Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Design. Show all posts

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Big cards from TGC

New jumbo card template
(from TGC site)
TheGameCrafter.com announces a new big card size (they call them Jumbo cards).  At 3.5" by 5.5", they're about the size of a photograph. My mind jumped to Dixit - the only game that I came up with quickly that uses super-big cards. In Dixit's case, I think it's for two reasons; one, because the cards are the focus for all players simultaneously, so everybody needs to be able to see them, and two, to show off the beautiful artwork by Marie Cardouat.

Neat-o Dixit art
(from a review by
Tiffany Smith
on BGG)
I'm always happy to see new options there, but I can't immediately figure out how I'd use this. Still, it could be fun, and now that it's there, I'm sure I can make my way toward it in future designs.  What I'd really like to see is mini-cards, but of course those are much harder to make in a print-on-demand format. The cutting doesn't get any more precise when you shrink the cards, so you have more and more of the card edge needed for a safety buffer.


Saturday, December 31, 2011

Game in progress - Wordy

Wordy in mid-game - bonus points for
anyone who can tell me the last word...
I spent a chunk of December working on a JavaScript-based game.  My wife and I had enjoyed playing Zynga's WordTwist very much, but Zynga canceled that game earlier this year.  So, I decided to recreate it, or something like it. This is not a very original concept - Word Whomp is basically the same thing, and there are numerous others - but still a fun way to exercise one's mental muscles, and I learned some cool stuff about JavaScript and browser-based games.

I'm still working on it, but give it a try if you want.  I haven't done much interface work - e.g., no instructions!  But it works.  We've played a bunch of games of it already.  To play, type any words you can make out of the letters provided, and try to get them all in the time limit.

I built it using a little PHP and a lot of JavaScript with a bunch of help from the CraftyJS game library, which I'd recommend to anybody.  The dictionary I used was a subset of  Kevin Atkinson's SCOWL project which was super-useful - I didn't want to use the whole Scrabble dictionary with all the really obscure words, but I wanted it to be mostly complete, and SCOWL let me decide what level of obscurity I was comfortable with.  I'm still editing my list as I discover words it doesn't have (or words that it does have that it shouldn't!).

Anyway, give it a try, and let me know what you think!  The game is here:
http://planktongames.com/wordy

Friday, December 9, 2011

TheGameCrafter offers hexes and square cards

TGC Hex card template
TheGameCrafter.com is now offering hex cards and square cards. The hexes are 3.5" the short way, 3.75" diagonal, and the squares are 3.5" on a side.  They're printed 12 to a page (regular poker cards are 18 to a page), and a page of printed cardstock in whatever form you choose is $2.29 at TGC, so if you make your deck divisible by 12, that's 19 cents a card - pretty great.

This is a really cool new feature - I love it when they add new printed options.  This one is especially good because it allows for map-building games (although the tiles are the standard thick glossy cardstock, so not too thick).  I don't think either of these will fit too well in the new tuckbox or printed small box options TGC offers, but they'd go in the big all-purpose 10"x10" boxes they use.

Here are links to the particular description pages with templates for designers:
Hexes here
Squares here

Saturday, October 1, 2011

New space game nearly ready for release

My entry in TheGameCrafter's vehicle design contest is in, and just under the wire.  I haven't gotten a copy yet (although it's ordered), so I haven't published it in the shop, but here's what the page will look like when I do.  I like the game - I've played it a number of times now with friends (thanks, Derek and Bob!), refining it each time, and it's pretty darn fun.  It centers on trading goods between worlds, but it quickly evolves into a race to complete missions and build technologies.

Plus, there's pirates.  What's not to like?


Thursday, September 22, 2011

Art for space game

Here's a sample play board (one of a 2x2 grid) for my new unnamed space game that I'm submitting for TheGameCrafter.com's vehicle game design contest, due in about a week.  In the game, players control ships and trade resources from planet to planet while completing missions and building ship upgrades.

The game board background image is NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day from June 30, 2011, seen here:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110630.html
It is of Star Factory Messier 17, taken by the European Southern Observatory's VLT survey telescope's OmegaCam.

