[GDS] JANUARY 2016 "Stronger together" critiques thread

Thanks, Andy!

True about the one-sided communication. But that was the plan :) Thematically, I wanted the King not to communicate with the "lowly commoner".

Thanks :) Well, full disclosure: with the ongoing Kickstarter this didn't go past the initial pitch and an idea in my head. I promise I`ll come up with at least a proof of concept prototype some time after we're funded :)

You are pretty accurate in your description, though. My idea was for the king to set bounties just high enough, so that hero could deal with the monsters that the king wanted him to deal with, at the same time, not overspending and losing due to running out of money.
While the hero should be smart with how he spends bounties, purchases quest cards and fights monsters.

The funny situation would be if the king have set a high bounty, thinking that this is the right target, then suddenly some especially nasty monster pops up and he has to set an even higher bounty, to redirect the hero there, which can have a domino effect. In theory, of course :) We'll see how it will actually work, once I`ll make a prototype.

And yes, buildings are supposed to be built on locations and monsters could pillage those.

Thanks!

I felt twain has a very interesting element of "cooperative spotting", where both players have to see the same answer to win. The number of available letters is always 10, and the "freedom" of word length gradually decreases. In this sense, player B has a push your luck element to it. Unfortunately, player B only gains the benefit of using player A's tiles rather than their own tiles. So if player B can spot a good word amongst his own tiles, as soon as player A puts in the missing letters, he would jump for it. Maybe place bonus points on A's tiles, or make them worth more?

The game end condition of losing when you fail a round is pretty harsh. Also, I think the game would be more interesting if there was some sort of progression across rounds: number of tiles change, scoring changes etc.

Tl;dr Twain has many problems in it's design, but a new word game is something you don't see every day.

I like the minimal communication between players. This would make for good discussion after each round, which is something I enjoy about playing games: breaking it down together afterwards.

The timer being reduced as you play is interesting, but I'm also stressed just thinking about it. :) Personally, I would maybe keep a standard time for each round (possible 2 minutes) or increase the number of tiles each round, but that's just me.

I liked the readily available components as well. It's a game idea the wife and I could do tonight if we wanted.

While I didn't give this one of my medals, it was a top 5 entry for me.

Thanks for your comments. I had originally thought of a less harsh penalty. (You get a negative score if you fail to make a word and the penalty increases each round. You lose when your score gets to zero (you start with a positive score. It should be that the number of tiles does change every round as well as the time.
I had not thought about making the A player's tiles worth more' that is a good idea.

"uncertainty in the movement," so like a separate movement deck for the natives/soldiers that show where each moves? And to maybe satisfy Andy's concerns, the NPC movement cards would show a section of the board moving the indicated directions instead of the whole board?

Any thoughts on that?

I REALLY appreciate the feed back. I don't get a lot of outlets for this sort of thing. :)

Dude...Yes...

Thanks for the medal and the feedback!

I agree it should be more random and a movement deck would be better. If you're only moving one or two at a time it would be much less fiddly. Also, what if the enemy tokens took up more than one grid space to represent their field of perception. After all, a soldier would see you before he caught you. I'm picturing a bunch a tetris looking pieces for enemies. I think you could also include an element of hiding where you have a chance to hide in between being noticed and being caught.

Re: Pirate Jailbreak.
I think there are some cool ideas here that could be worked into something that's a lot of fun. When I first read the description I missed the fact that there was only 1 character tile, and I pictured something that used two separate tokens connected by a physical "chain" (e.g., piece of string). I wonder if you could use that concept, and have each player only move their own piece, but within the limit of the "chain." Players would have to take turns moving 1st, otherwise one player could dominate movement, but I think it could be interesting.

Re: Mirrors.
I was a little confused about the Shatter tokens remaining in play. Does this mean each successive round starts with the net value of the previous tokens already in effect, or is it simply meant to prevent the tokens from returning to the available pool of tokens?

