I need to get this out of my head, and get some feedback about a game idea I had last night.
One Billion is a real time dice rolling game that spans one billion years into earths future. You play a series of unfortunate species that develop sentience, and build civilizations on the ruins of those who came before them. Cataclysms will befall your intelligent cockroaches, and all they will leave behind is a buried technological legacy for your next race of robotic velociraptor slaves to discover and try to survive the next solar flare / asteroid / ice age.
The game is played in a series of timed rounds. Players select a race/ability combination (small world!). This gives you the starting dice you need to advance your civilization. You roll your dice to buy cards, to upgrade your dice, to buy more cards. You collect symbols on the die to develop new technologies, have wars with your neighbors, and generally try not to destroy yourselves before the inevitable cataclysm comes along.
Here's the rub though, you are working against the clock. You roll dice like a crazy person, making split second decisions trying to beat the timer as it ticks down to the next alien invasion that wipes earth clean for the next group of unfortunate creatures.
So with 10 rounds at a minute each, then each second represents about 16,670,00 years. Haha, maybe I'll have to call the game one hundred million instead... Either way... here are some of the mechanics I'm thinking about
1. Upgrading dice - You can use symbols on one or more separate die to upgrade to a die with better probabilities and new symbols you didn't have access to before.
2. Branching die - Once you upgrade to one die type, that type may not be able to upgrade to another parallel type in the upgrade tree. You make a decision, and you're locked into one thing.
3. Locking dice - Cards can 'lock' dice. This will give you a static bonus of certain values that can otherwise be found on other die, but maybe the payout isn't as good... The benefit is that these locked dice don't go away during a cataclysm, and your next intelligent race can discover this technology and get those dice more easily.
4. Race/Ability die - If you are familiar with small world, you'll be familiar with where I stole this mechanic from... but it's dice now, so its different, right? haha.
5. Cataclysm symbols - When your tech gets strong enough, you might be able to trigger the cataclysm a little early. All players add die that roll cataclysm symbols to the center. At some breaking point, you don't need to wait for the timer (this is also my backup plan for if the real-time dice rolling thing doesn't work out).
I'm going to try to build a prototype this weekend if I can muster up the time. Do any of you have experience with real time games, or building these types of tech-trees. What are some common pitfalls I could run into? Anyone have cool ideas for more elements to throw into the game?
Thanks for your encouraging words! I definitely can't wait to dig in and figure out how this game is going to work.
As for the specific questions about mechanics you have, I'm not quite sure how some of those things are going to work just yet. I generally try not to pin it down until I'm sitting in front of some prototyping supplies and I can play around with components to get a feel for how it goes.
I really want it to have a press you luck type element, where you can lock dice in early to avoid catastrophe, but if you go for the next level of tech, there are higher layoffs.
In regards to cheating or fudging dice, I know that could be an issue so I might try and make it more of a coop or solo game, so if you cheat you're not doing yourself any favors. I'll post an update here as soon as I get a play test in!