Critique the July 2006 GDS Challenge Entries

14 entries, wow

Hmm, trick taking fishing tournament may have been a bit too restrictive, but a lot of these look preety good.

No ice fishing entries! I really wanted to call my game "Hardwater" but thematically, it didn't feel like an ice fishing game.

There's an "Eelpout" tournament in the States somewhere. Eelpout is a typically unpalatable fish. The word "Eelpout" would make for a great card game name too.

When this happens, maybe peg a little reminder to the bottom of entry 14. I nearly missed the 15th entry in the last contest, even though I *knew* it was there.

Aw, man! Got my entry in 45 minutes too late! wah!

Isn't the basic definition of "trick taking" generally being the player who had the highest bid (or the highest valued card)?

cmon yogurt, i've seen your entries to the challenges in the past, and you've seemed to have no trouble applying any of the themes to your game ideas. in fact, i don't think i've ever read one that did not apply to the required theme, so i don't think you can blame me for thinking that this challenge is well within your grasp... :D props

Good observation. But on that same logic you could call the game "War" (a game where players have facedown piles of cards and simultaneously flip their top card, highest card wins, ties result in showdown with tying players, play goes until only one player has cards remaining) a trick taking game, even though nothing that the player does influences his/her ability to win.

when i look for a "trick taking" game, i like to see card counting, trump drawing and or bidding-on-hand concepts and strategies. for example, in spades players must bid how many tricks they think they can make. in bid whist, players also bid to control who sets trump and what cards can win tricks. in bridge (specifically tournaments), teams all take turns playing the same preset hands to see if they can make more tricks than other teams could.

the key aspect is a strategy for both powerful and weak hands. in spades and bid whist, if the weaker(defending) team can prevent the other team from making a bid, it incurs a penalty which can level the playing field. in bridge a team can try to prevent opponents from getting as many tricks by playing the same cards at different times. since the capacity for bluffing isn't there as in poker, game mechanics should prevent a lucky hand from being an absolute winner. otherwise we might as well just cut the deck for the high card 13 times and say we played a game...

By the way, my absolute favourite thing about this month's competition is that the 52-card-deck requirement means I have prototypes of all the games already! For the first time, I can actually play the games I admire.

Okay, I totally missed you were joking. Sorry to throw up my hackles.

I look forward to seeing your comments on the entries. I thought your point about how a good trick-taking game provides a role for strong and weak hands was a smart observation, and I hope you have a chance to come back to that.

Congratulations to the winners! And to all the rest too. Competition was very close this month in my scores, with no sigle game taking the lead, nor any falling behind. Actually, in the 1 to 10 scale I use for my first evaluation of the entries, all games were between 7 and 8 (had to use decimals to set subtle differences).

All the games seem to be playable and have some interesting detail, and following Yogurt's idea, I'll probably give a try to at least some of them, given that I already have complete prototypes. :-)

In the end I awarded 3 point each to my three favourite entries: Bait & Tackle, The Great Lakes Fish Out! and Jack (Dempsey)'s or Better. But as I mentioned, I ranked all the games almost the same, so it could have easily been 2 points for 5 of the games too. I just had this tripple tie for first, so I decided to spread the points among them three.

Seo

Both my game and my critiques are were a bit rushed this month, but at least I didn't get shut out! My crits aren't as in depth this time but don't let that seem like this wasn't an interesting challenge. We saw a lot of games with a lot of different ideas in them.

I will preface my critiques by saying that I generally judged them against exsisting games of the 52 trick taking genre, such as hearts and spades. I think that this unduely punished the more complex games, but I think that there is a reason that most standard card games don't have a lot of complexity to them. Time has polished these games in a way that regular playtesting cannot.

Here we go.

Pirogue

Our only entry with graphics, and fancy ones at that. There are a few ideas in this game that I like. I like the idea that players play both as individuals and as a team, and that they can win either way. Splitting the deck so that you are guaranteed a certain number of face cards is interesting, but if you didn’t use two different colored decks it would get tedious sorting between deals.

In “Timequake” by Kurt Vonnegut he tells a story about talking to a fisherman friend of his about the story “The old man and the sea”. His friend thought that the old man was stupid for letting the sharks eat his catch, he should have just cut the best pieces of meat off the fish and brought them back in the boat and dropped off the carcass. I mention this because of the fishing theme and I think that this game needed to cut the choice filets and leave the guts in the water. Several of the games suffered from this. Pirogue just happens to be the first on the list.

When I think of card games I generally think of a few simple rules and maybe one or two exceptions. Remembering lots of exceptions in cards can be difficult because the cards provide little theme to the game to help remember the rules, and people know a lot of card games so they all muddle. When I look at all the scoring options, I don’t know if I could play this game without a cheat sheet.

