Yeah it's solid, one of the best worker placement gamesCrunchums wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 7:03 pmi feel youDoug wrote:I dunno, maybe I oversimplify things, but, for me, I just don't want to play multiplayer chess by accident
Or, better example, Blokus. Great game, but I don't want to play it by accident
I'm OK playing it on purpose, sometimes
have you ever played Caylus?
game design
it is hard
Moderator: Doug
Re: game design
It's your turn in Cthulhu Wars
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars
http://devilsbiscuit.com/
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars
http://devilsbiscuit.com/
Re: game design
I think we're all on the same page where, the kind of uncertainty from not knowing if you're going to draw a burn spell or a land next turn has a distinction from not knowing if your burn spell is going to deal 1 or 4 damage.KingRamz wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 7:00 pm
I'm kind of skeptical of this reasoning as applied to MtG. I mean, Magic FEELS better than Hearthstone in that I usually know exactly what my cards are going to do. But I can still get into a situation where (for example) I'm dead to a flyer next turn, I topdeck a draw spell, and I have an equal chance of drawing Shock or Disfigure but I leave up the wrong color of mana and die. And that example is just draw variance/randomness following a decision I made in a single turn - there are situations where I can choose different strategic lines of play over multiple turns based on what I might draw, and then draw the thing that I needed for the other line.
Re: game design
Less vicious than Agricola!
It's your turn in Cthulhu Wars
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars
http://devilsbiscuit.com/
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars
http://devilsbiscuit.com/
Re: game design
gameplay can emerge from the latter, and not the former (unless you have meta die-modifying abilities)
Re: game design
Yeah, that seems right. Magic does this sort of thing occasionally with coinflips or (in silver-border land) dice rolling, but the cards aren't really pushed the way effects like that are in HS. Though, how do you feel about this card?Aeldaar wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 7:04 pmI think we're all on the same page where, the kind of uncertainty from not knowing if you're going to draw a burn spell or a land next turn has a distinction from not knowing if your burn spell is going to deal 1 or 4 damage.KingRamz wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 7:00 pm
I'm kind of skeptical of this reasoning as applied to MtG. I mean, Magic FEELS better than Hearthstone in that I usually know exactly what my cards are going to do. But I can still get into a situation where (for example) I'm dead to a flyer next turn, I topdeck a draw spell, and I have an equal chance of drawing Shock or Disfigure but I leave up the wrong color of mana and die. And that example is just draw variance/randomness following a decision I made in a single turn - there are situations where I can choose different strategic lines of play over multiple turns based on what I might draw, and then draw the thing that I needed for the other line.
Spoiler!
Re: game design
I feel wizard fashion has come a long way
Re: game design
the clash mechanic from Lorwyn.
competitive d&d from the 1970s?
You are in error, no-one is screaming, thank you for your cooperation.
Re: game design
Totally agree, this is a good point, and it's interesting to try to think about why that is.
Re: game design
It's funny to me to talk about how Magic is fine but dice are objectionable when you remember that sometimes in Magic, one of the players does not really get to play whatsoever
It's your turn in Cthulhu Wars
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars
http://devilsbiscuit.com/
It's your turn in Squirrel Wars
It's your turn in Demon Wars
It's your turn in Wall Street Wars
http://devilsbiscuit.com/
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- Attaboy! You finished my labyrinth and I'm proud of you!
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Re: game design
I feel like my dog when he has a great tasting treat but can't bury it due to hardwood floors.Aeldaar wrote: ↑Wed Oct 17, 2018 5:57 pm a lot of games try to include some mechanic to break up set openings and play patterns, because otherwise you have a sirlin game. In these kinds of games, the better player can almost always leverage their superior knowledge to beat the weaker player, and then the weaker player stops playing and the game dies. Two major ways to handle this are randomness and variance
randomness is when the player makes a decision, and then the outcome of that decision depends on a dice roll or other percentile method. This disrupts strategies because they may or may not work; the player is meant to figure out changing probabilities and find the most likely path to success. This generally leads to casual party games where the outcome is not overly dependent on player decisions, like Machi Koro and Sandy Peterson's Cthulhu wars.
variance is better represented by a deck of cards, where the uncertainty happens before the player's decisions. This still leaves outcomes somewhat out of the player's reach depending on what they draw next turn, but in general a player is much more in control of making good decisions using shifting information. I find netrunner corporation decks show this very well; depending on the distribution of agendas drawn the corp needs to value different servers much differently in their opening when deciding where to place ice.
