[GDS] APRIL 2014 "Fool me once..." Critiques thread

My gold medal went to agents and agitators and was based on a lot of potential that I see in the game rather than the game in it's current state. It was the most appealing first draft of a game of all the options for me.

Pros
* I like the asymmetric nature of the game; it fits the theme well and the roles made good sense.
* I liked the use of area with 3 attributes to be revealed by the agitator in an order of their choosing. The numbers of each type felt like they could be changed to handicap one of the players in a more advanced variant pretty easily.
* The choice of how many districts to reveal determining how likely the agitation was to succeed was nice; when to switch from the aggressive 3 dice version to the more conservative 2 dice, but more hidden information would be an interesting one in the game.

Parts to be polished
* I couldn't tell what the raid accomplished exactly. I assumed that it was a way to quell rebellions that had already and wasn't an auto-success, but maybe I misunderstood their purpose.
* The game is probably too long. Getting all 18 districts into revolt would take quite a while given that the revolts only happen on the roll of a 6.
* The end game gets pretty restrictive as it stand for the agitator. This relates to the last point. If there's only one district left that hasn't revolted yet the agents player knows exactly where the agitator would like to go and that they might need to go there multiple times for that win condition as it's stated.
* I do worry about balance in a couple ways (numbers of pieces of each type, difficulty of events happening, and so forth,) but playtesting could take care of that.

Some sort of effect where districts in revolt could spread their status to neighboring districts without the help of agents might be nice. Or maybe the target numbers for the districts being effected by the number of nearby or similar districts already in revolt (if one slum is revolting the others might be more likely to revolt as well) might add a fair amount to the game.

On the whole I liked the theme a lot and I think that there's a good chance that the implementation could be tweaked/overhauled to make a great game. It hooked me as a strong bluffing, asymmetric area control type game.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

My gold went to Countdown DC. It seemed like an interesting Statego variant, with great asymmetrical gameplay. Movement and mechanics were clear and simple. Great implementation of bluffing / misdirection.

The presented scenario seemed interesting enough, with lots of options for different strategies. I could also see the base game supporting different scenarios (such as save / assassinate the VIP, escort missions), with different pieces, such as police dogs (can detect but not stop bombers), shooters (can kill VIP / police from a few squares away), and perhaps allowing players to choose their team composition to some degree.

While I liked many of the entries in this showdown, and I am sorry but my work schedule this month made it really difficult to enter so I was not able to do so.

The criteria was a game of bluffing and misdirection for two players. Of all the entries that fit the bill, I think this one hit the nail on the head.

The concept was clear. Bluffing and misdirection were the primary mechanics and they inter-meshed well with the theme and the game just sounded like fun and playable the way it was written. Of the games that met the criteria, this one to me was the best and is completely dealing with bluffing and misdirection.

Only three or four of them really did rise to the challenge, the others while sounding like good concepts just did not make my cut because they did not adhere their mechanics to the challenge.

Wow, that's amazing! This just makes me so proud and happy. ^_^
Thanks everyone for your confidence in my design, I definitely didn't think I was going to win on my first entry!

I'm on holiday at the moment, so I xon't have internet access every day and I've not got my notes with me, but I'll write up as many critiques as I can.

Thank you again everyone, I'm over the moon! :)

It's Sunday already here (Happy Easter!) so here's my critiques for my numbers 1 and 2.

Fight or Fleece

I like the theme, and it feels like a 2-player design. (To me, at least half of the designs -- including my own! -- feel like they might be better with 3+ players.) I like how this game makes you bluff about your own random hand, and how the point system is intergrated in the player's decks which also prevents a runaway leader. The automatic raising of the stakes (as players's hand grow larger) is another nice touch.

My only worry is that because the Shepherd provides a 'perfect defense', some hands might go on and on forever with neither player willing to attack. Otherwise, very neat mechanics and appealing theme.

Yes, Peas!

As someone who eats more quinoa than chicken nuggets, the "veggie is bad" theme put me off a little bit. But the entry is well and thematically written, and the resulting bluffing and double-bluffing gameplay is clear. The game may be a little repetitive; otherwise it's hard for me to find fault with this concept.

Good title and a great game. I think it’s a theme that everyone can relate to – whether by personal experience or the advertisement battle of tasty vs health. I think this game is simple enough to pick up right away, but the game play is much more complex and relies on a lot of misdirection and bluffing. This fits in well with the GDS. I just liked this game and would like to give it a go. Kudos.