King Fish

I really like this game. Simple set of rules that are understandable on the first reading, some interesting choices to make. I like the choice between using your cards as both line and bait. The fact that all the fish are visible allows a player to plan ahead. The only thing that I am not sure about is the simultaneous selection of bait. It might be more interesting to let players see what comes before them in bait selection. Or maybe this would be too easy, I can’t tell without playing the game

Bait and Tackle:

Another dead on game in terms of complexity. The base game is extremely simple, high trump takes the trick. And only one set of exceptions with the “Special powers” cards. The big choices you have to make in this game are what cards do you swap over for tools rather than scoring them.

The Heart and the Diamond both seem more powerful than the spade or club but this is compensated by the higher scoring value of the red cards. This game sounds like lighthearted fun, without too many brain burning choices.

Fly Vs Fly

I think this game could use a little simplification just from a read through, but I could be wrong, as none of the exceptions to rules are very obscure.

Setting the fish limit is an interesting take on bidding. A weak hand will lower the fish limit in order to limit points an opponent can take. A strong hand will run up the limit. I like this aspect of the game. Only the lead scoring is a nice touch as well, very themematic of fishing (though not really of spies fishing!)

The scoring is a bit obtuse, a 5-10-15-20 system would be better in my opinion, just to speed things up. The flow rule is interesting but I am not sure that it serves as anything more than a curiosity in the game. I initial feeling is that it could be dropped from the game.

The Great lakes Fish out!

This game feels more like a German style card game than a more typical trick taking game. Which isn’t a bad thing at all. I could see a version with nice cartoon fish on the cards, I think it could only help the game.

I’m not really sure that it is a trick taking game, but it has some interesting ideas. I like the choice between stocking a suit with fish or harvesting it. Though there are some no brainer choices there, I imagine there are some interesting ones as well. Only being able to take one harvest of each suit is nice too. This looks like a unique and interesting game. However it could also be the kind of game that looks great on paper but is a disaster to play.

Jack (Dempsey’s) or better

Some cool ideas in this game. I like that 4 players compete for 3 fish, that add some stress to the game. I like the poker scoring aspect of the game though it isn’t particularly evocative of fishing to me (Bird watching maybe).
The way the fish respond to bait has me a bit torn. I like that the complex odd/even red/black aspects of the different fish allow you to better tailor your bait to your fish and therefore help you make the best hand. However I also find it an annoying aspect to remember.

Big Game Deep Fishing

A very straight forward game. I like that about it. The ability to look deep ahead in the game is interesting. If I have any complaint it may be that there isn’t enough of a twist to the game. I think that this game has the kind of simple card game appeal to actually see some play.

The Big One:

This is my game. It is a bit sloppy, but I like games where you get to discard and replace cards.

Hook and Sinker:

Here is another game that has lots of ideas in it, some of them very good, but there seems to be a bit much going on here. Three special ability cards may be a bit much, I think that just the Aces and Two’s would suffice, the same goes with the “feeding frenzy” round. I do like the ability of the 2 to play as a low trump.

SpadeFish:

I think that this is a cool little game. Simple with a single good twist. The mechanic of highest without going over is something that you don’t see in many games and I think that it would make for some interesting play. Shooting the Moon is also a fun addition to most games.

Go Fish:

This game is unique as it is almost more of a German style game than a traditional card game. It is an interesting take on the challenge. I don’t think that this is a trick taking game however. I think that this game might have an interesting flow to it, of trading your various lures back and forth. Without playing it I think that this game might have the ability to spiral out of control with deviant strategies.

Fishing Quota:
This is a nice take on the trick taking game. I like how you have to take many tricks in your short suits and few in your big suits, that makes a nice tension. This game doesn’t feel as intuitive (perhaps read intuitive as familiar) to me as do some of the other games.

Drywater River Fishing Competition

Another good little trick taking game. Pretty straight forward except in the scoring which is nice. Picking and choosing what tricks you fight for is neat, trying to build a good set is as important as volume. Again we have the issue of remembering how those unique sets score.

It Was this Big

The bidding style of this game fits the boasting and bragging theme. As is the peeking at the fish in the pond mechanism, which can make for a little bluffing in the first few rounds.

Lunker

This game has some great Ideas, it does scream to be pared down however. The three specialized decks require a lot of maintenance. (Again here the possibility of printing custom decks with a fishy theme would be both visually satisfying and help clarify the roles of the multiple decks in a way that a standard deck can’t)

I like the bite range idea, and the “predicting and controlling trends” aspect is very cool, especially I think this is the juicy bit of the game that needs to be cultivated. I think that perhaps having the hand go 2 times around instead of once might help the feel of the mechanism, at least in a game with fewer teams.