The planets are textures from http://www.mayang.com/textures/ that I altered, recolored, and mapped to spheres.

The green grid I created in Adobe Illustrator, with shadows added in GIMP.  The wormhole art is a GIMP plasma rendering with a bunch of effects.  The pirate icon is clip art from the Open Clip Art Library (http://openclipart.org).  The starlanes (blue paths) are a path trace in GIMP with some gradient filling and border effects.  The text and disks around the planets I made in PowerPoint 2007.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Dueling D6's: Combat Odds for 6-sided dice

I've been working on a design recently in which I am thinking of using a pretty standard style of dice-based combat resolution. I first saw it in the game Mystic Wood, then in Talisman, and in a similar pirate-themed game called Sword and Skull.  Each player rolls a die and adds a bonus to it; high roll wins.  I did the math (not hard math) to figure out what a 1-point or 2-point advantage is worth in this scenario. I knew it wouldn't be linear, but I was curious how it looked.  The zone for ties gets smaller as your advantage increases, and a +4 isn't too different from a +5 in terms of results except that you can actually lose a +4 battle a fraction of the time. Anyway, here are the results.

Monday, August 1, 2011

Contest at TGC


TheGameCrafter.com is running a game design contest through their site. Prizes are from their new point system, which you can use to get your games featured on their site. I have no idea what the value of featured status is - whether it translates to more views or more sales - but it's an interesting idea, and I've been entering contests with no prizes for a while now at BGDF and at Hippodice.

Unfortunately for me, the contest focuses on their vehicle parts, which isn't really my thing - I guess I go more for abstract stuff rather than using fiddly miniatures. Of course, I could just use some of the vehicles as pawns or markers, I guess. I'll have to see if I can think anything up.

Monday, July 18, 2011

GDS - Europoly

I've got an entry in the newest BGDF design showdown after sitting the last one out.  We'll see how I do - it's a bit of a challenge, to make a Monopoly game that keeps the mechanics and pieces but is more "euro" and fun.  Of course, if people played original Monopoly like the rules say, they'd have more fun to begin with...

Monday, June 6, 2011

Good playtesting advice

Tom Gurganus interviewed Chad Ellis of Your Move Games, and Chad has some really good advice for getting useful playtests and also thinking realistically about how good your designs are.  Very good stuff. The company looks like it was founded in kind of the way I'm trying - some designers wanting to publish but not wanting to put up with all the trouble and crushed dreams of getting published by others.

Read it here.  There's an earlier part of the interview too, but this second part has the more interesting stuff design-wise.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Great article on design

I agree with nearly everything Matt Thrower says here, although the last point seems specific only to reviewers of games and not to designers. I think I follow most of his design advice, most of the time, but it's great to have an intelligent, well-written take on these concepts and to think them over again.

I particularly agree with his take on randomness - although I do love the elegance of a completely player-determined game, a random element makes for a whole lot of variety, as I've written about before.

Saturday, March 26, 2011

Writing Rules

There's an interesting discussion on what makes rules good over at BGG.  Lots of good ideas and useful observations there for people writing rules for their own games.  Also some differences of opinion - a lot of people seem to like Settlers of Catan's rules, which have an alphabetical section discussing various topics in the middle after the main rules.  I'm not opposed to a glossary or something like that, but the way Catan has it set up, I often find myself trying to remember what term a particular rule is listed under, which means I have to flip around through the alphabetical section to find the rule.  I'd much prefer to have all the rules listed in a structured way, where they relate to the part of the game being discussed, rather than alphabetically.

Friday, February 4, 2011

Interesting contest

Reader Wordman (a Shadowrun compadre from many years ago in college) directed me to the Thousand Year Game Design Challenge being run by Daniel Solis.  An interesting concept - create a game that will be playable and relevant for a thousand years.

