A Lasting Mark
A very interesting game. Is there anything that could stop the players banding together to wipe out the settlers? Maybe some militaristic backlash? I also thought it would be interesting if trading with the settlers promoted their expansion - so you might get a short-term benefit, but it could be worse for everyone in the end. Was it a typo to say that the majority group had to move on? Surely they’d drive everyone else out. Having to trade and face a common enemy, while trying to promote your own people seemed to fit well with the brief.

Metal and Honor
An interesting mechanic. I couldn’t quite imagine the cards, or how you could keep track of which cubes were ‘moved last’, but I just put that down to the word/image restrictions. I wasn’t sure what competitive strategies could be employed. It could be a very good cooperative game though.

I have to say I was really put off by the flavor text at the beginning of this entry. It wasn't merely that it appeared overtly racist but it was inconsistent and seemed to embrace the narrative cliches of American cinema.

I think the Vietnam War Era is an underutilized period of history and is ripe for innovative storytelling, but that wasn't what I found in this entry. Competing to stay alive during war time is an interesting concept, but I think there is a certain level of responsibility that goes into telling that story.

I really liked this game, and thus it got my silver.

Instead of writing my own thoughts about the game, I would like to address some comments from others. I don't understand why a game has to be historically correct just because it uses a historical setting. Sure the natives could not resist the Europeans, we all know that. That, in my opinion, does not make a game about natives successfully being able to work together a bad idea. Might it need a disclaimer? Maybe. But in that case, what about almost every movie set in a historical setting? It is just a game, after all.

That being said, I agree that a game that DID teach us something about history would be better than a game set in a historical setting that does not. But then again, would it be fun playing a game in which the goal is to resist as long as possible, knowing that it is just a matter of time before you are wiped from the board? I don't think a majority would vote "yes" on that.

Hi All,

Sorry I missed the convo yesterday. I agree with most of the comments about LM and MoH already said.

I think the system in MoH would be really interesting if re-themed to a fictional event/time. But the satirical aspect (and quest for glory) didn't appeal to me when placed in a real time period. This is perhaps a personal bugaboo, though, as I pretty much don't play war games set in real wars for this reason.

Lasting Mark sounded interesting mechanically, but the theme didn't appeal to me.

Apologies to MarkJindra, but I really disliked Schwarzwald Asylum. Not only was the theme a big turnoff, but I didn't understand why it would be competitive. Why don't the inmates work together?

That said, there are two things that I liked about it:
1 - the card grid board. I think this mechanic has potential, though could also be accidentally disturbed by a player, but that's easy to do.

2 - the potential in the theme -- the mad scientist experimenting on people? Gold. Those people trying to escape? Gold. Using real-world psychological illnesses as the challenges in this goofy setting? YEESH. I'd have been much better with it if a) it were a real game about dealing with mental illness that tried to simulate those effects, but it couldn't have the crazy theme then OR b) it were just silly by having the inmates not actually be crazy. But mixing the two made me cringe.

Mechanized: I like this game idea a lot. I think the group of mercenaries protecting the town but trying to get loot from the villains and from one another is perfect, and the all-or-nothing loss fits exactly. I'd be keen to play this if it were developed more.

Race for the Remedy
It looks like quite a compact, easy to pick-up game. The draw of the last three tiles might be the deciding factor, but there’s the potential for lots of tension. The theme matches the brief well, but the arrangement of the 'lab' is a bit abstract - a door next to a fire, next to a guard dog(?).

Looks like I got way behind on critiques over the weekend. I think most folks are dancing around the fact that they found some of these themes offensive. I'm sure they're trying to be polite. I will say it plainly where appropriate, since you need to know that before you try to market a game. An offensive theme is simply unnecessary baggage on a creative project, in my opinion.

We can debate all we want whether people should be offended, but as a developer trying to market an idea, it is important to know that a significant percentage of people will be offended. Those people won't buy your game.

Metal and Honor:

Mechanics: I was too offended by the theme to take the mechanics seriously.

The Show Must Go On:

Mechanics: Game was hard to follow, and strategies are unclear. However, scoring unused cards is a great twist. There is a social aspect that I'm never very good at, blind bidding, bluffing, etc., so I may not be a good audience for this one.

Theme: A cutthroat circus is an interesting twist. There is a lot of room for 'flavor'.

A Lasting Mark:

Mechanics: This design failed in theme, and so I did not evaluate the mechanics.

Theme: I was not particularly offended, but this is, essentially, a racial war. I doubt any game stores in the United states would carry it, especially with the raging controversy over the name of the Redskins football team. It's kinda nuts, to me, but it's the environment we live in.

Now if both cultures were fighting side-by-side against aliens or a zombie apocalypse using the technology of the time... that might work.