Re: Strategic Partnership
The more I look at this game, the more I like it. I don't think I gave it a vote, because I had a hard time visualizing the dial system as described, but I wish I had. I quite like the built-in count-down using the vitality token. It gives a sense of urgency, but gives them the option to extend the game-time at, I assume, the expense of other options. I can see games really building a sense of tension as players try to earn as much cash as they can while trying to keep the vitality token just one or two turns ahead.

Does the cash flow work similar to your "vitality" system, in that if the dial catches the token that represents $0? I did a mock-up ( HERE ) of what I pictured your dial system to look like, but I was not very clear based on the description how many concentric rings were actually supposed to be present (I drew 3, but that may not be correct).

I really like the idea of the dial with interchangeable/replaceable sections, but it seems impractical as I'm envisioning it right now. Maybe there's a way to make it so the actual mechanism runs behind the rings (see my diagram above for a better idea) so that you don't have to try to work around an arm.

I like how the shatter tokens are "one time use", and how they can signal information. On the last draft of a round, players can do a back and forth with their shatter tokens to work out which card their friend picked. The game would be good for sharpening your memory, but not at all interesting for hardcore board game players, as the only true interesting choice would be the last card, for which both players should quite likely have an optimal choice, which would be complemented by shatter tokens if needed. So for hardcore bg players, optimal play is reachable, and after that it's just luck. Young and elderly players might find this game challenging, but the theme is artsy, and not story driven.

I liked the look of this, but it narrowly missed out on a medal, I'm afraid.

It's not clear from the description whether players are allowed to communicate at all. If they are, the game might be a bit dull (and probably as well played solo), but if not this sounds like fun chaos, so I'll assume the latter.

I'd like to know more about the contents of the decks, but this sounds awesome. Kinda like advanced Roshambo but where you are trying to coordinate with rather than beat the other player.

This game got a medal from me and I can't really elucidate why, other than it got me excited about the prospect of playing it. Like Mirrors, I expect the replay value to be a bit limited (certainly with the same partner), but it should be fun learning how to win the game.

I wasn't sure what to think of this one at first. I think it would be pretty challenging. It's an interesting idea. I like the focus on nonverbal communication and trying to think like your partner. I actually think it'd be fun if there were teams racing each other. You could keep score over multiple rounds where you lose points for missing, gain points for matching with a bonus for matching first. It would go pretty fast, so having teams would give you more incentive to play more rounds.

@andymorris - I fixed the link (stupid formatting error, I forgot a " in the URL)

Thanks for all the comments. To answer a couple questions:

Regarding the board - I was considering a modular board. A couple ideas was to have a set of double-sided rectangular tiles that would be laid out randomly with the "dock" tile as the farthest down-stream, dock side down. As the players moved off a tile it would be flipped and added to the "downstream" side of the board. This would effectively halve the space required for the game. Also, a set of hexes could be used, allowing players to create a "river" that had twists and turns more easily.

Otherwise, since the deck size limits game length (18 cards, 18 moves) and players will be moving 1-3 spaces (probably average about 2+/turn over the game length) forward on most turns, I'd imagine a board with ~40 spaces would be required. This might make for a long board (or one that has fairly small spaces), or it could have curves and switchbacks to eat up some of the length.

Regarding communication - I realize I didn't mention it, but yes, player communication about cards in hand would be prohibited. I am unsure about whether communicating about direction would be allowed, but I think it would be fine, because there's still a chance that the cards played will negate any plans. Though not explicitly mentioned in the rules, I saw players leaving played cards in view for the whole game, giving players a better idea of what might be available to their partners as the game goes on (mirroring the growing communication of the imaginary paddlers in the boat).

Regarding special cards - The cards I had in mind were:
Backpaddle : Players move one less space downstream than indicated by their space (possible to move 0 spaces)
J-Stroke : Affects horizontal movement (not sure how exactly)
Communication(?): Next turn this player reveals the card they are playing before their partner chooses.