The scoring I could do without, the catching fish section is interesting but I think it is chaff as well. The streamlined variation is probably the better of the two.

Yeah it was annoying to remember. While playtesting, when the fish were
revealed I had to have one of the other players call out what each fish was looking for, so everyone including the designer(me!) were clear on
what was expected and I still made lots of misplays!

I think if i was to play this again, I would mark the fish with codes such
LRE for low red even cards. So there were no mistakes.
I imagine if it was a production game you could have the graphic be
a small red fish to give some extra indication. Maybe looking at you so you
could see both eyes for even and a side view with one eye showing for
odd cards.

Anyway good contest.

btw I also played Horoku's Fly vs Fly and felt it actually played well
in real life.

Dn

congrats to the winners and look forward to September's contest!

Congrats to Doho! He leapt ahead of us all. Can't beat the Vegas guy when it comes to card games, I guess!

Here are my thoughts on this month's challenge.

I agree with Horuku that many games didn't have something I'd recognize as trick-taking. There might be something close, but often the "winner take all" component was missing or the value of the trick would have nothing to do with the cards played. I rewarded entries that managed to share my possibly idiosyncratic view of trick-taking and capture the feel of a fishing tournament too.

As an entrant, I found it to be a challenging Showdown, because there frankly isn't much about fishing tournaments that feels like trick-taking. Anglers are rarely in direct competition with each other during the event itself.

However, the freedom to skip the art was a great relief.

On to the games!

PIROGUE. What a great game: rich original theme; full of clever ideas. Owes a lot to cribbage, of course. The "Tag and Release" rule is new to me though, and what agony it could cause partners.

This game did not receive a vote from me because it massively exceeded the length restriction.

The competition between team and individual victories could lead to some metagame stress: "I'm not playing with Bill! He always goes for the solo win." Family peace variant: Individuals who score 60 trigger a team win.

KING FISH (1 vote). Simple rules. Knowing what other people have in their hand, because of the tacklebox, adds a twist to the game. (My memory is so poor, I'd collapse.) Conflicts over the simultaneously-picked bait/suit might be random enough to be frustrating; it reminded me of Pirate's Cove. This is one of the games that was missing the winner-take-all element. There are tricks, but no one takes all the cards.

BAIT AND TACKLE. Traditional card games could use more special power cards, so I was glad to see that. The game itself is a little too straightforward for me. I did like the fact that red and black score differently.

FLY VS FLY. I had a hard time finding the core game in here with all the preliminaries and odd theme. I would have added this line near the top: "Players who capture lead are the only ones who earn points when winning a trick; they can also change the direction of play." Flow control was my favourite part of this game.

I worry that since scoring and control are based on the same thing, high cards, the initial luck of the deal could be overwhelming.

GREAT LAKES FISH OUT (3 votes). Finally, a game that rewards fishing to extinction! This was one of my favourites, because of its simple rules that promise complex consequences. But I only ranked it second, because as the designer notes, this is not really a trick taking game.

JACK (DEMPSEY)'S OR BETTER. This seems to be a plain old outguessing game. Players don't seem to have a chance to react to other players. The trick-taking aspect was thin.

BIG GAME DEEP FISHING. This one needed more twists to stand out.

THE BIG ONE. I couldn't determine the strategy in this one. I did like the gain-a-card bonus a lot. Thematically, this isn't a professional fishing tournament and even with the given the theme, I'm not sure what our cards represent. Playing for penalties is a fun idea. I haven't played Bloody Knuckles for almost twenty years...

HOOK AND SINKER (4 votes). Although this wouldn't be my first pick to play from the entries this month, it was the one that I thought met the requirements best, effectively blending trick-taking and fishing contests, spiced with unusual trump effects and the special "feeding frenzy" round. I don't think I like the idea that the eldest card takes a tie; that seems to reduce risk and tension. What does bidding represent?

SPADEFISH. I was hoping for a game with more strategy. Also, tournament scoring usually rewards catching the best fish, not the most, so the theme had a weird feel, especially with the hearts-like "going for them all" rule.

GO FISH! Another one that pushed my apparently narrow definition of a trick-taking game. It sounded interesting, but I couldn't get a firm grip on how it would play. Thematically, it didn't make sense to me that successes at different times would improve the quality of your fish.

FISHING QUOTA (1 vote). This seemed promising, but I wish I were better at visualizing the game because I'm not sure it would work. I didn't have time to test it. I assume the quota cards are face up, so you can work to screw your opponents? Cheated the theme a bit.

