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Reversed Time

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 07:30
Soulmate
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Greetings all.

An idea came to my mind when I was watching the movie memento. In that movie, the story is about a person with memory issues, and the whole movie is played backwards (to mimic the point of view of the person). The time reversal aspect of the movie was very original, and I was wondering if it could be done in a boardgame too.

The game would be about the history of another world. The game starts at the end of time, when everything is destroyed. Players are trying to relive the past, by playing different cards that represent different events of the past. Cards like "Starved to death" will create an unit, instead of kill one, thereby reversing the event and creating the feeling of reversed time.

In the game, you would have to try "Build up" a legendary civilization, gaining as much points as possible, only to "Break it down" before the genesis takes place. All units and buildings still standing by then, will have the respective player lose points.

That is all I got for now.
Do you have any ideas or tips how to make this idea into a game?

Soulmate

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 08:47
#1
NativeTexan
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Interesting idea...

Great movie and I love the concept you are running with. Here's a thought...

- The world just ended due to WWIII / Giant Meteor / Ecological Disaster / Nuclear Winter / etc.
- The galaxy's "ecosystem" of gravity / gasses / waves is off-balance once Earth is destroyed
- You are a part of some alien race that is essentially the Green Peace of the Universe and you have been sent to fix the damage
- You and your fellow players must unwind the events that led to the destruction of the Earth in order to prevent the planet's demise
- Each player is leading a nation or continent and is responsible for 'fixing' the things that contributed to the downfall of humanity
- Objective (Option 1): It's a co-op and you have to fix everything (or a majority of things) before time has completely re-wound or you lose
- Objective (Option 2): It's a competitive game and every player starts with 100 VP and at the "end" of the game, you lose VPs for every event you were unable to resolve (thus still contributing in some way to the de-evolution of the planet toward its seemingly inevitable fate)

I'm certainly intrigued to see what direction you go with this concept.

Keep us in the loop!

Robert K Gabhart
Driftwood Games
www.driftwoodgames.com

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 13:18
#2
Geikamir
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Wow

Both of those ideas are amazing! You guys should team up or something. I think something really awesome is here.

NativeTexan, I'm particularly fond of option two.

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Fri, 10/21/2011 - 17:52
#3
Soulmate
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NativeTexan wrote:Great movie

NativeTexan wrote:
Great movie and I love the concept you are running with. Here's a thought...

- The world just ended due to WWIII / Giant Meteor / Ecological Disaster / Nuclear Winter / etc.
- The galaxy's "ecosystem" of gravity / gasses / waves is off-balance once Earth is destroyed
- You are a part of some alien race that is essentially the Green Peace of the Universe and you have been sent to fix the damage
- You and your fellow players must unwind the events that led to the destruction of the Earth in order to prevent the planet's demise
- Each player is leading a nation or continent and is responsible for 'fixing' the things that contributed to the downfall of humanity

That theme is good enough to write a whole book about it!

When I asked some people about a theme, someone came with the idea of Merlin. Merlin the wizard was to be told to live time backwards, so it'll fit the theme perfectly too.

NativeTexan wrote:

- Objective (Option 1): It's a co-op and you have to fix everything (or a majority of things) before time has completely re-wound or you lose

I had not thought about a co-op yet, but I really liked the idea of reliving the glory of your own empire, but I'll brainstorm a little bit about it :)

NativeTexan wrote:

- Objective (Option 2): It's a competitive game and every player starts with 100 VP and at the "end" of the game, you lose VPs for every event you were unable to resolve (thus still contributing in some way to the de-evolution of the planet toward its seemingly inevitable fate)

Something like that would be a very good idea, I'll think about it.

I post again when I have a more solid idea
Going to Essen tomorrow, it should do me good :)
Keep posting idea! It really wors out!

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Sat, 10/22/2011 - 15:45
#4
Soulmate
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New Approach

I slightly changed the mechanics and theme: The objective now is to go back in time, trying to safe the planet from it's ending by going reliving the past.