NOTE: The game "Five Tribes," which is one of my all-time favorites, was recently forced to rename the 'Slave' card to 'Fakir' in order to market it in the US. Even Days of Wonder can get tripped up by the politically correct craziness over here.

I had a busy weekend including an all day playtest of a game I'm developing.

Anyway I wanted to start with my entry and my thoughts about what I wrote.

Schwarzwald Asylum

I'm not sure that I was effectively able to convey how the theme of the competition. The patients of the asylum are meant to be criminally insane. They obviously can't defeat the evil doctor and get past the obstacles with-ought each other. But they also don't trust anyone and don't want anyone else to escape that knows they didn't die in the fire. You must all work to beat the game but the first person out must also be ready to seal the exit in some way so that no one else escapes alive.

As an elevator pitch I did not go into much detail especially on the gameplay. The basics would be obstacles and ways to cooperate to overcome them meanwile you would be collecting something that would assist you in the big backstab and your rush to victory. Of course it is possible for everyone to die in the fire and have no winner. But I didn't formulate any actual game mechanics. But rather generalized some basic concepts from other co-op games.

...

And now on to my thoughts about a few more of the entries.

Mechanized

I am not sure I would be all that into the drafting idea. But I like the idea of a game in the genre of Battletech, Robot Wars, and Pacific Rim. Just please no drifting ;)

Promotion

Sort of The Office meets Office Space? I liked the overall game ideas though. There was a designer who taught video game design who I heard once say that good game will let you do something that you couldn't do in real life. A game where you pilot a star ship is a far better idea than a game where you drive a lawn mower. This one hits a little too close to home as I have worked at places like this.

Race for the Remedy

I like the idea of this one and had it tied for the bronze but the list of components and the overall gameplay actually turned me off just enough to drop it from my top three. I think a name that wasn't so close to "Pandemic: Race for the Cure" might have kept this in my top three.

Great Job All!

=M=

Sorry for the delayed feedback!

Schwarzwald Asylum: I thought the story and atmosphere for this one was good, and the theme and buildup is excellent. I could see the mental disorders resulting in some interesting mechanics. It’s a bit difficult to imagine how the player cooperation mechanic works for this one, though – I would have liked to see more information about the press-your-luck system, and the in-game effects of the disorders.

Mechanized: Mercenaries are cool. Robot mercenaries are even cooler. I particularly like your mechanics for building mechs and keeping track of weapon cooldowns. I’d like to have seen more cooperative aspects other than just combining firepower though, especially if it’s just as easy for players to outright attack each other. That said, I’m not even a huge fan of mechs, and I’d totally play this one, just to shoot some awesome big guns and drive a giant robot.

Promotion: Nothing says cutthroat to me like group work in a corporate setting. The theme and presentation is a lot of fun, and I thought the competitive/co-op aspect was very well captured. My only complaint would be that the project work mechanic is more randomized than I would have personally cared for; you could have a bit more strategy and underhandedness with a publicly known target. If this was balanced out by adding a ‘pointing the finger’ phase when projects fail, in addition to ‘claiming credit,’ I think that would have sold it for me. Overall, I gave this my silver.

Race for the Remedy: I like the urgency of the theme in this one. The exploration mechanic is cool, and reminds me a bit of Betrayal at House on the Hill. I would have personally liked to see more about the types of cooperative interactions that could occur between players, or the events and challenges they would have to face together. As it stands, the gameplay seems lightweight and easy to learn, and the randomization of room tiles makes for good replay value.

The Tribe
The theme seemed to fit really well with the brief - it’s believable that the warriors would think that their role is the most important etc. I wasn’t sure about the cards that negatively affected groups to begin with, but the examples cleared up the intention. The fixed number of 4 players might make it less playable, and it would depend massively on the board design and areas. It got my Bronze Medal.

Escape Reality
As with the similar book/movie franchise the cooperative/competitive aspects fit well with the brief. Would the best strategy be to alternate between helping others and helping yourself so that both tracks are the same? If there were enough challenges to ensure that unless you helped the team then you’d die, then it could be a good system. The EP system seemed like it could add to the atmosphere - with more actions as you get closer to the end making it more frantic.

The Tribe

This one seemed interesting, although a bit like a dry euro, to me but I wasn't sure the "common enemy" bringing them together was present in this one. Still though I think there might be a decent worker placement engine in here based on the description of play.

Escape Reality

I can't stand reality television so it was hard for me to even read this one. The overall feel I got from the game mechanics description seemed pretty good but nothing stood out for me that made me want to know more about the game.

I struggled with that a bit as well. Originally, I had written a few Luck cards where either the richest player has to share the wealth (one time action), or where the poorest player gets a freebie.

