Critique the May 2006 GDS Challenge Entries

Since I have an hour to kill and I am high on almost victory I will post my crituqes.

Congrats to the lime for his two in a row! LIIIIIIMMMEEEE!!!! Ill get you for this!!!!

Here we go:

Stake Out

Theme: This game seems to be in the modern sort of quasi realistic spy genre, like the movie spy game or perhaps a Clancy novel. Solid themeing but nothing to make it stand out.

Presentation: For a complex game with many moving parts I think that it is presented well with clean diagrams and explanation. If there were ever a poster child for including graphics with entries this is it.

Gameplay:I like the various tracks that you can climb up to increase action points for abilities. And that with a partner you can divide labor. I am not so sold on the swapping tokens on the tracks, mixed with simultanious selection. That sounds like a log jam. And that adds a sort of random oh I got screwed factor. But that could be fun. The climbing and swapping seems to be the main mechanic that you can control. tHe moveing the pawns and peeking are just execution. I'm sure that with some testing this could be streamlined.

STAM (Spy/Tourist/Agent/Mole)

Theme: I like the theme of agents infiltraiting foreign cities. The extra bits like the code breaking and microfilm are definately add to the chrome and theme of the game.

Presentation: Well written and the graphics were nice as always. Sort of evocative of the 60 spy genre.

Gameplay: I like the flipping tokens, and the running around collecting things, the capture mechanism reminds me of a kind of updated fox and chickens. The numbers of tokens may have to be balanced, but that is what playteting is for. At first I was excited that you wouldn't be sure what was on the other side of a tourist. It could be a secret agent, or a bluff, or a mole to steal things, but it turned out that all the roles are known. The decoding mechanic is fun, like a puzzle built into the game. The microscope does seem sorta tossed in though. Ultimately the decoding seems like a complicated way of saying after X points you win. It does nail the theme directly though,and playing with gadjits is cool.

RAID ON OMNITECH

Our winner! Congrats.

Theme: Those Omnitech guys need to buff up security! Everyone who works in their pie lab is a spy! I like the idea of scattered agents, selling their services to the highest bidder from round to round, working to execute secret plans.

Gameplay: The bidding for control is interesting, and given that many missions would require several steps to complete they could get frustrating to be thwarted. I think that the laying down the order tokens may be a bit much. The bidding and then controling would probably be fun enough without the problems of messing up your 'programing' I really like the fact that any player can complete any mission for anyone. This could lead to setting people up to do the work for you. I think that this game fails on the "different experience every time" criteria. The rooms are in different orders, and the missionschange but the missions ultimately seem to be "pick up, move to X, drop". This game is very close to playable and probably fun!

IPL: Thunder Point

Theme: Dueling directors trying to gather favor with agents is cool. I like the world spanning tone of the game. I am sure this could be pushed further with the gadjits and missions. It certainly involves agents with gear!

Presentation: Nicely formatted with nice art. Could probably have used another once over though for clarity. There are a few things I still don't understand.

Gameplay: The hidden alliances aspect is cool, so playering don't know who they are helping or hurting at first. The mechanics that are presented are easy to understand, Equip or upgrade agent. Execute Mission. The things that I am unsure on is the voting and evil genius involvement. What is the Evil track for? How does the profile card or being on a particular Villians payroll matter? I can see how the voting plays out now, but it took me a couple of times reading it.

Alpha Complex Blues

Theme: Ahh Paranoia brings back great memories of jr high and highschool. I don't think we ever finished a mission, but we left oh so many pairs of smoking boots. To those familiar with the game it does fit the genre of highly equipt agents attempting to finish a mission.

Presentation: Clearly written. The graphic at the end gives a good feel of the cards and boards without being too much.

Gameplay: Having various scenerios available definately helps the different experience every time requirement. The Directives cards coming down from on high captures the random feel of Paranoia as well as fullfilling hte controls groups of agents requirment. I think this game may have been most successful in hitting the design requirments. The mechanics are nothing revolutionary. Move shoot, look etc, but that is good, it gives lots of room for specials to break the rules. And it involves flipping counters, which is something that I like. Developing a game like this would be the hard part.

Sci-Fi Pulp Adventure

Theme: I really like the theme of this one. Desperate agents fightting to stop a doomsday machine. What more could you ask for? Zombie monkeys? It apparently has that too!

Presentation: Well written and direct. Though I do tend to agree that theuse of graphics mainly seemed to be used to cram in a higher word count. But it definately helped sell the theme of the game.

