Hi there!
First of all i must excuse my crappy english, sometimes its hard to make yourself understood when not writing in my native tounge(swedish).
Im currently working on a dinosaur game and im putting all my efforts in making this game my best ever.
All input is greatly appreciated!
I searched the net for games with similar themes and i must confess, the prehistoric games that i found have many similarities, and mine is no exception!
Lets face it, we all know that the Dinosaurs went out with a big bang, and they gonna do that in my game too (meteor strike).
Every dinosaur species is going to have a couple of characteristics:
Combatvalue
Movement
Climate survivability
Fertility
and be eiher a meat or plant eater.
There are going to be a number of characteristic points available at the beginning of game and every player distributes the points as he wishes, to create a unique species, these numbers are secretly placed.
Then the player decides if his species are a meat or a plant eater.
Different events trigger during game and tests the characteristics.
A failure could mean that your dino would be eaten by another dino or maybe die by heat or cold.
I have this idea of that the player with most dinosaurs in game when the comet strikes are the winner, if two players have the same amount then the player with the highest total of characteristic points are decided a winner.
The characteristic points will move up and down when different events trigger.
A value of 0(zero) will cause the extinction of the species.
Another win criteria could be that one race dominates let say 50% of the map.
I think im going for loose tiles (a´la Settlers) as i have found that Settlers is one of the few games outthere that can produce a fun variable gameboard.
Other suggestions are of course welcome.
Im right now brainstorming on different ideas on how to make the gameboard as strategically challenging as possible, and i have a couple of ideas.
This is how it looks right now:
Planteaters have to end their turn on a tile containing plants.
Meat eaters have to eat another dinosaur before they end their turn.
tiles are containing volcano´s and other prehistoric enviroments and can only be passed safe by dinosaurs with high climate survivability, dice rolls are needed to determine if the dinosaur gets throug safe or if the climate gets him, theres always a chance to get killed no matter how high survivability your species have.
All input and suggestions on how to get the game more challenging or other suggestions on game engine are greatly appreciated.
This game is planned to go in print during autumn this year and every contributor are going to get his fair share of credit.
[ This message was edited by: Cyberchrist on 07-03-2003 06:55 ][ This message was edited by: Cyberchrist on 07-03-2003 10:25 ]
I shall have a look at the games that you mention.
I havent really figured out a good way of having some more player interaction (and i really want that!), dont know if it really fits the game to have any kind of trading, bidding or diplomatics, i guess that not the dino way!
But theres more ways than that to have some decent interaction (i just havent figured out a good way, yet).
I really hope that people dont get confused by the many different factors.
When evolution phase occurs then every player get to secretly re-distribute the points, so its a kind of dynamic mechanism with no random factors involved, i guess you could call it resource management.
By distributing your points you are deciding your strong or weak spots, your basically planning what you gotta watch out for.
Climate survivability:
-----------------------
The ability to survive the climate changes, extreme heat or cold.
Exactly how this is incorporated in the game is not decided.
Fertility:
---------
The reproduction ability of the dino, the first phase could be a reproduction phase, a reproduction roll on a D6, where everyone having a fertility factor of equal or less get to place a new dino for each dino already in game.
Combatvalue:
---------------
Selfexplaining, right?
If a dino steps into a hex (or whatever) battling another dino, the one with the lower combatvalue gets chewed on and is removed from the hex.
No dice rolls!
Movement:
------------
The amount of hexes(?) you may move this turn.
I eventually thinking of splitting this characteristic into two separate ones, land and water.
Plant or meat eater:
----------------------
My initial thoughts was to have a rule that a meat eater have to eat a dinosaur before they end their turn, and a vegetable lover must end his turn on a plant(jungle hex?).
This would probably start some strategic war for territory, and some real tasty lunch snacks.
These are the initial thoughts, to fine tune the mechanism, i gotta decide how im going to do with the board, loose tiles, static or ...?
So far i feel that every charachteristic is vital to the game, the problem is that i want more interaction between players than just chewing on eachother.
And that is a hard nut to crack.
More input thanx!