In the first part of the game, you have a hand of three cards, playing one of them each turn and drawing another one, putting the played cards on a face-down pile in front of you (going back in time).
This will be done until you run out of cards, after whic you will play your cards from the top of your face-down pile (reliving the past). This time the cards will have reversed effects.

This way, you will basicly have the same cards to play, only you can play them with other targets ("make a unit // kill a unit" would not neccesarely be the same unit).
Then include some cards that say "the next card you play won't have any effect // the next card you play won't have any effect" to really change things.

Still working on the idea though
Any concepts too complicated?

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Sun, 10/23/2011 - 02:03
#5
NativeTexan
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Tell us more

I'm not quite sure that I understand clearly what the shift in mechanics / theme is aiming for exactly. I think, if I understand you correctly, that you are unwinding time one event / card at a time. Then once you have completed that, you have to play it out in reverse order (or really the *correct* chronological order) and attempt to avoid the planet's demise once you play it out in chronological order. Did I get that right?

My additional questions are as follows:

- What's the story arc?
- What are you manipulating in the game? Events? People? Places? Things? In other words, what are the cards you play going to impact?
- What are the victory conditions?
- What are the core strategies and/or styles of play?

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Sun, 10/23/2011 - 06:21
#6
Soulmate
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More

NativeTexan wrote:
I'm not quite sure that I understand clearly what the shift in mechanics / theme is aiming for exactly. I think, if I understand you correctly, that you are unwinding time one event / card at a time. Then once you have completed that, you have to play it out in reverse order (or really the *correct* chronological order) and attempt to avoid the planet's demise once you play it out in chronological order. Did I get that right?

That's the basic idea, yes.

NativeTexan wrote:
My additional questions are as follows:

- What's the story arc?
- What are you manipulating in the game? Events? People? Places? Things? In other words, what are the cards you play going to impact?
- What are the victory conditions?
- What are the core strategies and/or styles of play?

-I have two stories in mind:
(1) Your idea: Planet Earth has been destroy somhow (by human influence), and the aliens, trying to protect the balance in the universe, will travel back in time to undo this (could be done with an Earth colony in space as well).
(2) : in an another dimension, a few wizards look upon the destoryed world left behind by the humans. After some discussion, they decide to travel back in time to undo this event and make the medieval factions flourish once more!

-Events, and these will be events like:
(Reversed time // Normal time)
"Heroic Death": Create an unit // Destroy an unit
"Swallowed by Sea": Create an island // Destroy an island without units on it
"Timely Interference": Your next Action card won't have effect // Your next Action card won't have effect
"Gathering": Move all units from one island to other islands // Move one unit from each island to one island
"Taken by Nature": Create a building // Destroy a building
"Field of Battle": Create two units next to a unit of another color // Destroy two unit of two colors on one island
"New Life": Destroy an unit // Create an unit
Events can only target your own buildings and units, unless said otherwise. If a card effect can not take place, it won't (Like with "Swallowed by Sea"). Somtimes the second ability won't have a reversed first ability: The idea is you helped the event take another turn ("Field of Battle").

-The victory condition is to have saved your faction most effectively (this contradicts the alien story theme). This is done by looking at your victory points when all action cards are played. I have yet to make the victory points for each aspect of the game.

-The core strategy is to have the most effective style of play, making sure you will prevent bad things happening to your empire, knowing when they might. Playtest have to show how other strategies devellop, so I can't say much more about that now.

I'm going to run my first playtests today, as well as trying to fit in natural disasters or technologies (a reversed technology tree!). I'll post again as soon as results are clear
If you have any questions or idea, please post them. They helped my really good this far,

Soulmate

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Sun, 10/23/2011 - 07:02
#7
SLiV
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Sounds great!

This sounds like a great idea! I really like the bizarre idea of killing units by letting them be born.

Though I'm not quite sure I understand the Timely Interference card. The next card doesn't have an effect, but this card itself doesn't either. So that leaves you with two useless rounds. Why bother useing either of the cards?