Mechanics: I like that it is co-op. I like the players against the game, and it fits the theme very well. I don't like that players don't control a particular agent, but rather decide by commitee. Personifying an agent is pretty important. (this is me! I killed the Hyrax!) So it if kind of iffy on the control single agent, control many agent requirement. The combat looks functional, yet somehow too complex for what it is. The fact that damage discards abilities is pretty cool.

CRYPTIC CITY

Theme: Very shadowrunish, freelance agents getting hired by the players to find out the dark secrets in the dark city. I like this one as well.

Presentation: Again well written and clear. the graphics put in a few words but I don't think that it was out of line, just one example of each type of card and the set up.

Gameplay: I like the lack of a board and the card play. The laying out control and bluff and neat. The fact that players don't steal from one another but only from the middle gives some interaction but not as much as raiding other players would. With six very different characters to choose f rom there could be a lot of cool bluffing and and counterbluffing involved. Almost like an openhanded game of citadels.This game has the potential to be developed into something like the FF silverbox line.

Gaslight Agents

My game. I will reserve most comments. I will however respond to Kreitler's excellent critisism.

I was shooting more for an investment or betting kind of feel. But I certainly understand this. Token placement is Dry!!

Yes. There would be ways to expose double agents. Basically they would allow you to peek at who another agencies double agent is. There also would be several missions that would let you shuffle agents from your hand to someone elses. Or steal an agent from someone else. It is built in as a large randomizer, though this might turn people off. I like it when you can't know exactly how close you are to winning. And a person may take half of a non scoring resource from you. This could certainly fail in playtesting, or need to be tweaked.

Mission: Improbable

Theme: High tech agents working together for personal glory. A nice tension there. I like games that are competitive but also include a way for everyone to loose. I didn't get much of a feel for the theme from this entry.

Presentation: This game goes to show that you can make a perfectly cogent presentation in 800 words with no graphics at all.

Gameplay: Agian the Must not fail too much mechanic is a fun one. though one that can break if one player decides that they are loosing and want everyone to loose. This is resource management through and through, keeping your dice from being exsausted while putting the proper challenges to the proper agents. The dice add a bit of needed randomness.

OK, so here are my comments. I really didn't think that many of the games met either the "Mr Everyone" or the "Mr Unpredictable" constraints, but we all had fun with the gadgets bit.

Stake-Out was a very clever but ultimately overcomplex design. I think it failed on almost all counts, but it's a game I think has a lot of promise.

STAM went overboard on the gadget side, and yet I don't think they contributed enough to the actual game beyond fiddliness.

Raid on Omnitech got some points from me for meeting almost all of the conditions, and also being an interesting idea, albeit still sketchy. Annoyingly, I've got a deduction game that uses almost exactly the same variable board mechanism!

IPL was one that I thought missed all the targets, and yet had a very entertaining "high concept".

Alpha Complex Blues got my other top mark, despite also missing a lot of targets, simply because I like it as a Robo-Rally variant that I really want to play!

Spy-Pulp had some fabulous mechanics but was trying to do too much I think. And, as noted, I felt that the graphic component was cheating a little.

Cryptic City got a small vote from me, but for all the wrong reasons; it had a lot in common with my design did some things better and some things worse. But the card graphics helped it so much.

Gaslight Agents was another small vote from me for an original take on the idea, despite being a little vague.

Meanwhile, my game fell somewhat short, for many of the reasons Kreitler identified: all the interesting stuff got cut for space reasons... The design began with the group having a Traitor (who obviously won if the team failed) and then grew to encompass special abilities and so on. And once I'd explained all of that, I had no room for the rest of the game mechanics, which I really liked. So I cut all of that; at least someone could see where the game was intending to go.

I'm getting really depressed with yet another mid-table finish, but hey, one day I may actually come up with a good game!

Now that the voting is over, I'd like to share the complete version of Sci-Fi Pulp Adventure with y'all. It's available at http://www.invisible-city.com/file_download/61. The zipped archive has two password-protected pdfs in it. The password is "bgdf".

Hey everyone,

I'm not terribly good at giving feedback, but will give it a go, I think these will be more general overviews and feelings about the games, but hope it helps!

I will make a most about my own game after these ones are done...

Stake Out

Presentation of Rules: This was one of the harder games to come to grips with for me, and took a few readings to get to understand. The diagrams were excellent and great tools, but the rules explanations didn't flow very easily for me.

Gameplay and Fun-ness: Once I had a better understanding (I think) of the game, it felt like it would be quite fun, with a lot of interesting interlinking decisions. I liked the thinking behind the various game parts and I'd like to see it developed further. Got a vote from me ;)

STAM (Spy/Tourist/Agent/Mole)

Presentation of Rules: Everything was very clear and easy to follow. But, it felt like some things were missed out, or not easy to understand. It felt like more explanation was needed, or maybe I just needed to read over it again.