Then I watched a Dice Tower webisode where last-player-freebies were discussed as one of the 'worst' game mechanics. That's just the opinion of a few folks, but I guess it would irritate a significant portion of players.

Their rationale was that a well-balanced game shouldn't need to be 'fixed' in such a crude manner.

I left the last-player-freebie in (just one), but removed the first-place share-the-wealth card. Sort of a compromise.

You were probably beginning to think that I didn’t like any of this month’s entries. But I did! This critique covers two of them.

Schwarzwald Asylum

This one got the Gold. MarkJindra, grats!

Theme

All I wrote was, “Good theme, lots of tension.” So the theme was a little soft. The antagonist is trying to prevent the patients from escaping in the middle of a fire. He is obviously evil. Not all games need to be heavy on theme, so I didn’t rate it any less for that. The best thing going for it is player ‘conditions’ that limit potential actions.

Mechanics

Pluses:

• Uses a press-your-luck dice system to maintain a sense of risk-taking and suspense.

• Avatars have disabilities. Awesome! I’ve heard of giving each player a unique bonus, but integrating mental disabilities with gameplay options is an imaginative and creative idea. For instance, with agoraphobia, the player would be nearly useless in a large room. Claustrophobia? Not much use in a stairwell. Bipolar? Your effectiveness might be determined at random at the beginning of each turn. This idea captured my imagination. Great work!

(I'm sure someone would be offended by making light of mental handicaps, but I used the name minion, which would probably be offensive, too. You can't please everybody.)

• Replayability is high, with only 1/3 of event cards in play.

Minuses:

• Multiple mechanics seem to be a good mix, but cooperation is critical in the endgame. If you must cooperate to kill the 'boss', then who wins?

• It appears that some players could be eliminated by isolation caused by the fire. In a two-player game, this would pretty much end the game by default. You can’t kill the evil doctor alone, so everyone dies.

Needs a little polishing, but I would like to play this game.

Gold! ......................................

Mechanized

Mechanized got my Bronze medal, and it was very close to silver. I have played a tower defense game before (Castle Panic!), and it lacked a sense of real tension. The ‘fun’ quotient was low, and the gameplay was simple matching. Frankly, I was a bit bored. I think Mechanized would add some of the tension back into this type of game with salvage, and the complexity of play would certainly keep me awake. ;-)

Theme

Very tower-defense-ish, video gamey, etc., but piqued my interest. I have never played a robot battle style board game, but it looks like fun. Unlike Castle Panic, I think players would get a sense of accomplishment by winning. I like the balance between competition and cooperation in this one, and I think it would be engaging to the end.

Mechanics

I like the draft mechanic. It may be a standard thing, but I have not seen it before. You are already deep into competitive strategy during the draft because you can influence what other players get. You might be forced to discard a great upgrade just to keep another player from getting it. The balance between co-op and cut-throat is well executed.

Downers: Number of players is not specified. Could you adapt this to two players? I know this doesn’t sound like a fair statement, but ‘accessibility’ is a factor in marketing and sales. Frankly, one of the factors in giving this a bronze instead of silver was because I don’t think I would be able to convince my wife to play. It’s just a little too hard-core wargaming for her.

Great work, ryu343!

The Tribe: Worker placement is one of my favorite types of games, and you’ve set up some interesting dependencies between each of the players with the group cards. I also like the balancing and differences between each of the tribes – I’m guessing the smaller groups have more high-risk/high-reward actions available to them? Everyone needing to collectively maintain a constant middle ground makes this a nicely complex balancing act that I would love to play.

Escape Reality: The theme here is great, and fits very well with this month’s requirement. I’m also a big fan of using dice as pawns, and the EP system seems very elegant and well thought out. The need to roll 3d6 for stats, and how they’re used for skill challenges here, seems unclear to me. With a reality TV theme, I was expecting to also see something a phase where players can vote each other out (or maybe to instead impose penalties if you didn’t want to eject people from the game), which would make the cooperative aspect more important. Your mechanics seem really solid, but more clarifying information and exploration of your theme would have really elevated this for me.

The game is balanced in such a way, that players are often forced to complete quests that they are not interested in reward-wise, least everybody looses, or some really nasty bad effect comes into play.

And since the actual reward tokens are kept face-down, it discourages the "I can't win, so i'll make everybody loose" gameplay, because you don't know who is actually winning at any given moment. I might have more reward tokens than you, but they can be all of different suits, while you have all the glory, for example. Both of us will play against the game first, to have a chance to win.

I have actually built a working prototype and it proved to be working the way I've described. At least in those few tests I made.

Google "korgoth of barbaria". You'll get the aesthetics I was aiming for and my naming choices will make more sense. The game is a parody on sword and sorcery genre.