Chess is a very "serious" or "competitive" game because of the somewhat unique quirks of perfect information and deterministic play. It would be very hard to introduce a new game with those attributes in current times and have it catch on. Poker, texas hold 'em in particular, also works as a serious game despite having uncertainty and positions where the player engages with randomness, because of the ongoing stakes between hands.
Another way to introduce uncertainty is having randomness be tied to player dexterity or other skill. First person shooters use this with headshot mechanics, and magic the gathering experimented with chaos orb. You could also use bidding mechanics like netrunner's psi games that allow psychology to play a large part in determining outcomes. But any game where the player makes a decision and then rolls to see if it worked or not cannot be seriously competitive
We either need a front page or a FORUM DUMP thread. This is an awesome post but I have no where to put it... :oops:
27/50 states of cats on keyboards
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Re: game design
i have check it out and am going to read itCrunchums wrote:looks like my library system has a copy
u gotta skate
Re: game design
this is a really cool article from grinding gear games (path of exile) about creating an action rpg end game and how to deal with / how they had to deal with players deliberately sabotaging their own experience because of "content difficulty entitlement." def a sort of negative thing to identify, but through good game design and self reflection it did turn out to be something of a design flaw on the part of the developers, and something that can be / could be overcome. this article is old but this seems to be something that permeates. it has been coming up a lot lately again because path of exile put a new system into the game that no casual players seems to understand that is gated for their own well being
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2071848Players would finish the Merciless difficulty level and were excited to play in the Maelstrom of Chaos [the end game]. Because the areas were connected together, they could easily skip the first ones by running through them to get to the harder content. This was fine when the players were able to handle the harder content, but it failed in reality. Players would watch streamers and get the impression that everyone was farming the hardest Maelstrom areas, so they'd rush there themselves and fail to kill anything. Many players expressed vocal concerns that the game was so unforgiving and difficult, despite the fact that there were easier areas to play while working up to the hard ones.
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but her heart is still the same
size it was before - Posts: 12359
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Re: game design
here's a game design question: in tragedy looper, the mastermind has the advantage of knowing all the hidden information. What major advantage to the protagonists have? (there's goodwill abilities, but there's another big one)
Spoiler!
Re: game design
i don't have it or a copy of the rules any more. but it wasn't very complicated. apart from using the stack because in middle school mostly i had just played magic. soKhaos wrote:tell me about your worms board game. or even post the rulebook. i am intrigued by it
there's a square grid, and 2-4 players start in the corners. that is, they have a piece (of paper, with "P" written on it) that is "them". you win by being the last person alive.
there's a shared deck of cards. everyone starts with iirc 7 cards, and draws 1 card at the start of their turn. some of them can be played at instant speed, others only at sorcery speed.
iirc your turn is like you can play cards and you have to move once. so obvious question, what are the cards. well most of them are just like worm things. things i remember:
shock (instant) = dig. blows up everything adjacent to you. diagonal is adjacent and everything can move diagonally. "blow up" means put a lightning bolt (one of the kinds of objects) in every adjacent square and then remove them. but like there's a state based effect where if two things are in the same square, they both die; that's how you kill other people, is by hitting them with things. oh also you can use a shock to block a shock from killing you
zap = rocket spike. places a lightning bolt (which has a direction). at the start of your turn turn it moves in the direction it's pointing. i think just memory probably to keep track of who owned what, heh.