Gameplay and Fun-ness: I quite liked this one, and think it could be really fun. It may get a bit chaotic though, and the tricky components were a bit over-the-top. Got votes from me ;)

RAID ON OMNITECH

Presentation of Rules: The rules as written were very clear and well laid out. Very easy to understand, especially as it had some similar aspects to my game.

Gameplay and Fun-ness: I was swinging on this one, as I went through it a few times it felt good, then a bit funny, then good again (yeh, like that makes sense...). In general I liked it and thought it would be a fun game to play, but I could see it being very frustrating when you didn't have any idea on what the other players were trying to achieve, so you couldn't really work out how to stop them properly. Also you would be very hesitant about doing some things, as you may think you were helping other players. This would also become more evident after some plays of the games when players had learnt most of the missions... Still, got some votes from me, grrrr... ;)

IPL: Thunder Point

Presentation of Rules: Very clear layout and easy to read. I think having the world map indicated the game would be different from what it turned out to be (I am glad New Zealand didn't get left off the map though ;)

Gameplay and Fun-ness: I like Evil Geniuses (very cool computer game too...) but I think the shuffling around of Equipment wasn't as exciting as it could be. I felt it had potential and a fun theme, but that playing the actual game wouldn't be as exciting as it should have been...

Alpha Complex Blues

Presentation of Rules: Not so much a ruleset as an overview of the game, would have been more readable with a bit more layout. I think the RoboRally boards put me off a bit though (I've had good and bad RoboRally experiences...)

Gameplay and Fun-ness: Paranoia is a very cool game and I like the way this game approached the Paranoianess. I feel like it could have been a bit more extreme though, or needed more humour or Catch-22ness thrown in. I Really like the Use/Watch aspect and could see similar uses of it in games popping up on th bgdf soon...

Sci-Fi Pulp Adventure

Presentation of Rules: Pretty good layout, though a lot of text on the cards, probably didn't need so many. Fairly easy to understand the rules.

Gameplay and Fun-ness: The gameplay didn't tickle my fancy so much. It did feel like a solo-game, and maybe that should be its focus, though I do like the idea of a game that can be solo and multi-player. All the numbers felt a bit fiddly though, and though I liked the theme a lot, the rest of the game just didn't turn me on :(

Gaslight Agents

Presentation of Rules: Not the greatest layout or presentation, it also felt like more of an overview than ruleset. It all came across though and felt easy to quickly pick up and provided a lot of interest.

Gameplay and Fun-ness: I gave this game my biggest score, as it felt like it had a really interesting and developing game state. The theme was great and it felt like a great game to play. Looking over it again, the write-up sounds very general, but somehow I 'Get It' and though some things were a bit hazy, it feels like it would work well.

Mission: Improbable

Presentation of Rules: Easily laid out rules, though I was still confused at times. It felt like some things were missing, i.e. did you need pens and paper to write down the player's stats? (doh, I just read it again, and you use the dice...)

Gameplay and Fun-ness: The gameplay is very simple, which is nice, but it feels like something is lacking a bit, and is not as exciting as it should be. At the same time as being fairly simple, it seems there are some complicated things you need to remember while playing which could have been made simpler.

Well, thanks for giving everyone a 'nudge' to generate some feedback and leading by example! (and to jpwoo for being first to step up with his crit of last months entries). Getting feedback makes the effort wothwhile, at least for me.

Congratulations to the winners, specially to my dear arch-rival Josh!

Now that you won two in a row, I hope you're happy and let the other children play. ;-)

I'm a bit overloaded with work right now, haven't even had time to read the critics, much less write up my own, but I will post them as soon as I can.

Seo

I agree.. The lime can't win again, so next time vote for your second favorite game. :)

I agree.. The lime can't win again, so next time vote for your second favorite game. :)

Heh, yours was my favourite game Jpwoo ;) Gave you a good chunk of my votes too, gah, could have beatn ya ;)

I was busy fighting S.Q.U.A.S.H. on an uncharted volcanic island, so I missed voting on this month's challenge. I wanted to support the trend of longer commentary though, so my thoughts are below.

A few general comments:

The art continues to amaze, daunt and discourage me. Even with weeks to spare, I couldn't match these gorgeous entries.

Many people seemed to ignore or misunderstand the requirement to affect entire groups of agents. We saw lots of games where people could control different individual agents, but not so many where groups were affected at once.

