Critique the November 2005 GDS Challenge Entries

Just for the record, gamebot, I actually DID notice that mechanic in the game and thought that, although not exactly to the letter, it did to a certain extent satisfy the list req. since the items to be collected were ASSIGNED to the players through the chips. The games I d/q-ed were games in which there wasn't even a remote attempt at fulfilling the rule.

Voting will end tomorrow at 11am EST I belive or over 14 hours from now.

THe results will then be posted when the host can get to it.

- Dwight

Hmmm. First time that I didn't vote for either of the top two (although I did vote for the winning mini-game, so maybe I'm not totally weird ;-)
Ultimately, I think the confines were drawn a little bit too tightly this month (not the reason I didn't enter :-), such that the games that I found most interesting (Evolution and Atlantis) veered a little far outside the rules. Having said that, I voted for Johan's "Little Old Lady" game, which was way, way outside the rules but in a sufficiently original way.

Yes, in practise, the "Politics" game would probably fail miserably, but it was such a fun use of the double dice. And many of the other mini-games really did work (albeit frequently because they were implementations of existing games!) which impressed me.

Another good crop, chaps. Looking forward to next month (The Great Santa Claus Massacre, perhaps?)

Well, here are my reviews (I do these every month, it's how I gather up my thoughts to pick a winner):

1 - Quest For The Lowly Tale
This game is eerily just like mine! The similarities are amazing, right down to the method of obtaining objects. I didn't like the minigames here at all. The pirate was okay, and Cthulhu was just the same thing, and the hurricane was horrible! Game killer. Outside of the minigames, it's a pretty basic, but seemingly reasonable and enjoyable game.

2 - Gambol
Pretty interesting. There's a couple unclear things to me, one of which is just the fairness of the challenges. I can't manage the statistics, but it looks like after a couple of games of this, people would find the one challenge that was best for challengers (except of course Rainbow, which requires the right circumstances), and never use the other. I think that'd be the Match one, as just from looking at it Double Vision seems stacked way against the challenger. Match is also a little weird - why ever wager more than 1? All 6 numbers are equally likely, and that would save you money. If you bet anything more than 1, worse yet, your opponent can bid less than you, which means your victory will earn you less.

3 - How Much Wood
I like the board setup in this game a lot. The gameplay is pretty good too. I have two issues with it though: #1, I'm pretty sure there is no clear number on a 3-in-a-cube, just 3 dice inside a blank cube. I hope I'm right, since my game depends on it! And #2, the Log Rolling is just overcomplicated for no reason. I like the Thump Off, but the Log Rolling has too much to it. I think the agility rolling bit should not be in there. Also the idea of flipping the neutral coin if both players don't match is kind of silly too... it affects nothing!

4 - Hero Myth Etc.
I really like this game - the main concept of having to navigate a player along blindfolded is a lot of fun. An interesting twist is that the value of persuasion chips (and other minor prizes) may not be nearly enough to convince the navigator to help his foes in every instance. He might not guide them to a shipwreck, but to the wrong island? Sure! Not always, but it adds some tension. There's a pretty good amount of complexity here, but it all makes enough sense that I don't see people getting lost. The minigames here are quite minimal, but that's sort of a good thing - this is the first entry I've read where the main game is really interesting instead of mainly a framework for the minigames (which includes my own entry, I admit).

5 - Antiquarium
The coolest use of the custom dice yet. And as always, I find pictures of an actual prototype inspiring and impressive. Although it appears to me in the last picture that the setup rule has been ignored - there are only 2 adjacent discovery chips, and clearly 3 players. A rule change? One problem with this entry is that it violates the contest rule of the list of items needed to win being random/unknown (in fact, there is no specific list in this game). Otherwise, I like this one. It's another that hits the main game much harder than the minigames, which I appreciate (won't win coolest minigame though!). Not bad, other than breaking the rules.

6 - Backwater
Hamstyle.