hole (instant) = put a hole somewhere (essentially a zergling; it sits there and doesn't move)
3 holes (instant) = put 3 holes anywhere. there are rarities, so hole is common and therefore has more copies in the deck than 3 holes, which is uncommon
darkness = target players skips their next turn, but draws cards equal to the number of players in the game. mostly you should play this on yourself
counter = i think this was like, it stays out and counters the next card played. maybe the person who played the card got to draw a card? i dunno
magnet (instant) = move anything one square
titan = put a titan next to you. titans move in any direction of your choice at the start of your turn. when they leave a square they leave a hole in it
i think there was a rare that's like the corsair one where it puts lightning bolts surrounding you pointing outward? not sure
anyway like actual worms, the best way to play is to play as few cards as possible. you've got to play some because of maximum hand size (7). and it's pretty silly because trying to kill people is like, you're next to a hole? magnet that hole into you. in response, hole that hole (flavor fail, heh) to fizzle the magnet. so like probably if you play to win it's this miserable game of attrition that takes forever. but people had fun with it. it feels silly because now i try to make games and never come up with anything that's worth playing at all, but middle-school me succeeded. mostly by straight ripping off a pre-existing thing though, heh
u gotta skate
Re: game design
i dont think getting inspiration from other games count as ripping things off. i wonder if we could modify it to make it better
when you move do you leave a hole behind you
when you move do you leave a hole behind you
Re: game design
literally the only thing blizzard has done as a company is rip people off
Re: game design
that sounds right, but what rts was before warcraft
Re: game design
dune ii, by a little studio called westwood ... studios.Khaos wrote:that sounds right, but what rts was before warcraft
Re: game design
actually while we're in the game design thread, here's an excellent first hand account of the creation of warcraft [orcs and humans]
https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-ma ... aft-part-1
https://www.codeofhonor.com/blog/the-ma ... aft-part-1
Re: game design
i was thinking how to turn worms (basically multiplayer snake) into a board game and i was thinking the best way thing to replace the dexterity aspect of it would be to have some sort of delayed movement. so if someone cut you off, you couldn't just immediately turn away unharmed. and you could be rewarded for predicting enemy movement
so i was thinking, a big board of hexagons, and your worm head would have a direction pointer on it. you have an infinite amount of the following move cards available: move forward, turn 60deg right and move forward, and turn 60degrees left and move forward
you would start the game by queuing 3 cards (place them face down on a track in front of you, but then on following turns, everyone would simultaneously resolve the first movement in their queue (turn it face up, do the thing, then discard the card), place a worm body token in the space they just left, and then add a new movement to their queue
then for actions, i was thinking you could have both, queued actions and instant actions. queued actions would be played face down with your move action, and slide along and resolve the same way. maybe they would be things like "hairpin turn, rotate an additional 60 degrees in the direction this card moves" or " speed boost, move an additional space after resolving your move card"
offensive actions would be, like in your game, "dig, deal 1 damage to things in range 1 of you (worm heads, worm bodies, rocket spikes, etc.)
the questions then become
how do you get action cards
how do you incentivise players to use them and not hoard the good ones
how do you score points and encourage players to engage each other, without having people suiciding into each other or just hiding as the optimal strategy
so i was thinking, a big board of hexagons, and your worm head would have a direction pointer on it. you have an infinite amount of the following move cards available: move forward, turn 60deg right and move forward, and turn 60degrees left and move forward
you would start the game by queuing 3 cards (place them face down on a track in front of you, but then on following turns, everyone would simultaneously resolve the first movement in their queue (turn it face up, do the thing, then discard the card), place a worm body token in the space they just left, and then add a new movement to their queue
then for actions, i was thinking you could have both, queued actions and instant actions. queued actions would be played face down with your move action, and slide along and resolve the same way. maybe they would be things like "hairpin turn, rotate an additional 60 degrees in the direction this card moves" or " speed boost, move an additional space after resolving your move card"
offensive actions would be, like in your game, "dig, deal 1 damage to things in range 1 of you (worm heads, worm bodies, rocket spikes, etc.)