Like Seo, I was hoping 007 gadgetry would be the focus of more games. Equipment lends itself to being either bonuses (jetpack, +1 move) or prerequisites (you need the laser to complete this mission) and it would have been exciting to see a new approach. No suggestions from me either, sadly.

Component lists! Do these help other readers? I always feel like I'm failing a memory test when I read them. I do better with a BoardGameGeek-style overview of the game that puts a frame around everything that follows.

On to the games:

StakeOut!
I never did understand this one. There may be a fun game here, but I was baffled by sentences like "A player has two HQ markers each confering one action of a type defined by the track with Action Points (AP) defined by the numbered position on that track the marker occupies." The diagrams were very complex too.

STAM
This component list I didn't mind, because it says a lot about the game to come. UV rays! Decoder grid! Still putting the game goal at the top wouldn't hurt.

The "capture" rule is very thematic -- that poor agent, struggling against the crowd to escape. A less abstract board with open spaces and narrow alleys would have been an interesting twist.

The microfilm portion of the game was complex for what it does. The fun of the gadgetry may have overwhelmed the elegance of the game here.

STAM was one of my favourites, although I think the Everyone and Unpredictable aspects are missing.

Kids would have fun with this game, if they're unafraid of Greek. Which they should be.

Raid on Omnitech
The rule about getting to take the valuable bid if you use someone else's order was very clever. I liked the variety of the missions. I admired the simplicity of this game, although I wonder if the gameplay might prove to be low-key, because the orders are so straightforward (move clockwise, drop item). I suppose the tension is in the bidding and revealing.

Another favourite. Also missing Mr. Everyone.

IPL: Thunder Point
I'm fond of the "everyone's a traitor" idea, which always reminds me of Paranoia. The graphic design was lovely too. The profile was a good way of keeping players at odds, although there's the risk that someone could be screwed by the intial draw in a three-player game.

I stumbled on this rule "An agent needs at least three cards." This means equipment cards, right? I had to go back over the rules a few times to be sure.

The gameplay didn't grab me. It would have helped to spell out the agonizing/fun choices players would have to make.

Alpha Complex Blues
While I like games that feel like Paranoia, I have an immediate aversion to games that actually use published properties. Doing so seems naive, like young screenwriters writing their own Predator sequels. This is just a pet peeve, I know -- what does it matter in a friendly competition? -- but it put me off on the wrong foot.

The theme ended up complicating the rules too (does it matter which secret societies are present?) and it wasn't really on topic -- Paranoia troubleshooters are pretty far away from spies.

But after all this harshness, I have to say, there was a lot to like about this game. For one, it actually meets the Mr. Everyone requirement in an inventive way -- I like how directives *force* people to use their powers. The scenarios and themed boards that indirectly affect gameplay were a great answer to the Unpredictable requirement. The gadgets have dramatic effects.

I also liked the simple choice between Use/Watch. Making "watch" so important suits the paranoia theme too.

Hit points might be unecessarily complex, but that's a quibble.

A favourite.

SF Pulp Adventure
This reminded me of Talisman without the board. Do individual players make any decisions on their own? If not, I'm not sure how satisfying that would be as a game.

I think this one strayed too far from the requirements.

Secret City
This shares the approach of IPL and SF Pulp: you power up a pool of agents who can be controlled by anyone. As before, I didn't think this met the Mr. Everyone requirement. Maybe I'm being too strict with this one, but hey, I didn't vote anyway.

The bidding might get tiresome, and yet it's really the heart of the game, because if you lose a bid for control, all your previous work buffing an agent would reward someone else. Be careful that poaching other agents doesn't become a dominant strategy, as that wouldn't be much fun.

Gaslight Agents
The idea of carrying over modifiers from game to game is a fun idea and something I've never seen before. The pockets makes it easy too.

Faction and agency seem to describe the same thing, which confused me.

There didn't seem to be much player interaction. I'm also missing what sort of decisions a player would face over the game. Is this largely a resource management game -- you have to decide which missions are worth doing?

Mr. Everyone seemed absent again.

Mission: Improbable
I love games where competing players have to work together, but you have to avoid the situation where a losing player has to either (1) end the game and lose or (2) play spoiler and try to make everyone lose. Neither option is fun.

The rules could have used another smooth-over. They seemed jumbled in places.

Some sample gadgets would have helped clarify what they do.

The idea of Runebound-style expansion decks is a good one.

...

All in all, it was a tricky challenge to distinguish yourself in, because the requirements tipped a lot of people down the same path.

I continue to be impressed by the people who can keep finding strong new ideas month after month!

Yogurt