[GDS] AUGUST 2014 "Immortal in Time" - Critiques

Ritual Statue Building

This design didn’t feature in my medal awards because it contained 503 words. The overspill could have been removed from the outline quite easily, without affecting the readability.

I’m guessing a few tweaks where made in the editor when posting, without checking the altered word count, and they carried it over the limit. It might seem a harsh exclusion, and some might say my decision is overtly pedantic and unwarranted, but to my mind those are the rules of the challenge.

If you miss the rocket ship that could take you to safety from the exploding planet by 1 second or 1 year, you miss it and your molecules are scattered by the solar winds, it’s a simple as that. Deadlines and design criteria are very important aspects of game design and adhering to them in a light hearted contest is a valuable learning exercise for future best practice.

That said, well done on the win DifferentName, it’s a good design and I think it has the potential to be a very good game.

In respect to the design itself

The primary mechanic reminds me of an idea I bandied around the Gamecrafter chat a month or so ago. It was inspired by the game Thomas Was Alone and involved double value cards with basic shapes on them. The first value was a fixed shape and each shape had a fixed secondary value that allowed the player to change the characteristics of other shapes held by a player or affect the game play rules.

The cards could be used to take a matching wooden shape from the general pile or played for their affect. So a circle could alter the color of a piece held by a player, a square could alter shape, a triangle could alter size, a star could alter turn rotation, a rectangle could allow a player to look at a card (another players card or the top of the draw deck and so on). Taking my own musings into account the primary mechanic in this design obviously appealed to me.

I like the part where the item and tool cards are face up and they can be exchanged between players via two different exchange variants. The choice of acquiring cards by random chance (discarding what you possibly don’t need and hoping your opponent gives you what you do) or direct target selection is an interesting one. I could see this exchange format leading to some simple, but enjoyable player interaction. The differing potential of the risk to reward payouts between the two exchange types is also intriguing.

One thing that left me a little cold was something I mentioned in relation to one of last months designs. If the players don’t have the opportunity to deduce what another player is aiming for the game can easily fall prey to the luck factor.

If I don’t know what another player is trying to do in order to win, and I haven’t the means to deduce it, then I’m playing blind. I look to satisfy my own win condition and if I achieve it without inadvertently helping my opponents (and I’m fortunate enough to draw the cards I need before the others draw the cards they need) I’ve been lucky.

The blocking of card takes by hiding them is a nice inclusion, because it allows for tactical play. It also goes someway to providing a deductive element. If I choose to hide a card it’s because it has a greater value to me than my other cards. However, hiding a card is a very costly affair because it takes up my round action and it reveals to the other players information of value.

On the face of it the smart move might be to draw a new card because it doesn’t diminish my defense by making the hidden card a target (revealing no information) and it improves my offense by increasing my card pool. I have more cards that could make a match and more cards also means there is less chance an important one is taken. Even if a card is exchanged I still get a new card that might be one I need, because the other players have little to no idea what I’m after.

In the absence of knowledge regarding the objectives of the other players increasing my card pool, and thereby my own opportunities to satisfy my win condition, would seem to be the clear way to go. Hiding a card as a value bluff to solicit misleading information would simply be too costly.

The addition of tool cards that gave deductive options as new round actions, when they are on top of a players’ card pile, might be a way to address this concern. If a player has the jungle drums (or parrot) card on top of a pile they can ask a player how many aspects of their statue card they can currently complete.

Alternatively, a pencil tool could allow a player to change their current statue card with a new one from the deck (or a collection of papyrus scrolls could allow them to swap their statue card with another player).

I like the cute factor of making statues from everyday objects, although it’s a little too Renee Magritte instead of Rodin for my own sculptural tastes. Its perfect for a light hearted card game though.

However, I think the type of objects used placed the theme outside the Immortal criteria of this months challenge. I’m not sure what the perishable life of a melon is, but they don’t last very long, and they aren’t generally taken as a flattering means of representing an important dignitary for all time.

Overall the theme came across as something that had been attached to an abstract shape sorter, but didn’t quite gel in terms of believability. Outside of the thematic requirements of the challenge, the use of village objects to create statues for a tribal feast day would work quite well.

