Game Design Showdown
August 2009 Challenge - "Make Mike Hammer Cry"
>>> This Challenge has been COMPLETED<<<
Congratulations to doho123 for his winning entry!
- Submissions: Thursday, 6-August-2009 through Thursday, 13-August-2009.
- Voting: Thursday, 13-August-2009 through Thursday, 20-August-2009.
Main Design Requirements:
- Theme: 1940's-style hard-boiled detective/crime drama ... like the genre most often explored by American writer Mickey Spillane.
- Big Board: A large central game board must be used in the game.
- "The Gadget": The game must employ a mechanical or electronic gadget (or multiple gadgets).
Critiques: Please post critiques and any comments/questions about the entries to this Challenge on the Critiques Thread.
Comments or Questions: Comments and questions about this Challenge were handled on the Comments Thread.
GDS Details: For more details on how these Game Design Showdown Challenges work, especially the details around the word count and graphics limits, visit the GDS Wiki Page.
Enjoy!
-Bryk
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Entry #1 - Mike Hammer Wants to Beat Your Face In
by doho123
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SUMMARY:
Players are a team of crooks who have just pulled off a heist. They move around the map, selling their loot at seedy pawn shops.
However, Mike Hammer is on the case. His moves are revealed from a small computer shaped like a 1940’s desktop telephone, via voice cues of Mike Hammer himself. If Hammer finds himself in the same location as a player, he gets to interrogate the player in his own special way, in the hopes of getting clues to finding the location of the players Safehouse. Sell the loot before the Hammer finds your hideout! Or be a squealer if you are getting the short end of the deal.
THE GAME:
Players select a hideout on the map. Each location has a list of location Clue cards that should be gathered up. Clue cards have a bar code that the telephone can read through a card swipe mechanism. Clue cards, for the humans, say things like “Our Safehouse is east of the park” or “our Safehouse’s roof is blue”, in such a manner that a human could deductively figure out the Safehouse location after a certain amount of cards.
Players also get a paper score sheet that shows their body in graphic form that keeps track of pain Hammer does to them during interrogations. There are 12 “Pain areas” in all. Players select and circle 2 areas on their body as indication of their Weak Points.
Pain cards are shuffled and placed face down. Each Pain card shows a different pain area on the body that matches the areas from the player score sheets.
Players take turns moving around the city, carrying loot (up to 3 loot cards) from their hideout to pawn shops. When a pawn shop buys something, the payout at that pawnshop for the next loot is reduced, but other pawn shop buying prices go up.
Players are free to move around the city as far as they want on a turn, but for each city block they move, they press MOVE on the phone.
After X amount of moves(X being randomly decided by the telephone), Hammer announces that he’s moving (and any current player movement stops). Hammer always starts from the location he stopped at on his previous turn. He narrates his moves as he wanders around the seedy city, block by block (“Looks like Nick’s is open again; that bum couldn’t make a good hot dog if he was veterinarian with a flamethrower”). At some point he randomly stops (“Gotta get a new pain of shoes; these are too beat up from kicking the crap outta the scum in this city.”). And the players are allowed to continue.
Anyway, as Hammer wanders around, after each block, he pauses. If a player is on the same block that Hammer is on, that player must press INTERROGATE on the phone.
There’ll be some tough talk (“I’m gonna make you fold faster than my pants at the laundromat”), and the phone will fire off one of many meaty punch-and-groan sounds, and the player must draw a Pain card. If a Pain area on Pain card matches a Weak Point on the player’s sheet, he must press SQUEAL to end the interrogation. Otherwise, the player must add a mark on the corresponding Pain area on his score sheet. Pain marks are kept for the entire game. If the selected Pain area has over 3 marks, the player presses SQUEAL. Otherwise, the player may optionally press INTERROGATE again if he thinks he can outlast Hammer’s interrogation, or SQUEAL.
Over the course of a full interrogation, depending on Hammer’s “rage,” Hammer may give up the interrogation, or continue on for quite a while. His rage is based on how long it’s been since he last interrogated someone.
When a player SQUEALS, he randomly selects a clue card, swipes it on the phone, (“Thanks for the info, bub. Now get your loser face outta here”), and discards it from the game.
END OF GAME:
If Hammer moves into the Safehouse, and announces that he’s at the hideout, then with maximum rage, he interrogates each player in turn one more time a random amount for the fun of it, and players add marks to each corresponding Pain area (Players don’t get the option to SQUEAL out of the interrogation). Whoever has the most accumulated pain loses the game.
If all of the loot is sold, then the player with the most cash wins the game.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS:
Accumulated Pain marks can affect the player, such as: 6 pain marks on one arm lower the amount of loot he can carry by 1. 6 pain marks on one leg, and he must press MOVE twice from each city block.