New Game Review

Depending on what type of game you have you may find someone to play test it.

Tell us more: Theme, play length, player range, rules length, age group, etc…

Hi Gerry,

I think it depends on what your goal is. Would you like to see the game published some day? If so, you might post a link to the rules and some people here might have a look at it and tell you whether it would be suitable for production, as well as add other comments.

Many good games are designed that just aren't publishable due to the high price of production. You have quite a few components. It won't be cheap to produce.

Unfortunately I’m primarily a designer and leave the part pricing up to my publishers.

I have in the past gotten quotes on games to see if I could afford to self publish them. The last one included 20x20 board, 4 pawns, 1 die, deck of 54 cards, rules and box. At 5,000 pieces, the smallest run I could get a decent price on it was about $5 each not including cost for proofs, delivery, art etc… This makes the target SRP around $30. Unless the publisher is going to go with a large print run to bring the price per unit down a game with considerably more parts will need to be priced high.

This doesn’t mean you can’t find a publisher, it just means you’ll need one that can afford to invest heavily in producing it and in turn make money.

A board, a few decks of cards, a few pawns and dice is a lot of components?

I really like the theme of the game... especially if it blends trading of antique cars for profit with the costs and challenges of repair. Perhaps players have choices in the game to invest in cars, repair services or buying their own tools and fixing things themselves using time (a limited resource)?

But by an chance are you using the age-old roll-and-move mechanic? Where a player rolls the dice, moves a pawn that many spaces along a track, then receives the "pitfall" or "benefit" associated with that space? I gather from your brief description that this may be the case. If so, then I strongly advocate eradicating this mechanic from the game. It's been absolutely worn out, and its presence will make your game look like many thousands of other uninspired, failed designs. There are many other more interesting and thematically appropriate ways of handling game length and random events.

There are many, many exciting game mechanics out there beyond the much-dreaded "roll and move." You can get a listing of general types here. Click on each one to see examples of games that use that particular mechanic.

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browser.php?itemtype=game&sortby=mechanic

However, the most successful and fun games not only use one -- or, more often, several -- of these mechanic types, they add a "twist," often thematically-based.

For instance, one of my favorite mechanics is in the game Pandemic, which is a co-operative game where players fight diseases appearing in cities around the globe. Each turn, players draw from a deck of cards (one card for each city on the board), and infect that city. However, sometimes there's an "epidemic" -- when that happens, the players shuffle the discard pile and place it ON TOP of the old deck before drawing. In this way, the same few cities see diseases pop up again and again, sometimes with disastrous results. This twist on the usual "draw-cards-perform-action" routine is what elevates Pandemic into a truly fun game, rather than an exercise in running around the globe putting out fires; it adds tension because you know which cities will come up but not when, and sometimes you can't get to a city before it's drawn again, and then Bad Things Happen. The game becomes about risk management and effective teamwork, rather than luck of the draw and immediate reaction.

In any case, you're the expert here: what mechanics could you put into a game that mirror the actual work of mechanics and car collectors? Do they search a newspaper classifieds for listings? Do they have a network? Do certain dealers get reputations based on the quality of their previous sales? Do some cars go in and out of style with the passing of years? What factors in a particular car make it worth owning, junking, selling, or displaying? Are there regular events where collectors can show off their cars?

All of these can be simulated with much more immersive mechanics than "advance a pawn on the board, draw a card, do what the card says."

Gmcsph,

don't fix it if it isn't broken.

There is a gerneral feeling of contempt toward "roll and move" games by some of the designers who post to this forum. Others will tell you it is ok to use the mechanic if the game calls for it.

The archive area is a good place to start when looking for ideas.

is that a rant?

I am simply saying that Gmcsmp should go with what suits him and do his home work - as for hasbro, irrelevant. If some one wants to use roll a dice it should be ok irrespective of whether they are planning the mass market approach or not.

Pehaps I should mention that I don't design games so the dice debate is not my intention.

shazzaz,

It was rant(ish) I confess, but I certainly didn't mean to direct it at you, so I'm sorry if it seemed that way. I meant to direct it at the state of the North American boardgame market and Hasbro in particular, both of which bother me on an almost daily basis.

-schmanthony

Where to begin?

First of all, I don't think a few decks of cards, some dice, pawns and a board is a ton of components. Certainly not prohibitive to getting it published. If it is a fun game, a publisher will find a way to produce it for a decent price.

Secondly, having a roll-and-move mechanic as your game's core mechanic may make it more difficult to get it published in today's hobby market. The reason for this is that such a mechanic is not innovative - there are literally hundreds of games with a similar mechanic. Also, a roll-and-move mechanic introduces a certain kind of randomness to the game that most players these days don't like. At the same time a roll-and-move mechanic removes the chance for interesting decisions. In other words, what a player can and can't do heavily depends on the roll of the dice, not on decisions people make.

In today's boardgame hobby market publishers are looking for games with innovative mechanics and a good mix of randomness and player's choice, depending on the type of game. A traditional roll-and-move mechanic simply does not fit into that mold.

I asked in my first post whether you wanted to publish this game. The reason why I asked this is because if you want to publish the game it has to fit into the mold of what publishers want. In your case this means taking a few steps back and perhaps redesigning some core functionality of your game. This may take a lot of time and work. Remember that there's nothing wrong with having a game that you enjoy playing with your friends and family. This is an achievement in itself.

Instead of bidding (since your game is more than likely cash-intensive anyway what with repairs and the like) you could have the player with the least cards on the table pick a drawn card first, and then on to the player with the most cards on the table.

This somewhat reflects the method Power Grid (by Friedman Friese) reigns in the leader by forcing them to take their actions later.

Cards on the table would clearly be the cars that the players have in hand and fixed up, ready for sale or trade. The player with more cars would clearly have more bad happen to him as with more vehicles, there are simply more parts to get broken!

As an aside, you might want to go to your local game store and pick up a copy of Modern Art by Reiner Knizia. This is an auction and bidding game par excellence, and would probably help you with the bidding and trading part of your game.

By all means: if a mechanic in your game can be cut out or simplified, do it... so long as it retains that theme. This "optimization" process is quite a brain burning experience, and I really enjoy the challenge it poses. You can go through each part of the game and say "Do I need this? Does it fit with the theme of the game? How can I make it simpler and more thematic?"

Good luck!

I think, with its theme, that this game could easily target a hobbyist market *and* a market of car guys that could be persuaded into playing a game about their favorite pasttime.

Gmcsph, In your last description of the game, you mentioned something else that concerned me - the thing about "staying alive" for "another lap." This suggests that player elimination is possible. If this is the case, you may want to think about getting rid of that. It's certainly no fun to be out of a game while everyone else gets to keep playing it, and most modern games seek to "eliminate player elimination."

There are many ways of doing this. Probably the simplest way is to end the game when a player is eliminated.