Hello BGDF, I am here representing Those Fools Making Games, a small group of friends who like to design board games in our spare time. Currently, we are wrapping development on a ruleset for a competition, and we are hoping to get some feedback and pointers before we turn in the ruleset.
The game I am presenting to you is called Primetime Addiction. The basic idea behind the game is that you control a family of four who are competing in a Survivor style reality TV show, but people in this show can die. In order to win the game, you need to survive and earn cash. The family with the most cash at the end of the game wins a 10 million dollar cash prize.
The show isn't called Primetime Addiction for no reason, though. A key component of the game is the ability to use drugs (called herbals) to give you an edge in gameplay. While some of these herbals have great benefits, like taking extra actions or even cheating death, they come with the risk of Addiction and Dependency.
A basic idea of the gameplay is that you will never have enough time in a day to make every action you want or need under normal circumstances. You have an infant to tend, food to collect, water to boil, ect... along with needing to make basic life functions like sleeping and eating. However, by taking an herbal you can make all those actions and more, at the trade off of negative effects down the road. It has been really interesting watching players approach the herbal mechanic. Some players will dive right into their power, suffering the consequences later in the game, while others will sometimes refuse them entirely out of morals.
Also, it is worth noting that this game is dark. We decided to take it as far as we could while still maintaining some semblance of reality. There are also super dark ideas when you think about some of the context in the game world, like the idea that you could win the gameshow but be so addicted to herbals that you can hardly function in the world, or that you might give your infant herbals to help you win this prize.
So without further ado, here's a link to the rules so far.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vYZRBxcfY2xyukfaI-ea6FUiUhDc2MCb5-3C...
We hope you like what we have. If you have any questions please ask. If we don't already have an answer, we will be happy to figure one out. Thanks again,
Those Fools Making Games
Wow, thanks for the feedback. That is something I never would have thought about, and I want to try to keep the effects somewhat based in reality.
Anything else you would suggest that I should look into?