And if you reverse the Timely Interference, the previous card will take effect, right? So a different card is affected by the TI, depending on which way you go through time.

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Sun, 10/23/2011 - 17:09
#8
Soulmate
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First Playtests

SLiV wrote:
Though I'm not quite sure I understand the Timely Interference card. The next card doesn't have an effect, but this card itself doesn't either. So that leaves you with two useless rounds. Why bother useing either of the cards?

Yes, I found it out myself too, so I added giving money to you as addition to skipping your next card. And remember that if you skipped a bad event (like sacrificing an unit), you will gain form it (it's like gaining a unit then), so you will have only one of your turns lost.

I ran my first playtest with myself (as three players), and it turned out that in the end, one player was eliminated, one player gained one unit and another one gained three units (the obvious winner here!). It seemed the events were too much "alike", setting the board back to it's starting position.
So I need to figure out a way to have a player gain something when going in revesed time, and gain when going in normal time.

Any Ideas?

Soulmate

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Sun, 10/23/2011 - 23:16
#9
NativeTexan
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Keeping the playback dynamic

There are several ways that you could have the playback in 'normal' forward time play differently than just returning the board to the way it was originally.

- Player choose what event to apply a card against (which will not necessarily be the same unit/building that you focused the event on as before)
- Certain cards have an impact on other players at the table when playing forward (thus creating issues for the other players to need to deal with). Moves my units from x to y and moves 1 unit of each player to an undesirable location.
- Actions could have compounding effects or nullifying effects if more than one player has the same card (or some category of card) appear at the same time.
- During forward motion you could introduce a notion of new events being introduced as a result of the changes that players have created in the timeline. So there would be a separate set of event cards that you draw from once every round or once every three rounds or any time a particular card appears.

Good stuff!

Robert K Gabhart
Driftwood Games
www.driftwoodgames.com

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Mon, 10/24/2011 - 14:14
#10
pelle
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I have in my pile of future

I have in my pile of future designs an after-the-fact wargame. Players, probably all on the same side, try to shift blame to make it look like the others did worse, to go to history as the one competent general in a badly fought war. It is about history more than the war itself and cards played can undo events, showing "what really happened" in various ways. But rather than backwards time it would be more like forward but with some undo-function. More details some other time.

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Mon, 11/07/2011 - 09:08
#11
sounde
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I need to see Memento (I've known this for a while) :P

Soulmate wrote:
SLiV wrote:
Though I'm not quite sure I understand the Timely Interference card. The next card doesn't have an effect, but this card itself doesn't either. So that leaves you with two useless rounds. Why bother useing either of the cards?

Yes, I found it out myself too, so I added giving money to you as addition to skipping your next card. And remember that if you skipped a bad event (like sacrificing an unit), you will gain form it (it's like gaining a unit then), so you will have only one of your turns lost.

A card like Timely Interference makes perfect sense to me. Adding some sort of resource boost (how is $ used? could this just be the negation and some extra card draw?) is not a bad way to make it balance out. I'd probably call that card something else and move the idea of "Timely Intervention/Interference" over to another card -- something that you somehow pay for (in useless rounds?) in Reverse Time (RT) but which really shines in the unfolding of Normal Time...

HOW ABOUT...

"A QUIET NIGHT" or "THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM": Your next Action card won't have effect // Your next Action card won't have effect
and separately...
"Timely Interference":
(something costly) // You may introduce a new card (from your hand) into your timeline
or Your opponent randomly chooses your next Action Card // Draw three cards, play one into your timeline and discard the others
...or combinations/variations thereof.
Something that really can change the timeline.

I could really imagine getting into and helping you with this one.
I'd like to hear more.
Perhaps you want to share your materials and set up some time to chat.

