Flywheel: Inertial Game Design

This is Chris’ game that we playtested on Tuesday.

Overview

We only tested the basic functionality of the game so a full review of it cannot be made. What we did test was the basic acquisition, moral influence, and movement of the characters. The game consists of a board with buildings and streets. In each building, there are characters that have three moral traits. These traits are one of seven which are either in the good or evil state. The object of the game is to change the characters so that more of them are matching your hidden alignment.

Critique

We were given two actions each turn. These actions could be used to move one space, recruit a character, or turn a character. That is fairly simple, but the real problem for me was the board evaluation. With those actions, you must first see what is possible for you to do. You have to look at the traits on your characters, the traits on the buildings, the traits of those who you want to turn, the good/evil alignment for those traits, and to see if anybody else owns those characters. There is a lot of looking around. Once you enumerate all of those possibilities, you must come up with some heuristic to determine your move. Right now, the game has these mini-goals: don’t leave your people in the street, turn people to your alignment, and recruit. If you can do those things on your turn, then you’re in good shape.

Right now, there is not a lot of bang for the buck. Either lower the buck (complexity), or increase the bang (interesting choices). That is just my initial impression of it based on the incomplete game.

I do have some ideas to reduce complexity without totally stripping the game down to nothing. Mark Kreitler (who may be rejoining us in a few months) once told me that you shouldn’t force complex realistic mechanics in your game if you can get away with just the essence of it. Right now, your game has a very literal translation of moral converting. Characters have multiple vices and virtues, just like real life. Characters with a bad trait can convert another one, just like real life. Like-traited characters can be recruited (made friends with), just like real life. My idea is that the game retains the good/evil conversions, but maybe not with the movement, “owned” character, or tons of traits. An example of this idea can be found in games like Othello where you convert based on location to opposite pieces. That is a very basic example, but the point it that the goals you want to achieve with this theme can be approached in a different manner.

As it stands right now, you have a lot of challenges ahead, and I’m glad you decided to proceed in steps to test out the viability of different aspects of your game. It’s good to have a strong framework to build the rest of your game on.

This is a game that Marc brought that broke new barriers in game design… or something.

Overview

This is a card game with two decks. One deck is full of tea party treats which have points on them. Points are bad. The other deck is full of action cards, like serve a treat from the row of three face-up treat cards, or “hop” to switch places with another player. On your turn you can play a card and either draw a card or sip your tea (remove a tea token from your supply of four). The game ends when the action deck is depleted or one player is finished with their tea.

That sounds simple enough, right? Well, imagine doing this “in character.” We’re talking fluffy bunnies here. Also, politeness is a rule in this game. When a player serves you a point-filled treat, you must gracefully accept like a college hazing. If you fail to be polite or forget to refill the treat tray, another player can force another treat onto your plate.

This game was so hilarious and we all had a great time playing. No doubt Marc will post his video soon.

Critique

The game itself is pretty good. I like the fact that you have to “push” the treats on other rather than playing them from hand. That prevents players from getting really powerful hands with high point treats. The trading, hopping, and frolicking all work fairly well, too.

The tea drinking mechanic was neat, but it seems like we have too much tea. None of the players were able to finish off their tea. Also, the benefit of drinking the tea is minimal. You would only drink it to try to end the game, but that is a difficult task that will take many turns. On top of that, you skip drawing a card. I think it needs to be tweaked a bit, but I do like the essence of what it is trying to do.

I wonder about the target audience for this game. You mentioned that this was for kids and old British ladies. Is it also intended for us gamers to play? If so, I wonder if Pretty Pretty Princess or similar games would have the same humorous effect.

In the end, you challenged my understanding of incorporating humor in games. Good Job!

This is one of Marc’s games we playtested on Tuesday night.

Overview

This game is a card game with a deck full of rocket components like boosters, fins, and cones. The object of the game is to assemble various sizes of rockets to launch various sizes of astronauts. The astronauts include a chicken, a dog, a cow, a monkey, and a human. To collect the rocket parts, a blind auction is performed on two pieces at a time. The high bid gets his choice. The low bid gets second choice. Ties are broken with another bid.

To gain more money, you can sell of unwanted components, which all have a black market value on them.

To launch your rocket, you must perform a die roll for each component in it to see if it burst into flames on take off. Each component has different modifiers. If you succeed in your launch, you score points for your astronaut.

Critique

First off, I think this is a very nice framework for a game. It is simple and quick to pick up. People like building things, and using cards to build rockets is a great idea that works perfectly. Launching random animals is another plus.

I think the auction system needs some tweaking. While the bid high/low mechanic may work great with two players, it didn’t work very well with more than two. Maybe the idea can be expanded upon. Possibly have one card for each player. Bidding will determine the pick order of the pieces. There are a ton of different styles of auction mechanics out there, but I still think that you can find a new one that will be interesting and still work for this game.

Failure to launch is another problem. The punishment doesn’t fit the crime: All pieces of your rocket are discarded because you rolled low. Now matter how good you bid, you can’t help rolling a 1. Also, you get no credit whatsoever for even trying to launch. You go back to square one, only with less money. One way to fix this is to lessen the blow: Give the players some compensation money for each card discarded. Another way to fix this is to localize the damage: Only the failed component is discarded. One thought I just had is to give players experience for trying: Each time you fail a launch, you get an experience card that adds +1 to all your rolls on your next launch. This will give players with good bidding skills a way to overcome their bad luck.

Some other suggestions I heard thrown out:

• Put the quantity of each component on the card itself, similar to Bohnanza.
• Make the animals into cards. Why stop at just five animals?
• Add other income opportunities. Right now a player with no money or parts is virtually screwed.
• The bonus cards should be able to be added after the roll.

Overall, this is a good start, and I look forward to seeing any tweaks made.

The group met up at Chris’s place for playtesting and whatnot. We sat down for a couple run-throughs of some mechanics for a board game that Chris has under development entitled “Vices and Virtues”, and a bidding/card game of Marc’s tentatively called “RocketYard”, in which the players take the roles of fictional third-world countries trying to buy and assemble rocketship parts in order to send various animals into space. It’s a blast. Ho!

We also tested Mischa’s new proto-boardgame, “Take The Money And Run”, which uses two kinds of currency to achieve some neat effects. I’m looking forward to seeing how that one develops. Ian had used his printing and laminating-fu to produce a playable Wiz-War, which is awesome, but before we sat down to relax with that, I sprung another card game on the unsuspecting boys – Fluffy Bunny Tea Party. It’s exactly what it sounds like, and it’s hilarious.

Many good things will come of this.