Disregarding the word limit overshoot this would have been a major challenger for one of my medals, but the absence of a strong immortal theme and the absence of clear deduction regarding win conditions would have hurt it in that consideration.

Wow, thanks for the votes! This was a tough challenge, but it was fun coming up with an idea very different from my usual designs.

**Ritual Statue Building (my gold)**
Building a statue is a great way to immortalize someone. The trade mechanic is interesting, but I think players will always “request” specific items. I am not sure why a player would discard a card in the hopes that the other player will discard something good for them. Hiding is also an interesting mechanic. Overall this game is quite creative and would be fun to play. I wonder if a change in theme would make this more fun to play. For example, dressing a pop star instead of building a ‘statue’.

**Founding Heroes**
An interesting take on the theme requirements. Most people went for something becoming immortalized. You looked more at the immortalizing process. I found that interesting. There are a lot of hidden numbers in this game. We were asked to take this game as far away from game theory as possible. This game has strategy based on numbers and essentially, you are working towards having 6 locations.

Ritual Statue Building

I didn’t give this one a medal. I thought it solidly fit the restrictions, but I didn’t feel there was enough to the trading to make it interesting as the core mechanic. And I didn’t know if the Leader card for each player was private or not. Making it private would quicken the game but a win would feel cheap because I’d have no idea what someone was going for. Keeping it public might keep people from winning as doing a trade to get your last item will allow that player to steal another one you need. So you’d need to win on a draw.
Hiding your cards sounds great, but I think you’d need to start with more cards for it to function correctly. I think fixing this would be tools that do multiple things, and separating tools and objects intentionally. Put the objects into an open draft, giving players the option of choosing what’s more important to them at any point in time – a good object or a tool.

Founding Heroes

My gold medal. I adored how this game used positioning within decks, and the win condition was a Boolean state of whether you are the only hero showing. As described, it’s a very casual game: drawing random cards each turn, and hoping you can play them well against your opponents’ random cards. Assuming all random things being a bit of a wash, this would make it incredibly difficult to get ALL of the heroes buried except your own. The only lasting change being purging a forgotten hero, I imagine this is what players will gravitate towards.

The fun I think you should focus on is in the deck manipulation, setting yourself up for future actions, and forcing players into bad spots. The surprise element of a casual game can come if you do a mild bit of deck building of your collection of devotees. And maybe the locations have a special rule changing condition on them rather than relating specifically to devotees? The strict correlation seems to limit the use of the devotees.

Thanks for the votes and the great feedback!

Taking on board this feedback the path I was thinking of going down was to allow players to play multiple Devotees each turn. This would create possibilities for chaining card effects, and would open up more tactical and strategic choices: Do I play a series of Devotees this turn to try to take a series of locations, or do I save up cards for a potentially game winning combo on a later turn (but risk being shut out in the meantime)?

It was actually a toss up for me whether to make the locations cards or places on a board. I went for a board for thematic reasons (I liked the idea of playing out the game on a Tolkien style map). But I agree that the board is not a necessary component and that cards could extend the life of the game, by allowing for variable play setup and expansions.

I like the idea of shuffling 'event' cards into the deck. Another thematic way to use this mechanic would be to introduce new non-player heroes which takeover a location. This would add to pressure on the players not to 'turtle', and would also simulate the gradual burying of the old founding heroes as new events occur in the kingdom's history.

I had a lot of trouble getting my head around the no-numbers requirements this month. I hope I did not stray to far from the intent of the challenge, but am interested to hear the opinions on this of those who are more familiar with game theory than I am.

Finally, I have to apologise for exceeding the word limit this month. I composed my final draft on my phone(!), which does not have a word count function. It was only after entries were posted that I realised the last of my Devotee examples had crept me over the limit. I will be more careful next month!

Entry #1 - Infamous: The Game of Villainous One-Upsmanship

This sounds like fun with the right crowd, and certainly fits the category well. One change I'd make is not to have the Goal and Scheme be on the same card, but to have two different cards which the player somehow has to fit together. Trying to put together goofy matches would be a lot of fun. Either have two separate decks, or just one deck where every card has both, but you draw one for its Goal and another for its Scheme.