DRYWATER RIVER FISHING COMPETITION. The play here was too straightforward for me. I also think that if tricks are going to have different values, the value should relate to the cards played.

IT WAS THIS BIG (1 vote). An interesting game, although weak on the trick-taking. It actually feels like a eurogame I've played, but I can't put my finger on which one. Maybe the game is simply Knizia-ish, with players each having a limited pool of bids.

LUNKER. This was my game. I'm fond of the shifting range of valuable valuable cards ("bites"). I also like the idea of scoring the most-played trick, although it would work better with 6+ players, and could leave too much power in the final player's hand.

But then I couldn't leave well enough alone, could I? Drawing from the BASS DECK would probably slow the game down too much, and complicates the game, so I think I'd eliminate it if I continued to work on this one. I'd to have work Ole Grandad into the main game somehow, though, or I'd miss him. Also, I'd have to restrict the weather-deck changing cards to just red 2s or something. It would happen too often otherwise.

Well, in theory, I totally agree with your philosophy that card games could be simple, smooth as river stones. That's one of the reasons I like Fish Out so much.

However, my own designs and my fandom for games like Pirogue show that my revealed preference is actually for games jam-packed with ideas -- complexity and comprehension and maybe playability be damned. :)

It's something maybe I should work on.

When I said some games were too straightforward, I didn't mean too simple. I mostly meant too traditional -- they didn't have any twist that would stand out in my mind or make me choose them over euchre.

A game with two rules would be fine by me, as long as one made me take a step back and say wow.

(I do want some room for strategy though.)

Bold added by me.
I find this interesting because its not thin, it's not there period!
I had posted in the comments on this challenge that my entry had no trick taking aspects to it. Yet I ended with more votes than other entries that
had good or at least some trick taking parts to it.

I fully expected to receive 0 votes, I just enjoyed the game I came up
with and posted what I had.

I find the requirements to voting ratio intriguing. :)

I'm back! Briefly. I'm incredibly busy.

BAIT AND TACKLE: I liked the idea of tools, but not that they were called tools. I don’t associate the word tools with fishing. Better to just call them tackle. Just reading it, it seemed on first thought that the game could get caught in loop. If a player has all four high cards of one suit, can he lose? Why red 3 and black 2 points?

PIROGUE: I didn't even read it. With 15 entries, and knowing I wouldn't give out points to one that broke the rules, I couldn't spare the time. So I am one vote you didn't get for going over. Hey, I'm a game designer, I take rules seriously. Actually I could barely spare the time to read any of them! Or enter! But I did do both! Hooray for 2nd place, I'm really pleased and surprised.

BAIT AND TACKLE: Red is worth more than black because red tools are better - you have to sacrifice more point value to use them. It also adds a little twitch to the game - you're gonna fight much harder to win a red trick, as it will tend to be worth (#players) more points than a black trick (but not always, since after a couple rounds, somebody won't be able to play the suit anymore, and it gets all mixed up). This makes tools more important, since you won't always have the cards to take red tricks. It's a simple game though, nothing too deep. I'm not sure why a player with high cards in one suit would have any major advantage. The fish could be any of the four suits (drawn randomly), so there's only a 25% chance that any given trick is guaranteed to be his, and even then, he can be trumped through the use of tools (diamond or heart could beat it, depending on factors. Club could beat the last of his 4 high cards). I didn't like the word tools either. It didn't seem right to call a diamond, guts, a club, and a shovel "tackle". But then again, I don't know what the word tackle means outside of football. There are definitely no loops in the game, though, so I think you misunderstood the rules. It will end in exactly 12 turns no matter what (used tools are discarded, and you can't play cards out of your catch, only from your original 12-card hand).

I found it impossible really to judge this contest. Partly, I've been out of this a long time, but mainly, plain card games aren't something I can get a grip on in a quick reading. I had to really picture them, and I think I didn't really understand them fully. I'd have to play them to truly judge. But I agree with other people in that I felt that almost none of the entries were 'trick-taking' by my standards. I checked the wikipedia though, and it was much looser than what I had imagined. I thought the word "trick" in cards had a specific meaning of "all the cards played this round", so taking a trick had to do that. So I let that slide and just went with what I liked. It still bothered me though when the games had everyone lay down cards and the winner takes one specific card. Just sticks in my craw.

I have no critiques, but one of my favorites was probably the least trick-based of all - "It Was This Big". I really like bluffing games! I also liked the, I think, two different entries that had poker involved in the scoring mechanisms. And the one about stocking the lake. Those were the ones that caught my designybone. #2, 5, 13, and 14 got my points, though I certainly couldn't tell you good reasons at this point. I don't remember the details of a single entry other than my own! That's the trouble with abstract cards.