After finishing the design of Field Hospital, I decided to design a game that was a stand-alone extension to Field Hospital. What that meant to me was that the game could be played by itself or, would interact with a simultaneous game of Field Hospital.
The initial concept was to have a game where players were different UN member countries that were all participating in a joint military operation. The concept was for players to be setting up Forward Operation Bases (FOBs), dealing with established enemies and then turn the tide as reinforcements and supplies began arriving to aid in the military advance. The UN would send anti-air, planes, tanks and additional troops as the game progressed and players had to divide amongst themselves the resources to deal with each threat appropriately. When units were destroyed, they would just be gone and players would only have the new units.
The way that the game would interact with Field Hospital would be that if both games were available, when units were destroyed in FOB, the patient count would go up in Field Hospital and as patients were healed, players would then have those troops available for re-deployment.
My first play tests did not go well. The players were not interested in the theme. I know it was due to most of the people I know who are willing to try early prototypes were fantasy fans. All my war gamer friends are very reluctant to try early prototypes. I changed the game to fantasy and huzzah!, the game was a regular on game nights. I no longer had a tie into Field Hospital but, the ability to get more play tests in compensated for that.
Next up: KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