7 -Ants Go Marching
Sounds pretty interesting. Some of the rules seem too fiddly and would probably be whittled down in playtesting to more succinct versions. There are things I don't quite understand, like the hats - why 10 each of 3 types per player? Can't you only have 3 squads total, each of which needs a unique type of hat to identify them? Or wait, do you actually put the hats ON the ants? That's adorable, but I figured you'd be moving a pawn around the board to indicate the army. Do you actually have to move all the ants at once, with hats on? That's very close to unplayable with all the spilling that would occur! I think this could be a really good game, that's got some unique gameplay to it, almost like a mini-wargame of sorts - but it needs to be simplified and trimmed, or maybe I just need to understand the rules better.

8 - Old Lady
This is a very avant garde ruleset... I don't think I actually like that, it's very tough to follow, but I like the premise (not of ordering the rules that way, but of the game). I like the mechanism of the deck with animals she swallows, and how each time it's the right one in sequence, everything gets reset and sped up a little bit in a sense. The whole game has a really unique structure (not just the way the rules are written!). It took me some reading to get it, but I really like it. Big minus for minigames - by my count, the bidding on items is really the only minigame (man, it's tricky deciding what's a minigame and what's just part of the game in general). Other than that, and the difficulty of dealing with the rule format, this is really nice! Oh, and also, it violates the "waterscape" rule I think. This was my #2 choice, but I decided with all the violations I had to remove it.

9 - Mors Atlantis
I think this doesn't meet the 'scavenger hunt' requirement. But it sounds quite cool. The minigames in this game though, ouch. I think I'd need scrap paper to do all the calculating. I really like the hex spells you put around your island, and how the colors have to match. If the combat made more sense to me (probably would be a lot more comprehensible if there were no double dice involved!), I think this would be a very nice game. I didn't have trouble understanding how the combat worked, but it felt like it would be incredibly difficult and tedious in practice.

10 - Pack Rats
I'm sort of in the middle on this one. Pretty good, but I don't love it. I like how the minigames seem so integrated into the main game. I don't think I like a game so dependent on memory. The gameplay seems solid, but it just doesn't do it for me. Actually, I want to praise it more highly than that... it seems really clever and interesting, it's just that it's not the right gameplay for me.

11 - Evolution
Classic: "Play starts with the start player". Curious: move any number of germs from a place to another place that can be reached only by moving through other germs. As written (and interpreted liberally), you could move anywhere on the board by continuously chaining them forward. I guess each germ may only move one time? Even if this is so, it still allows some massive movement. Imagine a chain of 4 germs in a row. Move the last one in front of the first, then 2nd to last in front of that, etc. In the end, you've effectively moved one germ 8 spaces. Or maybe the rule is that you can only move a set of germs from one space, I don't know. Just an action that got me thinking. I like the evolutions and how you get them with increasing number of tokens, and how they affect things. Pretty cool game overall, but I'm still kind of vexed by the movement mechanic. There are some missing issues in here - how do you add more germs to the board? How do you take tokens from the ground? I think I'd really like this finished game, but I'm a little lost as to the details right now.

12 - Save Lake Filth
I love the board! Boggle as a board setup mechanism is great. Would be really cool for a travel game too, if the cubes seated fairly firmly. I wonder if the 'clean all your tiles to get one badge' (that may or may not be one you need) makes the game drag out too much. I think it might be too slow as a result. Another concern is the Double Or Nothing game... if I read it right, it seems like a completely random chance of seeing who wins, since you're adding an unknown number (I guess you know 2 numbers it can't be, but that still leaves a wide range) to a chosen number. The trick game seems a little more reasonable, but also pretty close to purely random. I really like the core game here a lot, I just think it might turn out too long, and that the minigames aren't so interesting. And just think of the frustration when you had one tile to go and someone else finishes and reshuffles!

13 - Dead Celebs
The humor is rocking here, especially the line about "emancipating your soul". The Deadly Dice minigame is quite weak, but I like the Wiki Tiki one. It would however be a major pain to see the values of the inner dice as they got stacked upon. I'm not very clear in when the Wiki Tiki challenge begins though - if only one person has gotten all their parts, they have no one to play against. Do you wait for a certain number of turns, or until a certain number have finished, or what? The main gameplay is pretty interesting here, trying to keep yourself hidden while collecting your parts. Memorizing what each celeb needs to collect would make a big difference in your ability to play, though. I like it overall.