The villains, of course, should include plenty of ethnicity, so that the players have to give their descriptions with exaggerated accents.

Entry #2 - Pinfall Olympics

This reproduces quite well what I imagine wrestling is like. :-) Your mechanism with the cards and the tokens is very clever, and keeping only one card hidden adds a lot to the WIFOM. ("Wine In Front Of Me." It's the cyclic I know he knows that I know ... analysis. The reference is to 'The Princess Bride.') I like simultaneous action games, and games where out-guessing the opponent is key, and I suspect I would like this one.

Entry #3 - Written into History

Interesting. I wonder if this game might be more fun if the players have their hands revealed rather than hidden. That is, your hand of milestone cards normally sits face-up in front of you. Only when someone wants to steal a card do you pick them up, shuffle them, and the person chooses blindly. Also, rather than all the milestone cards being different, I think it would work better if you have only, say, 10 or 12 different cards, with 3 copies of each card in the deck.

The give or steal mechanism is clever. I was about to ask why anyone would give rather than steal, but then I got it.

Entry #4 - Temple of the Gods
I think that the extra action you get for having complete sets in play lends to a runaway winner issue -- only a little. The person who gets lucky enough to make a set quickly then gets more chances to get lucky. However, I didn't quite follow how long the sets stay in front of you. Maybe it's not that big a deal.

In any case, I think that this sort of thing -- where you get an extra action if you play XXX, should only be a rule when playing XXX is otherwise not a great play. That is, there is an opportunity cost to playing the cards that give you extra actions in the future, creating a decision tension. Do I take a hit now to have a better opportunity in the future?

Entry #5 - My Dad is... IMMORTAL!!!
I am intrigued by the mechanism where the winner of a challenge gets the cards that the loser of the challenge used, but I'm not sure it works. I think I'm understanding that right -- he gets the cards the loser played, plus he replaces all the cards that he played, so his hand grows by perhaps several cards. Hands never shrink, at least until there are no cards left to replace those played, right? So they just grow and grow until the deck is used up, with the showdowns getting longer and longer and huge swings in the number of cards.

Also, once the deck is gone, there is no upside to being challenger. What happens if no one challenges the Initiator.

So, I think that this game is interesting and worth working on, I don't think it works as it stands. How about this: Both combatants replace the cards they played, plus the winner of the contest gets to take his choice of the cards the loser played, and the rest are discarded. Therefore, the winner's hand increases by exactly one card. You play until the deck is gone, and the player with the biggest hand (who won the most combats) wins.

Entry #6 - The End of History?
There just isn't enough here for me to understand what's going on. Also, I'm not really buying the theme, as if you had this game ready to go for the "no numeric comparison" challenge and then noticed the "immortalize something" part of the challenge.

Entry #7 - Raido the Magnificent
Oh, the arguments! :-) Actually, I think that this would be a fun party game, but you need to include some way to adjudicate the inevitable arguments. But I totally want to try this game, and I'm definitely giving it one of the top spots.

Entry #8 - Ascension
I'm not sure I understand the play, here. I do like simultaneous action games, though, and I think this would be worth trying out. I'm sorry I don't have more interesting feedback, but I think you were just too limited by the 500 words.

Entry #9 - Long Live the Fashion
Sorry, but the world of fashion carries no appeal to me. That said, taking it just as a game and ignoring the theme, I think that there is something there but it is still a bit too simple. You have the players placing their cards face-down, and they are shuffled and voted on. Then, I assume, you just expect the player to claim their cards? People are just going to vote for whatever is the same type as their own, and just hope to split the other votes. The bluffing aspect of being able to discard cards makes it a little interesting, but I don't think that there is enough decision tension there to make the game fun.

With your alternative play and actions, I think it improves, especially if you do it after voting but before votes are revealed.

Entry #10 - Godhood
This was mine, and it had a major typo. I said 8 of each type of card per player, but I meant 2 of each type. (I had originally written 8 of each type for 4 players, ...) Anyway, I hope it didn't ruin the concept. (Edit after results were revealed: Oh well. At least it got one point. I did not consider it to be my strongest showing. Thanks to the one person who threw the game a bone.)

