Hand2Hand
An 18 card co-op game for 1-2 players about fighting off an armed gang of thugs using just your martial art skills.
Files for playing:
Rules:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/jc1tl6ih1dd0w76/hand2hand_rules_01.pdf/file
Cards:
http://www.mediafire.com/file/0bjs2mylwjw3zgr/hand2hand_cards_01.pdf/file
Additional resources needed:
1 D6
5 Cubes (1 for progress tracker, 2/player for actions)
Game play:
The game is played until either one player is hit by an enemy (they lose), or the players knock out 18 enemies (the player’s win).
The game is played over several rounds. In each round a D6 is rolled to determine where the new enemies spawn. The players then select, in private, which new action card to play.
Once the round has been setup, the players can discuss the sequence of actions to play. The main restriction is that the actions must be taken alternatively (left player, right player, left player, etc.). There are other restrictions, such as:
• a player can only perform up to 2 actions per round,
• an action may only be used once,
• the targeted enemy must be adjacent to the action card,
• actions cost cubes, meaning some actions prevent a player from taking a second action.
The key point is that few of the actions let you directly knock-out an enemy, you must use the enemies’ attacks against each other. There are three types of enemy:
• Unarmed enemies cannot knock-out (discard) another enemy, they can only knock-down (flip over),
• Knife Wielding enemies can knock-out any enemy,
• Gun Wielding enemies can knock-out any enemy, but they cannot be blocked (placing a cube on the enemy card), and some player actions cannot be used on them.
Reflection:
This was a fairly quick development and the core concept didn’t change much from the original idea. The idea came from those cliché film scenes where the main character manages to fight off a horde of generic enemy characters in a cleverly choreographed sequence.
The feel of the game came out pretty much as I’d hoped, but finding the right combination of actions to balance the difficulty was quite a headache. Originally I wanted 18 unique actions for the players, but I soon found this was too difficult to test and balance. I also had ideas for some actions only being available if the other player played a specific card, I also tried to design the actions as combinations (one player throwing, the other player punching, etc.), but none of those experiments worked. In the end I settled on a set of 9 actions, with some common ideas across the the card types. This just felt better and resulted in a semi-tough experience.
Anyway, I'd love to hear how others feel it plays.
If you're curious, here's the link to the other game so far:
Game#6 "The Skurge"
cards: https://www.mediafire.com/file/tin84rd8qcgrjfd/the_skurge_cards_01.pdf/file
rules: https://www.mediafire.com/file/kqradtyxjv8oc61/the_skurge_rules_01.pdf/file
Game#5: “Green, Chems & Steel”
cards: https://www.mediafire.com/file/5g4t1pz6084v80b/money_drugs+guns_cards_03...
rules: https://www.mediafire.com/file/5u9ezmwc877ftto/money_drugs+guns_rules_02...
Game#4: “Those Magnificent Men”
cards: https://www.mediafire.com/file/q2bptjpkqgx2r34/those_magnificent_men_car...
rules: https://www.mediafire.com/file/62ifvf6ihzlv3ui/those_magnificent_men_rul...
Game#3: “Anisoptera”
cards: https://www.mediafire.com/file/3eznffiwsg6la9d/anisoptera_cards_01.pdf/file
rules: https://www.mediafire.com/file/yltl0cu438mtzc1/anisoptera_rules_02.pdf/file
Game#2: “Dyadic”
cards: https://www.mediafire.com/file/bhceed33r1za0d5/dyadic_cards_01.pdf/file
rules: https://www.mediafire.com/file/xevx4z5jll69ae2/dyadic_rules_01.pdf/file
Game#1: “Gene Dreams”
cards: https://www.mediafire.com/file/gnoyog6ylt5qtrz/gene_dreams_cards_05.pdf/...
rules: https://www.mediafire.com/file/opo9fv2mda5nuid/gene_dreams_rules_04.pdf/...