the questions then become
how do you get action cards
how do you incentivise players to use them and not hoard the good ones
how do you score points and encourage players to engage each other, without having people suiciding into each other or just hiding as the optimal strategy
Re: game design
making some things simultaneous and double-blind seems naturalKhaos wrote:i was thinking how to turn worms (basically multiplayer snake) into a board game and i was thinking the best way thing to replace the dexterity aspect of it would be to have some sort of delayed movement. so if someone cut you off, you couldn't just immediately turn away unharmed. and you could be rewarded for predicting enemy movement
i tried to make a game in this vein recently. it was like everyone repeatedly double-blinded their movement + maybe a spell. i even built it and played it! my conclusion was that keeping track of all of the movement of the non-player things was too fiddly and annoying - most of the game was spent resolving that instead of playing - and that it would be better as a video game instead. maybe if you could somehow make it interesting where the non-player things mostly didn't move, so there was less to keep track of?so i was thinking, a big board of hexagons, and your worm head would have a direction pointer on it. you have an infinite amount of the following move cards available: move forward, turn 60deg right and move forward, and turn 60degrees left and move forward
u gotta skate
Re: game design
the queueing idea is interesting. whenever i have that idea i always wonder whether it would actually be fun, or whether it actually just feels dumb when you queue something and then get wrecked somehow. i think 1) the queueing shouldn't be too deep (i.e. far into the future) 2) your idea of instant actions on top of it makes it better
my first thought is, you get a fixed set of stuff at the start and either that's it or there's some way to occasionally get more. and you just have the board be small so that even if i try to just hide, space will run out pretty quickly and i have to do something
my first thought is, you get a fixed set of stuff at the start and either that's it or there's some way to occasionally get more. and you just have the board be small so that even if i try to just hide, space will run out pretty quickly and i have to do something
u gotta skate
Re: game design
you could have actions of different speeds! slow gets played with/on your move card, fast gets played at the same time, but is placed on the earlier move card in your queue, and instant would be two down the queue (and so is played next turn with your move card)
Re: game design
you could do it hunger games style and spawn boxes near the center, as a means to get more powerful actionsCrunchums wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2019 2:42 am the queueing idea is interesting. whenever i have that idea i always wonder whether it would actually be fun, or whether it actually just feels dumb when you queue something and then get wrecked somehow. i think 1) the queueing shouldn't be too deep (i.e. far into the future) 2) your idea of instant actions on top of it makes it better
my first thought is, you get a fixed set of stuff at the start and either that's it or there's some way to occasionally get more. and you just have the board be small so that even if i try to just hide, space will run out pretty quickly and i have to do something
Re: game design
it being a pain to manage npc makes sense. we could minimize those
in the nick of time
movement Action
Instant - Reverse the rotation of your move card this turn
delay that order
movement Action
Fast - Before you reveal your move card, switch it with the move card next in your queue
munch
common action (infinite pool of these)
deal two damage to whatever is directly in front of you after moving
wiggle
Common action
take a worm body connected to you only on one side and move it to a new space that is still connected to you
munch and crunch
action
slow - deal two damage to whatever is directly in front of you before and after moving
stop and think
action
slow - dont move this turn
tongue lash
common action
Slow - deal a damage to the first thing in the path in front of you, after moving
maybe i should make a thread
in the nick of time
movement Action
Instant - Reverse the rotation of your move card this turn
delay that order
movement Action
Fast - Before you reveal your move card, switch it with the move card next in your queue
munch
common action (infinite pool of these)
deal two damage to whatever is directly in front of you after moving
wiggle
Common action
take a worm body connected to you only on one side and move it to a new space that is still connected to you
munch and crunch
action
slow - deal two damage to whatever is directly in front of you before and after moving
stop and think
action
slow - dont move this turn
tongue lash
common action
Slow - deal a damage to the first thing in the path in front of you, after moving
maybe i should make a thread