14 - Giant Monster Arch.
Um... where are the giant monsters? I guess they're included in the locals. Hardly seems deserving of a title inclusion! I really liked the maze-building minigame. The other minigame, I was totally lost. I like the overall gameplay in a lot of ways. I'm not sure I'd call the special events you buy with the maze game "new rules" though. They're just special events (okay, some obviously are permanent changes, but that happens in other games too). When I first saw mention of them I thought they would actually change the rules of the game fundamentally, a la Fluxx, which seemed very interesting. The way you buy/find treasures is very nice actually. This is again one of the games to defy the "scavenger hunt" rule of the contest. There is no specific list of treasures to find.

15 - Island Scavenge
The thing I like best here: the shouting game where you, as pirates, need to make as many aRRRs as possible. The items having unique powers are nice, although I am quite sure that the sneakers are completely overpowering (add to BOTH dice?). There seems to be a problem in that players can only hold as many items as they have List Cards, but, given that they're called List Cards, each one surely must mention more than one item. So it is impossible to collect enough items to win. If they don't list more than one item, why are there a different number of them than there are of items? Another, very major flaw, is the compass card. The act of flipping it over changes its orientation. And can be done in virtually any direction you want, no less, if you're dextrous. I would say just have them all flip down their compass cards at once. Despite these issues (or so they seem to me), I like this game. I think it would be one I'd want to play - very simple, quite random, but just a fun diversion.

wow! joint 5th, and joint 2nd in the minigame :)
i didnt win but it was great fun, and reading the other entries was great too... did get a bit of ''why didnt i do that'' syndrome though!

- i didnt think about the fact the compass cards would look different after being flipped! design flaw *hides*

this was awesome fun... whens the next one?

I wrote the following

o Move any number of germs from one location to any location that can be reached by only moving through locations occupied by germs of their type.

What I was trying to say was that you could take any number of germs in one location. Then you could move them to any location that can be reached by moving as described.

You take tokens from the ground by applying the 'pick up token' action. You get extra germs by ... erm ... hang on. I missed that bit.

...

You get one extra germs by spending an action. I ... erm ... missed it out to test your observation. Yes, that's it. It was self evident you had to spend an action, so I missed it out to test whether anyone was paying attention. Right.

WOW

While I wasn't expecting to win, and I DID vote for the winner, I was surprised to see that I ranked lower than some of the games that I d/q-ed. Talk about an eye opener. I wonder if I'm just too strict... Anyways, good contest overall, and, at the risk of being ostracized I must admit that I didn't find the rules to the contest as constraining as some have. I actually enjoyed having to "think outside the box" (that sounded SOOO cliche) and work in some concepts that I hadn't really worked with before. A good exercise in game design. Congrats to the winners, looking forward to the next one! (Once a month seems so long!)

Congratulations to the winners! See you next month!

Mitch

Matt we appreciate your hard work, thanks. I love the GDS.

Thanks to all that voted for deadly-dead-celebrities.

Congrats to Doho123 and DanogNellows, I voted for both of your games.

I think there were several ideas in this months GDS that were great. I loved doho123s white board game board idea. To me that would win as best mechanic.

Other memories from my reading of them:
I thought the OLD LADY that ate more and more animals story was very creative.

I voted for and liked the dominos spin on the double die used in the "Politics" mini-game.

I loved the tongue and cheek humor of "Got Wood?" er "How Much Wood…" that’s it. This was great: "You'll be dammed before you let them spoil the happiness of your home."

There were more. Nice job to all.

RE: Deadly-Dead-Celebrities
I agree that the end was a bit confusing. What is submitted was an abbreviated version. like always I was way over on words and I cut what I some rules out. I was hoping that people would give the benefit of the doubt that it would be worked out.

To win you have to win at Wiki-Tiki Challenge. If there are no other players ready to play Wiki-Tiki then you play against the Wiki-Tiki tribe leader (represented by the player on your left). If you don’t beat him then you have to wait till next turn and try again. If there is more than 1 player ready then the Leader is not needed.

Also, The Wiki-Tiki Challenge would have a rule that a Die that was completely covered would no-longer be scoreable.

- Dwight