[GDS] JULY 2015 "Standing Room Only" - Critiques

Hey! Thanks, everybody!

Congrats wombat! And thanks to everyone who voted for me too, I appreciate it and look forward to your critiques!

Speaking about Proper Deportment though, I really enjoyed the theme and how well it matched your components and game play style. Just a 1 to 1 match of theme to component and style. Brooches are a REALLY fun component that I'd never even thought about! (I'm also a bit of a sucker for cool components lol) Also, if you make a game super small and portable and cute, 99 times out of 100 I'm gonna want it!

The game is incredibly social and seems like it would play well with a group of people who know each other or even at a cocktail party as an icebreaker. I can see the moment of listing the last person's scandal and watching that 'gotcha' moment unfold!

Some of the parts I didn't like as much was the maintaining composure as the determining factor of winning or losing. I just saw that this game could easily turn into twelve people balancing cards on top of their heads in a room. Which is all well and good (and can be downright hilarious!), but it kind of negates the first part of the game for me. If there was another way to lose, like "damage" of some kind, but you could use maintaining composure as a skill check to take some of that "damage" away, I would play this game ALL the time.

Full disclosure though, I shy away from dexterity games for physical limitations of players. There is nothing worse than having a game that someone can't play because they have a physical handicap. But I didn't let that cloud my judgment. I don't think, at least. If I'm off base and you think it did, please let me know.

Overall, the game is clever and I see it as a PERFECT start to a game night! THIS is the kind of thing you break out before everyone settles into a big box game, especially in a group with people who've only just met. You did a great job with this challenge!

Apologies to anyone offended by the break in protocol, but I'm going to post all feedback in one go. There's only 5, and I can't guarantee being able to login over the next few days.

I was expecting variations on racing and fighting games, so I was pleased to see more creative designs.

Smear - Silver
Fundamentally a very simple mechanic. This is a great game for people familiar with traditional card games like poker - and it would blow their minds how a simple change like being able to reverse cards can make the choices more interesting. My only concern was being able to remember who gave who the distrust cards, but that might be anticipating a problem that wouldn’t be a challenge in actual play. I was also trying to imagine how the game might play differently if each card only had a single symbol, compared to multiple different symbols. It might be possible to design the cards in a way that supported both (a major symbol and minor symbols) for different levels of player. The instructions didn’t say how many cards there were in total, but I liked the idea of only using a subset of them for each game. One game might have lots of smear, while another might have lots of distrust - adding to the replayability.

Sack of… - Bronze
A nice simple game; easy to explain and very portable. It was a very good match for the brief. I originally read it that each player would put a token in the small pouch, but assuming there is only ever one, and nobody knows what it is, then it makes more sense. And no duplicate tokens? Remembering all 13 different types could be tricky, especially for new players, so maybe some look-up cards would be needed (or listing icons on the back of each token?). Would it be better to publicly discard a couple of tokens for small numbers of players? Otherwise there could just be lots of drawing from the bag trying to pull a token that you haven’t seen already. Screams out for a deluxe version even before it’s been made.

Proper Deportment
This is really not my type of game - stories, acting, accents etc. - but I tried to put that aside and be objective. It did say that the acting could be left out, but I think for many people that is where the fun will be. The theme is engaging, and a lot of the mechanics tie in nicely with it. I initially got the impression that players would wander through the party, occasionally joining in conversations with each other to bring up the scandals. Then the description seemed to switch more to a traditional ‘play start-to-finish’ game with a series of rounds. Both could work, but the mix left me a bit confused. Possibly just my reading of it. I also got confused around the use of stacks and hands - how you played all your topics (added them to someone’s stack?) but completed the conversation in your hand. So, a bit of confusion on my part, but lots of interesting elements to make a great game.

The Rogues Gallery - Gold
This is a really nice idea for sub-game running alongside other activities. I liked that although there was a lot of freedom for the players the actual interaction with each other was simple and well defined - so it wouldn’t be awkward even if you didn’t know the other players. A prominently displayed bag makes it clear who is involved. The poker chip element didn’t seem to be fully defined given that it was a core mechanic. Is each chip different? Do they define roles? Where might you get others from?

