[GDS] NOVEMBER 2013 "The End is Near" - Critiques

This game was another one that just lost out on my top 3 by just a few points.

I felt that by using the cards, the ending of the game was not as unexpected as the contest rules required, which meant major loss off points in the limit section. However, a game about the economic crisis is bound to carry plenty of uncertainty and merging that with an auction mechanic meant more points on theme and mechanics.

I did have the same question as the previous poster, though. What is more important if players tie: luxury or debt? Since the whole game is about earning money, I would say debt, but that would clearly negate the effort of buying or collecting luxury items...

Limit: 5 points; Theme: 9 points; Mechanics: 7 points; Rules clarity: 7 points; Components and profit: 7 points; BONUS: 8 points; TOTAL: 43 out of 60.

Ok, so I think I gave this one my bronze but the more I think about it, it should have gotten my silver. This game's rules are simple, yet elegant. The way the movement is determined helps mitigate some luck (you get to multiply the result by the number of dice rolled AND the number of dice of the number chosen rolled).

I love the implementation of the competition criteria. They were implemented flawlessly. I also love the rule that if there is a tie, the person who drew the last bomb wins. This means even if you're in last, you still have a slim chance of winning. This game is right there with Pass the Pigs in seriousness and I believe is already a complete game, ready for testing I guess, but I think that with only a little testing this game would be ready for market.

Now for the bad...this game is light, and by light I mean super light, BUT this means that it only doesn't appeal as much to me as other games. I prefer meaty games and this game isn't meaty but that doesn't make it a bad game. In fact that's the charm of the game. So, my negative, is a positive! So, I don't really have anything bad to say about this game.

This game received my bronze medal, but now that I look closer, it should probably have gotten the silver...

I loved the simplicity of the game rules for this one and I also enjoyed the fact that it wasn't merely luck. You can, if you want to, calculate the chances of drawing a bomb ahead of time and take your sprint on the turn before the risk becomes too big.

I do think that you need to do some checks to make sure that the game is balanced enough, because you don't want people to draw piles of safe dice, throw sixes and reach the end of the wasteland in one uncontested sprint.

The only thing I didn't like is letting the person who drew the last bomb win in the case of a tie for first place. It just didn't seem to make any thematic sense. I'd let the tied players draw dice until one of them hit the 4th bomb...

Limit implementation: 10 points
Theme: 7 points
Mechanics: 7 points
Rule clarity: 10 points
Components and profit: 6 points
BONUS: 7

Total score: 47 out of 60!

Monkey Business 42
- Comprehensibility 4X4=16
- Playability 5X3=15
- Theme 3X2=06
- Marketability 5X1=5
Notes:
Like Spoons – except it makes more sense. Like Mancala except. . . well, maybe not. This takes silly to new highs. I like this game. The two ways to end the game is quite elegant. Designing a seemingly mindless game is not easy. Congrats!

Comprehensibility: My only question is whether the players all plunk bananas in the cups as fast as they can, or does the plunking go round the circle one at a time? Since dexterity seems to be a part of the game I assume plunking each person plunks as fast as he can.

Playability: This seems very easy to play but not appropriate in a wide variety of groups. It would fit in well any time one might play Pigmania. Somehow I assume beer is involved, but I’m not sure how.

Theme: Monkeys. Bananas.

Marketability: This is probably the most marketable game among those entered into this month’s contest. I think this game would sell very well in a college setting with no other alterations. It has everything needed to become a money making fad item.

Great as an ice breaker, stress reliever, party game, just an all around entertaining piece. This is probably more of a sophomoric sort of game, literally for college sophomores, and not the kind of game one plays with the parents.

With that in mind, maybe the black banana shaped pieces should be referred to as ‘Poo’. This would both up the ante for immature craziness and be more in keeping with actual primate behavior. Crazy idea here – make all the bananas out of candy. First you play with them, then you eat them. Especially fun and gross if you go with the ‘poo’ idea.

Banana chaos. Possible suitable as party game, but as it is, I think the replay-value is low. Or put it differently, it is not my type of game. The sudden end is well build into the game, and the players might have some idea who is ahead during the game.
For me (is it the age?) it seems almost impossible to remember which cup(s) have the most bananas. If you cannot do that, the game becomes random.

Although this game ended in the bottom regions using my scoring system, I don't think that makes it a bad game. It was just a little bit too chaotic for my liking. If two or more people shout stop simultaneously, I want a tie-breaker to decide who goes first. Also, if I empty the first cup into player 1's bag, is the next player allowed to do the same?

If so, that would significantly lower player 1's chance of drawing a rotten banana and his chance of winning the game, which, for me, is a gamebreaking idea. After all, they're supposed to say stop on a rotten banana, so none of those get passed around. Still, the limit of the competition was very well implemented.

The Last Castle seemed like an incomplete game. Placing pieces on your castle with the level of the rooms giving you points didn't seem special but I saw the rules as a basic foundation of the game. The criteria, I thought, was well implemented. The true shining quality of this game is the possibilities in it. I can see these different rooms unlocking abilities for the players. This opens up the possibility of expansions with different rooms that will expand play. This game is filled with potential and this ultimately was what gave it the gold.