That, of course, means that using cultural memes, metaphors, or current technologies is not a great idea.  To my way of thinking, actual current thousand-year games are mostly dice and boardgames like chess, go, ludo, backgammon, nine men's morris, mancala, etc - simple rules, abstract parts, but enough complexity to keep it interesting.  I guess it wouldn't need to be all boardgames, either - there's evidence of dice from thousands of years ago, and playing cards or the like have been around for a long time, so maybe those would work too.

A fun challenge. Maybe I'll try to put something together.  The deadline is the end of July.  The judges are Solis and his wife, and they seem to be fans of storytelling-style games, although I'm not sure that kind of game would fit this challenge.

They definitely state "unpublished," so given my current fiasco with SaltCON, I'll be careful...

Saturday, December 11, 2010

A look at the competition

Here's another game that's made it to Hippodice for 2011.  Looks pretty polished (and very Carcassone-like).  I really like the artwork; fanciful and clear, with neat colors.  No idea how it plays.

Looks like a very professional prototype, with a box, even.  Neat.  I may be outclassed there if the game is as polished as its presentation.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

New BGDF Showdown

A weird topic this month from the game design showdown at BGDF.  They want something that relates to the holidays, plus something that relates to internet spam, plus a dexterity component.

I can't think this will produce any games with any lasting appeal, but I'll try.  Hmm.  Maybe throwing green and red darts at meat substitute and then blogging about it?

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Dominant Species

Dominant Species is here - looks like it might compete thematically with my game Galapagos (which may have to be renamed given that there's a new game with that name out now), although the mechanics don't sound the same.  I'm not sure if similar themes mean we've both hit on a neat idea that will be really popular, or whether my creativity and marketability just got diluted by other similar games out there.  Hard to say - I'll have to see what this game is like.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Hippodice

One of the two games I entered in the Hippodice competition has made it through the first cut.  Yoggity didn't make the cut from 190 to 50, but they asked to see Diggity for the second round.  Pretty neat.  I'll see how it goes - the final results are in March.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Hercules: The Later Years - Rules

The following is my entry for the BGDF design showdown for October.  Enjoy...

Hercules: The Later Years


Story:

After his labors, Hercules rested on his laurels. Literally – he had a whole pile of laurels upon which to rest. But over time, his fame faded, and he’s now badly in need of drachmas to support his lavish demigod lifestyle. You are Hercules’ new agent, trying to find him some paying gigs that fit his skillset.

Parts:

  • 108 cards
  • Starter pawn
  • Game Board
  • 30 coins per player

Setup:

Give each player 10 coins. Place the other coins in reserve. Place the game board in the center of the table. Shuffle the cards and place them in a pile face down. The player most likely to have been sired by Zeus takes the starter pawn.

Turns:

Each turn has two phases described below.

Phase I: Card Auction

Draw one card from the deck per player in the game. All but one of these should be placed face up; the last should be face down and hidden from all players. So, if there are four players, turn three cards face up and place the fourth face down. These are the cards up for bid.
The player with the starter pawn bids first by placing as many coins as she wishes on top of one of the cards. Only one bid may be placed at a time, and a player may not refuse to bid. Bidding progresses around the table to the left. Each subsequent player may either bid on an unbid card or add coins to an already-bid card. For example, if Andromeda bids two coins on a Conquer card, and Antigone adds a coin to that card, Antigone’s total bid is three coins, and Andromeda’s bid is no longer valid.
Bidding continues until each card is allocated to a player. Players cannot change their bid amounts or switch cards unless outbid. When outbid, a player may request that her coins be refunded and replaced by the higher bidder.
When bids are resolved, each player must pay the total amount they bid to collect their card. Unused coins are returned to their owners.
Deadbeat Rule: If a player bids more coins than she has, the auction is cancelled and then repeated without the deadbeat player participating. The extra unbid card is discarded.

