January 2013 Game Design Showdown - "Time marches on"
Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.
We have a winner!
The votes have been tallied and the winner is...
The Tower
By Black Oak Games
Here's how the final votes panned out:
1st place with 13 votes: The Tower, by Black Oak Games
2nd place with 11 votes: PopulatiOn, by JustActCasual
2nd place with 11 votes: Faulty Towers, by bowling_m_h
4th place with 10 votes: Maya's Offer, by bike
5th place with 3 votes: A survival game, by regzr
6th place with 0 votes: Revolution, by Alumidon
Congrats to everyone who entered! The Critiques thread is now open for business!
Not only is it the start of a brand new year, but just last week the Mayan calendar flipped as well. Fortunately the prognosticators of the end of the world were a little off, and as it always has, time marches on!
Mechanic Restriction: Rondel with a unique twist.
Component Restriction: Non-trivial 3D Gameplay Element
A recent game mechanism that could represent time marching ever forward is the Rondel. Mac Gerdts pioneered this mechanism in Antike, and refined it in Imperial and Hamburgum and perhaps perfected it in Navegador. Stefan Feld added an interesting twist in Trajan, combining the Rondel with the age-old math based game Mancala.
The first showdown of 2013 challenges you to use a Rondel mechanism with a unique, new twist such that it is distinct from Mac Gerdt's basic Rondel.
Furthermore, as 3D movies are all the rage nowadays (I'd rather hoped that trend would die out), you must also include a non-trivial 3D element as a central feature of your game. Non-trivial means that the feature must integrate with game play - not simply be a 3D object sitting on the board. An example of an unacceptable feature is the Church pieces in Pillars of the Earth, which are placed on the board at the end of each round to act as a (completely unnecessary) game timer.
Have fun!
Word Limit: Let's go with an even 500 word limit this time.
Voting: Award a Gold, Silver, and Bronze (worth 3,2, and 1 points respectively) Medals to your three favorite entries. Any entrant that does not award all three Medals will receive a Pyrite Meal (that's "Fool's Gold") worth -3 votes!
When submitting your entry: Please PM submissions to sedjtroll with the following subject line. PLEASE use the correct subject - it makes my job much easier!
Subject: GDS - JAN - [your username]
- Submissions: Wednesday the 2nd through to Friday the 11th.
- Voting: Through to the the 18th. PM your votes to sedjtroll.
- Voting Format: Each person has 3 Medals (Gold, Silver, and Bronze - with values 3, 2, and 1 vote respectively) to distribute any way they choose among the GDS entries with the following restrictions:
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- Entrants may not assign any Medals to their own entry!
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- Entrants must assign all 3 Medals.
- An entrant who does not assign all 3 Medals will receive a Pyrite Medal (-3 votes) as a penalty.
Comments or Questions: Comments and questions about this Challenge were handled on the Comments Thread.
- CRITIQUES: After voting has closed the entries will be posted for comments and critiques. Post constructive critiques and commentary about the entries to this Challenge in the Critiques Thread.
- GDS Details: For more details on how these Game Design Showdown Challenges work, especially the details around the word count and graphics limits, visit the GDS Wiki Page.
Enjoy, and good luck!
-Seth
PopulatiOn
Time marches on, but population soars! Can you find places for the people?
Each turn you place one of your people on the world wheel, and then reap the fruits of their labours: some people might even give you brand new abilities! But watch out: your opponents are trying to inhabit the same world, and the world will turn based on a combination of your decisions...will you choose the aggressive route, or the more peaceful path? As time goes on your civilization will gain impressive new technology, but make sure your hard working farmers don't fall off as the world turns! The first player to place all of their people wins!
2-4 Players, 30 minutes, ages 8+
PopulatiOn takes place uses a world wheel (similar to Hamsterolle) as its central rondel element: each section of the wheel gives you certain abilities depending on how many meeples (persons) you have placed there. The starting bottom section is Farm, and the starting top section is Rockets: the resource generation sections on each side are similar, but the action sections on one side are aggressive and on the other side are more pacifist. Each turn you are allowed to place a person and then take whatever actions your sections allow you (you may perform each action once for each of your persons on that section). Any persons that fall off the world as it turns are taken back to their player's supply (initial supply is scaled to the number of players). The first player to empty their population supply wins.
The sections are:
(clockwise half) Farm, Infantry, Foundry, Cannon, Missile, Rockets
(counterclockwise half) Farm, Boat, Foundry, Rail, Launch, Rockets
Farm: Produce 1 Food
Infantry: (costs 1 Food) You may return 1 opponent person to their supply
Boat: (costs 1 Food) You may place 1 additional person on the world
Foundry: Produce 1 Steel
Cannon: (costs 1 Food and 1 Steel) You may return 2 opponent persons to their supply, and move one of your persons who is already on the world.
Rail: (costs 1 Food and 1 Steel) You may place 2 additional persons on the world, and move one of your persons who is already on the world.
Missile: (costs 1 Steel, and 1 Rocket) You may return all persons in 1 section to their supply.
Launch: (costs 1 Steel, and 1 Rocket) You may remove up to 10 persons in your population supply from the game. They have gone to the moon colony.
Rockets: (costs 2 Steel) Produce 1 Rocket