While this theme does not interest me, I am sure that it has a place in modern society.
Basically, this game is an auction / wits game where you are trying to get your opponent to overpay for an item. That part of the game is nothing new, but I like the twist of peeking through the window and adding things to the crowd. You could throw in a red herring to trap your opponent. In a lot of ways this is the game “Liar’s Dice”.
While not original in mechanics, I felt like this reused themin an interesting enough way to win bronze?

I really thought the half truth, set the price idea was very creative and that's what made it stand out for me. I think it would force some interesting and difficult decisions. I think you might need a different term other than dealers and something more thematic to differentiate them. That might help develop the theme a bit, but nice job.

The theme really stuck out in this game and it strikes me as one which would be fun to play with kids (or made into a family game by adding extra players).
The rules I found a little confusing, but the idea of guessing/bluffing over a partially known "stew pot" of ingredients was appealing enough wedding of theme and mechanic to get my vote.

This entry appealed to me because it used not only hidden information (as did most entries) but also that classic Cheat style choice of whether to risk calling of the other player a liar. This felt particularly well matched to the conniving world of local politics depicted. The rules explanation was also excellently interwoven with the theme.

I was a bit unclear as to what the reason was for enabling players to attempt a win at 8 votes which complicates the game a little. Is this related to theme somehow (as an Australian I am ignorant of council rules in Toronto), is it to level the game if one player is falling behind, or is it to add a further bluffing element to the end game? Its not that there is an obvious problem with this, its just not immediately clear why this very specific win condition has been included.

I added the appeal to the winning conditions, because I wanted to give an additional element to consider when selecting which card to play. This way you can't just play your best card every time.

My Silver Medal winner was Dragon's Dojo. I like the mechanic of moving both the actual player and the decoy around the board. Once again, I'm giving this credit for the game that it could become rather than the draft that was turned in.

I like the fact that there are obvious targets spread out around the board that you want to go for (the relics, which increase your movement options,) but should also have some desire to keep your decoy and your ninja close together so that if you're attacked you'll have a chance to retaliate.

The description as written didn't seem have any way to spawn a new decoy if one was attacked, but I assumed that would be part of the mechanics in a finished game. I think that there could a fair amount added with the relics beyond just extra moves (an extra decoy springs to mind, but powers in general could work well in this sort of game.)

This game and my bronze medal winner were both bluffing via hidden movement; they remind me of an old lord of the rings game where you spawned rumors which would move around the board and were just a distraction to the other player. Sadly I don't remember what the name of that game was.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

The one game that I didn't award a medal to, but which I never eliminated from contention was Yes, Peas! It was easily the game with the most flavor (if you'll pardon another pun,) and it looked very charming. The big reason that I didn't get it into the medal categories was that it felt a little too light for my tastes and it looked like there was a pretty good chance that it made sense to consistently try to get your own recipes made and eat them and not focus so much on the other player. I think that it could also be expanded to more players more than most of the other games that were submitted, though that's neither here nor there as far as my rating went.

For anyone interested, my game was Rakshasa (which I apparently misspelled the title of when submitting.) My thanks to the two who voted for it for their thoughts! I agree with some of the criticisms shared and have overhauled it a bit to clarify some points and make the scoring more interesting and thematic along the lines suggested. I'm working with an artist that I know to get some cards designed and plan to share it in the forums more generally in a bit should anyone else want to comment. The 500 word limit for the rules was tough and I look forward to submitting more games in the future to practice the concision that it requires.

-Zorblag R`Lyeh

Thanks for the detailed feedback Zorblag, it has prompted a bunch of ideas for further refining and developing the game. The difficult choices facing pro-democracy activists in repressive states is something I am keen to continue exploring with this game concept. In response to your feedback:
* Raid was intended to give the Imperial player the choice of just guessing the location of the agitator based on available Clues without "spending" a Spy (which are single use) to reveal more Clues. This was a bit underdeveloped and I think there are more interesting ways the Imperial could be given choices (more ideas to be posted later).
* Length and restrictive end game scould be fixed by modifying the Radical's win conditions. Instead of needing to control every district they could win by either surrounding the palace or controlling all of one type of district (eg. all factories), this would add another layer of deduction to the Imperial's hunt for the Agitators.
* Balance is tricky to predict at this stage of development, but my feeling is that changing the number of Agitators would be a quick fix for an overpowered Radical.