Entry #11 - Drawing
This fits the challenge very well, and would probably be fun to play.

My concern is that it is too much like simultaneous solitaire. Player interactions are minimal; there's only the occasional case where another player makes a line that you can use. However, once you've gotten basically started, it's not as if you can move what you've drawn so far to take advantage of a segment of someone else's efforts. If theirs didn't fall right for you, it doesn't matter.

Also, I don't know how frustrating it would become when you don't get the last drawing element you need, and it just becomes luck who draws the last few he is looking for.

Rather than using sticks, I think it would work better actually to draw, either on a dry-erase board or make the board a specially-printed pad of paper, and you just use the top sheet and then throw it away for each game.

Entry #12 - Ritual Statue Building
Interesting. Possibly quite fun. However, I'll give the same criticism I said for the previous one -- it sounds too much like just simultaneous solitaire. There needs to be more interaction between the players. I think it needs a bidding phase or something along those lines.

Entry #13 - Mosaicus
I was going to say that octagons won't tessellate, but I see that you've added squares to fit in the holes. :-) I'm having trouble seeing how this game isn't just luck, where the winner will be whoever happens to be playing when the rotating dial makes a winning opportunity. (I suppose it might be tricky to spot winning opportunities -- I'm not sure.) Anyway, I don't see how, for instance, my action on one turn might help to set me up to win on a later turn. I think that this is a necessary characteristic for this sort of game.

Entry #14 - Founding Heroes
How does the game end? I think that there might be some interesting decision tension, as you try to balance defense (keeping your hero on top where you are) with offense (moving to the top where you aren't). But I'm concerned that it will just come down to luck, where, given a circumstance, people would almost always agree what the right play it.

Entry #15 - Ender Poets
I'm afraid that this game will not have the sort of silly fun that, for instance, 'My Dad is ... IMMORTAL!' would have. Also, if people are actually trying to win, they will start to vote based on whether or not the poem's success will give the speaker a victory.

Entry #16 - Monument
This is probably a fun game to play a couple of times. I like the draw mechanism, and I suppose I could stand to try another part balancing game. :-)

I did not consider voting for this one because I felt like the idea of comparing height didn't move far enough away from a score or numeric comparison. Aside from the that I like the concept. I like the idea drawing three things, passing one and discarding one. I like getting to keep one piece that falls off. I did not like the inclusion of the clay. The clay would work well to help make towers, but it would have a limited life span forcing you to buy more clay, if you want to play the game again. Perhaps you could have different types of connectors to allow some of the pieces to interlock. Something along the lines of having three kinds of connectors where each structural shape piece can only connect with two types of connector. It would give you different kinds of shapes, connections, connectors and angles to think about while selecting pieces.

I think you've definitely got the foundation for a fun game. I did not vote for it because I didn't feel like kids arguing over whose dad is best was sufficient for being immortalized, but I like your thinking. It would nice if you could have more than two people involved in the argument each round. Of course the issue would be not having anyone to vote. I'm not sure voting is the best way to decide the winner anyway as there could be a tendency to simply vote for the player with less cards. Now that you don't have to worry about avoiding numbers, maybe you could add a quantitative element to the cards to help decide the winner.

Monument --Critique

The physical tower building aspect of this game is a neat idea. I wonder if the players would see the items in the box or is it supposed to be a blind draw. I'm not sure how the draw or trading mechanics would affect the game. I guess what I wasn't sure about though was comparing the heights to determine the winner. To my interpretation that seemed to be keeping score in a loose way by counting height instead of score it is an implied score. You cannot count the number of blocks but only measure relative height and I was torn by whether that violated the challenge or not so on the side of caution it was a great game but that uncertainty left it without a medal

My DAD IS IMMORTAL!

