about not "buying it" (I'm just spacing the name right now). I'm just not sure what you mean. The inspiration for the idea is taken from Francis Fukuyama's famous essay of the same title. Like the essay, the game is based on Hegelian dialectic: the idea that problems are resolved as a consequence of resolving a thesis and anti-thesis, recursively until there are no more problems. At that point history will end because there will be nothing left to know. Game play is just a physical modeling of that idea. Maybe that helps?

I actually like the press your luck idea. I think it is more interesting than simply dealing a hand of cards to each player. The potential issue is down time between turns. With this system players cannot even think about what they will do next in between turns. Perhaps there can be a middle ground where you have some cards in your hand, and maybe there's a place for a trading mechanic or something like that to increase player interaction. I like the general concept in the game, but I also didn't feel the thematic idea of multiple people drawing on a single sheet made much sense. Maybe it could just be a group of architects who are suppose to be working together, but have totally different ideas.

Ascension

I like the game. It sounds like it would make an interesting session, but unfortunately the ladder ranking in it to me sounds too much like a scoring methodology and less a voting technique which dropped it from medal contention but remained fairly high on my list.

Long Live the Fashion

Interesting concept, not necessarily my theme for a game I would play, but I like the interaction that occurs in it. I don't know if it rises to the level of immortality or permanence since fashion is such a transient thing. The major issue was the last rule which says the person with four fashion markers wins. That unfortunately is a scoring mechanism which I think violates the challenge restrictions.

Godhood
This is an interesting game. I like the idea of building a pyramid of matching sets, but the dynamic flow of the pyramid's sets (Ie not knowing whether the pyramid is building up or down). I didn't quite get the idea of whether there were restrictions on how the rows relate to each other. It was my runner up to a medal this month.

The End of History?
This sounds more like a synopsis for a game design or an idea rather than the design itself. There really isn't enough here to judge and I don't get where it plays into the immortality theme. I think what is there conforms to the no number constraint, but there is not enough for me to sit down and understand how the game would work or even visualize it.

Drawing
Interesting idea and novel concept as far as I can tell. My only problem was I was having a hard time visualizing how it all fits together, but I like the mechanic of having all players trying to complete their designs on one sheet.

Ender Poets

I read through this. I like the poetry mechanic, but I'm not getting the rule symbols or do you just play the cards down or are they played into some type of tableau? It's not my type of game, but I think with the right people it could be a fun diversion and it meets the constraint of the challenge but I'm not necessarily certain of the theme.