This one ranked pretty high on my list. It was a mostly complete game which you could pretty much start to play immediately based on the rules. There were a few things I was confused about in the rules such as the card counts, levels, and scoring.

For example, what does the "(8)" mean in the following:

It also seemed that there may have been something missing from the game rules. Whether this was due to the word limit, the time limit, or just something that could have been added but wasn't I am not sure. But I am interested to see how the game develops if you continue to work on it.

Congratulations on the tie for Silver place.

P.S.> Monkey Business feedback:
I know that I typed up a feedback for Monkey Business, but I do not see it in this list. I probably hit preview without actual;y hitting save. Sorry. Well, it seems that most of my thoughts on that game were covered by other peoples reviews, so for now I will just leave it at that.

Great work everybody on all of the games, the feedback, and the organization and running of the competition.

Thank you for all the kind words! This challenge has inspired me to work more on this one.

True, due both to editing back for word count and keeping within the challenge’s restrictions. That, and not having figured things out yet.

That’s a good point. Right now there are just rooms, but I’d like to expand this to give players more interactive powers and strategic options. I’m thinking I can add Intrigues to the level cards, so that there are enough levels so no one gets stuck, but they don’t become annoyingly useless cards to draw late in the game.

I screwed up on an edit and removed an important phrase. The ‘8’ indicates the number servant’s stairwell cards in the deck. The ‘4 each’ and list of 4 room types indicate there are 16 room cards for rooms that can be accessed through the Servant’s Stairwell. Thank you for catching that.

I added the Mausoleum specifically to give the ending the sort of inevitable uncertainty called for, plus that little extra wobble in the end game. I’d like to thank Mindspike and his wife for inspiring it.

There is a story world behind this game, I’m aiming for the feel of a dysfunctional court on the eve of revolt. For this challenge I was struggling to keep the deck size closer to the standard 52 cards (only off by about 50 percent - sigh).

I’m not familiar with that game, thanks for pointing me towards it.

Again, thank you all for the comments.

I quite like the thematic bent to a standard building game and how it incorporates the random end game condition. I would have liked for one of these games to have an end even more like Bingo, where the random game end occurs because a single player has crossed some slightly-changing threshold to be the winner. In most of these entries, like The Last Castle, the game ends randomly like the context says and then afterwards points are added up to see who wins.

I saw I your comment that you had difficulty with the word count, which seems a common issue. The 500 words are very capable of fitting a description to a "complete" game, and it serves you best to think of it as an opportunity to reword for clarity rather than simply "cut" parts.

That said, there are parts here that could be cut, like the names for all the rooms at each level. Then again, I think it helped add a bit to the sense of theme enough to include one or two examples. The extra words can be used on explanation.

I hope this game gets a little development after the contest, because it's got a good sense of using theme and mechanics together.

I feel everyone who makes an effort to enter the competition deserves to get feedback, but if you get a lot more entries next month, putting them all into the same thread might become a bit too messy. Maybe you can simply encourage entrants to start their own threads after the scores have been announced, so I can focus on giving feedback to the people who really want it.

I'm happy to comment as long as I actually have to say something about an entry.

Critiques on Critiques
I’m not so hot on the idea of cutting back the number of critiques because there’s no good way to decide who does or does not get one. The designers of the high rated games want the critiques, the designers of the lower rated games need the critiques, and everyone involved learns by critiquing both games they liked most and games they liked less.

What do you think of running two or three threads of critiques a day instead of one?

I may whine about that limit a lot, but I absolutely agree with you. Given my druthers I’d hit 120,000 words and whine about not being allowed to write a trilogy (…probably one of those four book ‘trilogies’, too). The 500 word limit is an excellent learning process and needs to stay.

Thanks. I’m going to start a thread on this project. In theory I have a lot of extra free time this week. Practically speaking, there’s a lot of cleaning, cooking and entertaining to do.

Speaking of which - Happy holidays to all!

To be honest, I sent my votes before this game was even published. (my first GDS:-)
I read through the description of the game and thought it was pretty nice. It did´nt interest me that much, but the game seemed well-functioning and the description was well written. I thought of maybe changing my votes. I don ´t know why I did´nt do that, but I just never did. If I had done it, this game would at least get the same amount of points as my game did. and probably even more, cause I would probably give it silver or gold.
Because of this I would like to dedicate my "victory" to "the Last Castle" Congrats on a very good game.

The criteria was well built into the game. Not very original maybe, but it works well.
The game seems straight-forward, but I am not sure if there are interesting choices of which card to build? You have 5 cards in hand, and you play or discard one every round. it is 4 of each type of card, each player can play only one of them. Is it not possible for every player to kind of just build the "same" castle with the same kind of levels and rooms? Maybe I have misunderstood something. I also see some issues with the castle. If no player can build a level-card or room-card at a higher level after a chapel is build. What if a player gets "lucky" and draws and builds a chapel on level 1 early in the game?

As mentioned by others above, it would probably be great if each level and/or room gave some advantages besides 1 point per level/room. Maybe you also should score points out of the types of combinations you have?

I think the game has good potential, I would therefor probably given it silver or gold if i had bothered (sorry) to give new votes.
Congrats.