[GDS] April 2012 "Fools Rush In" - Critiques

Catch that bunny
I liked the whimsical nature of the game. One issue is that the bunny might not remember their starting space turn to turn.
Setup will be hard, unless the bunny player also sets up the wolves. The 'close your eyes' part may lead to cheating, but what game doesn't? I think the nature of this game would make a good phone app.

Revenge of Bunny foo-foo: Cute game, I think you could lower the age range to 3+ (No reading required). I'm sure both of my kids would've loved this game at a younger age. It would make a nice easter basket goodie.

Heavy Treasure Hunt
How fixed are your fixed actions? Do you amass more cards every turn? (Is it possible to get a bad deal where you cannot maneuver your pirates, and every turn be stuck? Example: All of your cards are 'move North') I like the concept of flanking the treasure chest to pull it.

Lhasa - I'd like to know more about how players' actions can affect each other. From the description, I foresee people just leap-frogging over each other to cross a known hex into an unknown hex. I'd like more tile esamples to see the advantages of visiting known locales.

The Great Svengali
Interesting game. I like how the theme really complements the design. Matching the flop cards on the table makes me think of a mix of Clue and Mastermind. What I like most in the game all the choice given to players. (5 theatres to select cards or see Svengali). My only suggestion would be to penalize a player more for an incorrect guess to make them think twice before guessing. Once Svengali's trick elements are known, it will bring the game to a speedy close.

Leprechaun Rumble
Interesting game play. I like how you drop items as you move. I don't think the game will end if you need to dump 20 shamrocks. I could see the players just circling each other ad nauseum. Maybe add a mechanic that at a certain point, discovered shamrocks are not returned to the player, or slow the rate that they get reowned by the player.

Easter Egg Hunt
(my game) The hardest part of the challenge for me was to convey the idea in 300 words. My first draft was 600. I believe I lost a bit in the translation, chopping down the rules to fit the limit.

I tend to be a bit wordy, thus the 300-word limit was extremely tough for me on this one. I had so many ideas and other twists and turns, but when I got done putting it all into words I was at over 800 words. Obviously, I had to trim some things to get it down to the 300-word cap.

RE: Police Deck - you are spot on...I was thinking that these cards could help introduce a little chaos to the game. Perhaps one would say, "No stashing cash next round", or "Everyone pass one card to their left", etc. Little things to keep the game interesting.

RE: Bluff Card - The bluff is there just to draw other players to that hideout. Say it's a 4 person game, and you have already seen all three of the other players visit and "stash" at a particular hideout. You now have to decide, are you going to play it safe and keep stashing your original loot, or are you going to make a run at that hideout, hoping that there is a bunch of stashed loot that you can swipe (and also remove those receipts from your opponents hands). However, you may make it to the hideout to find that everyone was bluffing, and there is nothing stashed in that house.

I don't think this would ever become a real heavy game, but I could see with the proper cartoon animation...maybe something like the old Ant Hill Mob cartoon (http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090502050550/hanna-barbera/image...) this could end up on the shelves in a store like Target or Toys R Us.

Thanks for your feedback...it is always appreciated!!!

~Brad

@GreenO... I think the tendency for lighter games is part of the nature of the beast. Lighter games are easier to iterate over, even if it's just eigen-testing while mowing the lawn.

Thanks for the votes on Hart of the Forest. Here's the board.

Black cubes are the hunters, the circular tokens have a forest image on the green side, and a picture of different harts with the different values on the yellow side. A Hunter that has gone home with a captured Hart sits on that Hart, allowing easy distinction between the two players' points.

@AndyGB... You'll see that the middle part of the forest (where the hunters deploy) has the most paths. There are a few things that prevent the ganging up from being too bad: whenever a hart is captured, one hunter goes home; hunters can be "dragged" along with a Hart, allowing a clever Hart player to disrupt a screen; and the Hart player must resign himself to having some tokens captured, hopefully of lower value. Since the Hart player can intentionally blunder into a trap with a 0-value token, he can temporarily destroy a trap near the Heart, since the Hunter player will have to redeploy in the middle of the forest and will take several turns to reset.

Re: making individual Harts more powerful. The rules kind of do this in reverse, since having groups of Harts makes them easier to capture. Of course, a lot more playtesting would be needed to suss out if there needs to be more balance. Right now, it feels like being able to send Hunters home with low-value tokens allows the Hart player to thin the Hunters sufficiently.

And no, I don't have any good handle on making this multi-player. Most all of my games are for 3+ players, so I went with a specifically two-player game this time.

@BMinNY... I always have this challenge, especially since I tend to be too literal and write rules instead of a description of the game.

Hi folks, I am happy that you liked the Great Zvengali!

It was hard to figure out how to balance the penalty for guessing "The Trick." Too light and you get a lot of random guessing, too heavy and people only guess when they are near 100% sure. I figured that the randomizing of the card order would probably be enough to dissuade frivolous guessing, as it is a relatively larger penalty the less information you have. Discarding down to 3 cards of their choice prevents people who had certain knowledge of 4 out of 5 cards from simply auto-winning the next turn because of their hand makeup.

And yes, once the first guess is fired off the game will likely end soon. That was an intentional move to reduce the time between the exciting/suspenseful reveal (The first guess) and the game's conclusion. I figure that most games should be 75% or more over when the major power play/reveal occurs. This is something that makes me, as a player, want to play a game again.

Thanks again for your votes!