Hello esteemed fellow game designers,
I'm currently in the process of desiging a new game, and I would really appreciate any thoughts or comments you might have on the below rules. It's a bit longish, but I've tried to include everything that's important. Thanks for any reply!
It is a yet-unnamed cooperative zombie survival game in the Victorian age. The game takes some inspiration from Pandemic; I'm aiming for a similar "Oh no, everything's escalating, time to make some decisions!" game feel. Players are Victorian characters who try to survive an ever-increaing zombie threat.
COMPONENTS
The game consists of:
- Game board, containing three tracks (location, health, infection)
- approx. 50 urban salvage cards
- approx. 50 rural salvage cards
- approx. 20 event cards
- approx. 6 role cards
The board consists of a large 'location track' containing cities and rural areas (around 16 squares), a health track ranging 0 - 5, and an infection strength track ranging 1 - 20. Health starts full (at 5), infection starts at 3.
The salvage cards contain something that the players can use. Generally this is either food, a weapon, transport, or reserach. Food has a numeric value. Weapons have a numeric strength value. Transport have a numeric size value. Some Weapons and Transports are large and come in multiple cards, so one card might contain 1/2 of a gatling gun. You'd need two of those cards to create a gatling gun. I'll explain research at the end.
PLAYING
Players start on one end of the Location track. The game can be won in to ways: either by reaching the other end of the location track ('Escape to the New World'), or by discovering a cure for the zombie infection.
Each player start with a hand of two salvage cards. Apart from their hand, the players can store cards in 'the camp': a common, open collection of cards on the table. Both the hand and camp are normally not limited in size, but only a limited number can be carried over when Travelling (see Actions).
TURNS
Every turn, each player gets 1 action. Then the Infected strength is increased and food is eaten. Each turn ends with one Event.
The players may execute their actions in any order their like. Once every player has taken his or her turn, the food supply is reduced by the number of players, and the Infected strength is increased by 1. If there is not enough food, health is decreased instead. Then, one Event card is drawn. After the Event (providing the players survive it), a new turn starts and all players may take another action.
ACTIONS
The actions available to a player are:
- SEARCH. You must specify whether you search for
- food,
- transport and weapons,
- research.
Take three cards from the appropriate salvage stack (urban if in an urban location, or rural if the location tracks is on rural area). You may keep all cards of the chosen type. Discard all other cards.
You may either keep the received cards in your hand, or add them to the camp. - EXCHANGE. Give or take as many cards as you want to/from the camp.
- CONSTRUCT. If you have enough parts of a multi-part tool in your hand, create the tool by putting all cards in a single stack in the camp. The weapon or transport now counts as a single card.
- TRAVEL. If you have a Transport card in the camp, move to the next square on the location track and decrease the Infection by 3. However, each player must reduce his hand to two cards, and the camp cards must be reduced to the size value of the transport.
EVENTS + HEALTH
After all players have taken an action, an Event takes place by drawing an Event card. The most common event is the Attack. In this case, zombies attack the players and they need to have an amount of weapons with strength equal to the infection strength. If they've not enough, they'll lose health. Other events include bad weather, meeting a camp of survivors, and so on.
Health determines the maximum amount of actions taken in a turn. So on health 2, only 2 players can take an action, even if 4 players are present. When health drops to 0 the players have lost the game.
ROLES
Each player has a specific role (eg. Explorer, Apothecary, Engineer) that grants him/her additional powers. For example, the Engineer can more easily construct multi-card weapons and transports, and the Apothecary can increase the group's health.
RESEARCH + THE CURE
There are several research cards in the deck. By finding a matching combination of them, a Cause and a Cure can be discovered (in that order -- first need to find a Cause, only then can a Cure be discovered). I've haven't detailed the match-making of the research cards yet.
Thanks again for reading.
~Koen
Any thoughts...?