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Piece Capture mechanic

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Sun, 10/26/2014 - 22:37
MarkP1981
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Joined: 10/20/2014

Hi,

I'm developing a restaurant game in which one of the pivotal mechanics of the game involves competing with the other players for increasingly greater percents of the pool of customers.

The loose premise that I have presently is that based on the size of the restaurant, and any bonuses you have acrued, dictates the percent of pool of customers that your restaurant has captured.

This is how it goes. At the beginning of a round, everyone checks to see who has the greatest landmass / any powers that puts someone in the same class as with the greatest landmass. Based on this check, each of the players may select a certain number of "people" per round that their restaurant gets to capture.

I am wondering: Are there are any games out there employ a similar mechanic? If so, what are their names?

Thanks!
Mark

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Sun, 10/26/2014 - 23:00
#1
RyanRay
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Joined: 03/27/2014
Based on your description, it

Based on your description, it sounds like a re-skinning of the standard Economic Engine concept. You get things to help acquire more people/land/money/magic/etc., and then use those very same things in unique ways to get more of the same stuff, sometimes with cool abilities or artifacts along the way.

Some games you should definitely check out to see how this concept can sometimes work very well, and sometimes not very well-

In no particular order:
-Automobile
-Dominion (or most any deck-builder)
-Caverna
-Power Grid
-Race for the Galaxy
-Scepter of Zavandor (I despise this game, yet I fully realize what a fantastic economic engine it has)
-Anything with "Age" in the title (Age of Steam, Through the Ages, etc.)
-Phoenicia
-Settlers of Catan

If you're into computer games, I'd highly recommend any of the better titles from the Tycoon series. This would allow you to get immediate feedback on what works and doesn't work in an economic engine game even though it's 1-player.

This mechanic is also called Snowball sometimes. One thing I often see is that there are ways for players in the back to still win. The danger of these kinds of games is that runaway leads can be difficult to stifle. If you can find a way to keep that from happening without adding a blatant STOP THE LEADER bit to the game, you've got a good thing on your hands. If you've got a restaurant theme, something like a tax system or advertising might be a good way to balance it.

Good luck!

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