This is a cool game I think to play a few times, but it would seem that the concept would get old and unplayable after several iterations. How many different ways can you one up each other with the same cards. Also, I'm not sure how the mechanics of ending these challenges would not go until someone runs out of cards. I don't see any course of action that would make the initiator not want to initiate or make the challenger decline. Finally, I'm not a big fan of totally subjective voting in a game without some empirical foundation as well because these games could turn into a gang up situation or a shut out situation on one or two players at the expense of others. I'm just not a fan of this type of game.

I just question its replayability which kept it from a medal in my opinion.

My Dad is... IMMORTAL!!!

Thanks for all of the feedback everyone. There were some great suggestions. I hope to make a rough prototype and see how it plays when I get a chance in the coming weeks. I am sure there will be lots of changes based on your suggestions and the freedom of being outside the GDS. Though, often restrictions can be liberating as well.

Raido the Magnificent

Sounds like fun! Could be a great game to play on a long road trip. I bet a little playtesting would iron out any wrinkles it might have. Thankfully there is zero prototyping to be done. All you need is a group of test subjects.. I mean.. friends to try it out on.

Written into History

Has potential. This is the kind of game I think could shine with a historical fiction theme instead of striving for immortality. What if it was set during the World Wars but the characters and their goals are based on real historical people? I am thinking Henry Ford, Madame Curie, Alfred Nobel, Amelia Earhart, Winston Churchill etc. I think it could lend some gravity to the feel of the game.

I like that this game does not require any components, so it could played as a car game or something like that. It was a good fit for the challenge thematically, but there wasn't enough to the gameplay to get a medal for me. It would be difficult to keep track of everything, but I think that is partly what you were going for. I think you would need a larger number of people to make this work well, but the player elimination factor would be a drawback. Perhaps now that you don't have to worry about the contest restriction, you could simply have a fixed number of rounds and anytime you mess up you get a point. After the set number of rounds the person with the fewest points wins.

Mosaicus

Good job at making the rules with no numbers at all, sticking to the contest rules very closely. It sounds like it would be fun doing the puzzle, with player interactions as dials are moved around, but I'm concerned like Zag said that there might be a lot of luck in getting the dial turned just right.

A large part of the rules were just in explaining the visuals of the board and how things in the dial were pointing at other things. Unfortunately, since I can't actually see it, it's really tough to imagine how all the pieces fit together. I was hoping to learn more about how the gameplay works and the kinds of decisions I would make, but it's tough to get there without

Infamous

I didn't think this one really fit the theme. I can see where you were going with it, since telling stories was a common theme in these games about immortalizing, but the premise of yours was telling stories so you could become an evil leader rather than becoming immortalized. A slight tweak could have made the theme fit the theme better, like voting on who was the best evil person of all time, putting their star on the walk of evil, or in the evil villain hall of fame.

As for the game, it's mostly just telling stories, without much to the game rules aside from determining the kind of story you're going to tell. It does sound like a fun theme of story telling though, describing what your evil villain would do.

I think there's too much randomness with the end of game trigger. I don't know how many duplicate goals there are, but you could draw a duplicate goal on your second card when some players didn't even get a turn, or after everyone has had several turns.

Mosaicus--

This game design sounds interesting and off to a good start but I was concerned that the changing of the dials might make it difficult for anyone to actually win and I was having a problem visualizing how the game mechanics would actually work, but I think it has potential to be a colorful fun game with some possible refinements.

Infamous--
This is a cool story game, but I didn't think it rose to the level of immortality. I'm not a big fan of story games as I said with the other design, but villainy is one of my favorite subjects. The idea of developing a story is a great use of one's imagination, but I like games with more strategy and less "socialness". Not my cup of tea, but it's a neat design overall but I'm not certain it rose fully to the theme.

This was my game and I appreciate the two silver medals. It was really difficult to cut it to 500 words and I think it lacked some clarity as a result. This is my fourth attempt at design and the fact that most of them got some kind of votes makes me appreciative. It is hard to design something in a few days.

Anyway, some people already gave some feedback. I hope to hear from some more, but I can clarify a few things that may not have come across.

THE WORKER SETS
The Worker set collection was designed to provide the additional action points. Everyone starts with one action and as in any building project, you need to start with building teams. The team required three different talents so in order to do anything my thought was that you have one action to start and completing up to four sets adds four additional actions one per set. One of the sets needs a sculptor as well to seat the statue of the king at the end and win the game. The sets provide action points and once completed they remain in play for the rest of the game.