Phase II: Playing Cards

Beginning with the starting player and moving left, players may play their cards as follows:
Draw Cards: The player discards the draw card and takes the indicated number of new cards.
Object and Action cards: If a player has both an action (Conquer, Capture, Clean Out, Endorse) and an object (Used Chariot Dealership, Temple, Hydra, Politician), she may play them to make Hercules complete a task. The player discards the cards, takes a new coin of her color from the reserve, and places it on the game board at the appropriate spot for the action and the object.
Fees: Each action and object has a value associated with it. To determine the fee paid for the task, multiply the cards. For example, Capture has value 3 and Temple has value 2, so capturing the temple is worth 3x2=6 coins. A player who captures the temple collects a fee of 6 coins. Fees are printed on the board task spaces.
Repeating a task: The first time a task is completed, it requires only one action and one object card. Each subsequent time, the task costs one more of each. For example, the second time someone endorses a politician, it takes two Endorse cards and two Politician cards. The fee remains the same regardless of how often the task is completed. The player’s coin is placed on the board on top of any previous coins. Players may repeat tasks they’ve completed.
Bonus cards: Some action and object cards are marked double or triple. This means that they may count as more than one card when completing a task. The fee paid for the task remains the same. Players may “overpay” for a task.
Players may make as many plays as they wish. When all players have had one chance to play cards, the starter pawn goes to the next player, and a new Card Auction phase begins.

Victory:

The game ends when there are not enough cards in the deck for a full card auction. At that point, the game is scored as follows:
  • Each task completed – 1 point.
  • Most unspent coins – 2 points.
  • Each chain of coins across the board – 3 points. A chain is any unbroken string of coins which connects opposite sides of the board. The coins in a chain must be adjacent. Each individual coin may only be used in one chain.
The highest scoring player wins. For tiebreakers, use the most unspent coins and then the most unplayed cards.

    Monday, November 15, 2010

    BGDF October Showdown results

    Looks like I came in a close third of four.  A bit frustrating; this time around I actually designed the game pretty quickly after the contest parameters were announced, and I got a set of my game made by TheGameCrafter.com in time to test it out before the contest deadline.  My game is fun - my kids have asked to play it several times since we got it, and I've enjoyed it every time.

    Of course, tastes may vary, but both of the games ahead of me in the competition invoke a bunch of cards that are never shown, so you have no idea if the game will be balanced or how it will play.  The first place game is actually pretty similar to mine; there's a card auction, and you're trying to create tasks by bidding on cards.  The artwork for the few cards shown is top notch, and the game is described pretty well, but it's hard to know how it would actually play out without knowing the card distribution and card types.

    The 2nd place game shows only one card out of the 124 invoked in the rules.  The graphic design here is also good, although the board is mostly covered with little numbers.  I imagine it would be fun, but it's a little hard to know again because you don't see any of the parts.

    I guess I shouldn't get hung up on this - voting for anything is of course a bit hard to predict, and I'm just doing this for fun.  My game is good and works well; I have a few other ideas to make it even better, but it's a good time even in the early version, and it has pretty good replay value.

    I'll put the rules up here.  My artistic ability is a bit too crude for now, but maybe I can work on that part too and even release it.

    Thursday, November 11, 2010

    Ion Award competition

    Here's another competition of which I just recently learned.  Looks like a reasonable deal; you send them a description, they chose a subset of submitted games to test out, and then you get judged by a panel of game publishers.  It costs $10, and you can enter multiple times.

    The plusses would seem to be that you get judges who are within the industry and are actual publishers.  The $10 (plus postage) is cheap for this kind of thing.  Most of the European competitions and the Mensa competition here in the U.S. have pretty steep entry fees - in the case of Mensa, it's $200!  Fine if you're an established company, but pretty harsh on somebody self-funding.

    Anyway, I might send my two finished games in for this - it sounds like fun.  Not sure I could get to Utah on short notice, but it sounds like that's not mandatory.  I really appreciate these conventions being willing to sponsor design contests - it's a neat way to polish your products and maybe get some exposure if you do well.

    Wednesday, November 3, 2010

    October BGDF design showdown

    My entry is in.  An interesting contest assignment this month - the theme is Hercules and his labors, plus you have to use three of a list of common game mechanics together in one game.  I ended up with a fun one, I think.  I test-played it with my family, and it seemed to work pretty well (although I lost to my wife).

    More details on my entry when the voting closes - it has to be secret until then.  Woo.