Either way -- keep it up.
Seth

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Mon, 11/07/2011 - 09:55
#12
NativeTexan
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Interesting Choices

When I was introduced into this hobby of euro / designer / boutique games, I was told: "It's all about playing unique games with lots of social interaction and interesting choices." That has stuck with me ever since and is a guiding design principle for me. In this case, I would see doing something along the lines of having something be very painful / expensive in reverse time, it should then reward you richly in normal time. Correspondingly, if something is easy / powerful in reverse time, you should have some sort of penalty or cost or drawback in normal time. It could provide for some really interesting choices.

Finally, no matter how well planned things are, you really could benefit from some Space Alert type of mechanics that cause gaps in the timeline and/or cause delays in the timing of events.

I'm also available to help work on the game if you are so inclined.

All the best!

RK Gabhart
Driftwood Games
www.driftwoodgames.com

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Mon, 11/07/2011 - 18:49
#13
Soulmate
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Ideas

I'm sorry I've not been updating recently, but I was quite busy the last few weeks, and I wasn't able to do very much on prototyping or playtesting (although some ideas popped up in my mind). I will be testing and improving it very soon.

My latest design (which has not been playtested properly), was played around three 'decks' of cards:
1) Event cards: You will have three of these in your hand, playing one each turn, discarding the rest and drawing three new ones. These cards will have slightly benefitial effects that can become very appealing when played well. These cards will be put in a pile and will be reversed later.
2) Disaster card: Every turn, one of these cards will turn face-up (ten in total), and every player must use it's effect. These cards will have huge effects, but only when played with the right Event cards ("double the amount of units you will gain this turn // double the amount of units you will kill this turn"). These cards will be put in a pile and will be reversed when all ten are played.
3) Mercenary cards: Five of these will lay face-up next to eachother, all with a different cost (in money) and effect. You may buy these once in a turn, and they will have a slightly benefitial effect, but unlike the other cards, do not have to be played in reversed order later (for you can hire other mercenaries when time goes forward). Most effects will be like ("Make a Unit // Kill a Unit").

The player with the most islands under his/her control wins the game.

I appreciate all help you guys would like to offer me, and would like to make time to have a personal conversation about any game ideas you could offer.

All Ideas and Suggestions are welcome!

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Tue, 11/08/2011 - 06:58
#14
sounde
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area control -- but starting from what?

Wow. That somehow changed in my head a lot right there...

There is actually one very basic question that should have been asked already. Desired number of players? 2-X?

I think we need to establish some useful (if flavorless) common vocab.
The game effectively goes from Endpoint(EP) (to Startpoint (SP)) to EP.
We've got Reverse Time (RT) and Forward Time (FT).
(I keep thinking of them as The Unraveling and The Unfolding but that's maybe too ephemeral/poetic)

SETUP
If the goal is area control --- tribal dominance --- than what is the initial setup for EP?
If it is balanced between the players, is it one of equilibrium? Sounds like PEACE?
Seems a bit nasty to go back in time and break that up.
(POST NOTE: I forgot your disappearing/sinking islands idea. That was the justification for rewinding. Well... I wrote all this, so you might as well see it.)

This brings in a new structural idea and an accompanying theme.
Could the initial EP be one where a foreign/invading force has taken control of this group of islands.
Some of your own people remain, but not enough to put up any more resistance.

GAMEPLAY

RT
You play backwards until a certain point.
Possibly --> Play until the threat (first/last) of these invaders shows up/is gone.
If a certain number disappear automatically each turn (+/- whatever you might do to them) then that gives you a MAX number of RT rounds to gather your resources/make repairs.

FT
You play back out with the dual goal of keeping X amount of these invaders out and winding up with majority control of the archipelago. The Disaster deck then maybe ends up being an Invader deck or a mixed Disaster/Invader deck (or both separate). Makes it a semi-cooperative/competitive blend.

I had been thinking pretty heavily sci-fi (playing with time control pushed me that way), but the invaded islands idea pushes me in a more historical direction --- Island tribes defending their homes against colonial (British/Spanish) invaders. Could always work in some mystic-hoodoo/old-gods/tribal-magic thing if you wanted to explain the time twisting.

I can be chatted with a number of different ways.
I am sending you a PM with my various chat protocols.

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