In addition the workers would have abilities on their cards that give bonus manipulations (one worker may allow you to move two stone decks and such, another worker may let you immediately lay a block (set of four) into the temple).

Also note that at any time three workers are visible to recruit and available for an action. In addition some action cards might allow you to search the pile or turn over extra workers to make this less tedious and pace increased. There will be enough cards so no one is shortchanged. You also can switch a worker for one with a better ability as well.

STONES
The cards in the stone deck represent stones of different colors. The mixed up deck is divided into four somewhat even (but not exact piles) Each player is one of the colors. The idea is that the four piles represents the quarry and that you need to get four of your color stones on top to harvest them and create a "block of four" or set of four stones. The manipulation of moving cards and cutting the pile or piles (or searching based on action cards) is the digging in the quarry.

BLOCKS

Each set of same colored four stones of your color becomes a block you can layout in a temple (4 by 4 grid topped with a centered block of four). The idea is that once you have all four sets of workers recruited. You can manipulate the stone decks and bring your color to the top of each. These sets of four are kept in front of you until you place them in your temple face up (ie lay them into the grid)

Each set of four stones that form a block are laid into the grid so one you have all four sets along with the action cards and the workers, that surpasses the mechanic that would make the deck movements an endless shifting from pile a to pile b and back. You could potentially move several cards per turn which would lessen what would be a frustrating one card per action movement. The idea being that everyone will be able to move several cards to harvest sets of the same colored stones for their temples.

EX.

X X set of four stones same color form a block
X X

The first temple level would contain 16 stones laid in sets of four

X X X X
X X X X
X X X X
X X X X

The middle four stones would be where the second level block is laid and then the statue card (or pawn) would be sat in the center of the layout

ACTION CARDS
This is where the action cards came into play. They could be used to stop a player from taking the set of four stones and laying them as a block. A block already played in the temple could be damaged by an action card and this would be represented by flipping one of the four card set stones face down. A repair action would reverse that . To win all the blocks must consist of face up stones. The action cards allow you to provide dilemmas to other players as well as fix problems created by other players for you. (ie a strike would prevent you from laying a block, or a shut down quarry might prevent you from harvesting a block or shifting stones) The action cards would be balanced and plentiful so that it doesn't debilitate into a game of waiting for the right card.

STATUE
One set of workers needs to include a fourth card (a sculptor) in order to finish the game. YOu can only recruit one sculptor so this does not become a bottle neck.

Although I ran out of specific space, my thought was once all the blocks (four on bottom, one on second level, 20 stones altogether), you would need to harvest one more set of four stones, but once it was harvested you would need an action to convert the block to a statue and an action to place it on the top of your temple to win.

---

Overall I know there are a lot of cards but I felt it was necessary to have the three different decks (stone cards, action cards and worker cards) to truly make the game interesting, although the stone cards could be replaced with cubes of different colors in a bag to make the game more 3d which would alter some of the actions but possibly make it more luck of the draw. The idea of using cards is that quarrying requires moving earth and searching for the right stones which is why I went with using cards.

I struggled to keep my design in 500 words so that I would not violate the rules of the challenge, but as you can see there was a lot more thought. It is hard to explain everything without diagrams or pictures but that is what makes this so rewarding and challenging as well.

I read somewhere the way to get to a good design is to move through your first ten or more designs and get them out of the way. I'm halfway there and the added part of fulfilling a challenge on the way makes it more fun and ups the ante.

Thank you all for allowing me to participate with you and for the consideration and feedback you have given my designs. With one week of work, this is difficult so just having something resembling a design that is possibly workable is rewarding.

Thanks and peace,

David

PS.

I ended up cutting the color text from the top of the design but for completion I wanted to share it here:

" If there were no immortality there would be no need for temples." -Gordon B. Hinckley.

A decree has gone out throughout the kingdom. The first province to build a temple suitable to worship the gods will be richly rewarded by King Hirus and join the ranks of the immortal builders of history.