A minor point is that parts of the theme text seemed redundant. You wouldn’t need the story about handing out envelopes - just give people the envelope (including the plot text), bag, etc. when they arrive and go straight into character.

A Stitch in Time
Is there a single story, with each player responsible for their own thread? With the right group of people I can imagine this being a hugely fun experience. I personally don’t like voting for the winner at the end, and this is an example of a fun activity that doesn’t need a winner. Whether it counts as a game if there’s no winner is a debate for someone else, but I think it certainly does. The cards could possibly have pre-punched holes to make them reusable, but then who would want to untangle it? Bundling it all up and dropping it in a bin at the end seems wasteful. Seems like an ideal activity for writer’s workshops.

I liked Smear very much, particularly for its clever small set of rules that seem like they would result in very interesting interactions between the different cards. The recent On Board Games podcast ep 162 focused on the idea of these kinds of 'emergent' properties. As I thought playing a card face out into someone's hand, I realized the interactions are pretty darn complicated--very neat! The theme seems to work pretty well too, as the idea of having to guess what the outcome of 'handling' a particular issue will be -- is it a smear, or a potential help that I could botch?

The only thing I would have liked to see is a bit stronger sense of 'standing' as part of the game. I know that the rules were 'games you could play standing up,' not 'games that require you to stand,' but I think this game would be just as fun sitting around a table, so that's one small ding in it for me.

Great work, tuscansun!

Anyway, the matter at hand...

The Rogue's Gallery is a cool concept and I really liked the components that you chose for it (I liked unique components? So shock, many awe, wow). The story aspect of the game was probably what made me like it the most because it, thematically, was on point. I see it playing a lot like Coup but with hidden objectives added to the mix.

I'm not a fan of simultaneous play, and considering that was the goal, the game seemed a little complex for a simultaneous experience for me. It was mostly the hidden objectives that did that, which I could see being added or subtracted in a bigger or smaller game.

You did a great job with this Mark!

One of the things I like best about this month's contest is the diversity of approaches people took to the challenge. Thrust force five struck me as an interesting use of the deck-in-hand mechanism (from the boringly-named "One Handed Solitaire") as a racing game.

On the positive side, I think the 'race through the deck' part sounds fun, and the choices involved are as interesting as they can be in a game where your options are determined by the order of your deck.

The game felt like it would be a solo experience, though it is played in rounds and players interact through slowing down and speeding up. In thinking about playing it, I think the finger band might be too fiddly - what if the finish line card had thrust force in bands at the top -- so it stuck partway out of the deck and was moved up or down to indicate speed. This would also show everyone where their opponents are and spur some last minute haste, perhaps. Last, this feels like a few bad choices or poor card order early in the game could be awful. (The penalty that gets you max 2 thrust, for instance, incurred at the beginning of the game, would be a real bummer.)

I'd be interested to see and try this game as it develops, though. Good work, thoughtfulmonkey.

Sack... has a great mechanism: the pouch with two pockets that people pass around is a cool idea. I like the fact that players have to choose between the random draw from the sack and interrogating players (and perhaps giving away clues as well). On the other hand, as tuscansun said -- it plays a lot like CLUE, and I really don't like CLUE. It also has the problem of having a theme that feels tacked on -- the game wouldn't change at all if it used numbers rather than royalty ranks.

A Stitch in Time - I really like storytelling games, and I've not seen this kind of thread mechanism before -- really unique. The theme also drives the storytelling very well. I think the attention to the youngest player and the physical interaction of thread and needles would make for a great family game. The index cards and strings reminds me a bit of the Ben Robbins games MICROSCOPE and KINGDOM. I was a bit confused about the relationship between each player and the communal story and the different thread pieces. As the note says, the end will probably have a messy network of strings and cards (which is maybe the point). With development, this could be really fun.