Advanced Game Design – Analysing another board game

Hello!!

This is another Analyse of a board game my group and I played during this week. It’s the same assignment as the last one just with a different board game. So for this time we chose a game called Small World Underground which is a simpler strategy based game.

This is what the box looks like.

The game aims for players from eight years and older and can be played by two to five players. It takes from 30 minutes to play up to an hour and half. It’s actually not that different from “Dust” (the board game I analysed two weeks ago). It’s about collecting as many victory coins as you can in a determined amount of rounds by overtake areas on the board and defends them to keep a high income.

Small World Underground includes four maps on two double-sided boards, one for each of the possible amount of players. It contains 15 fantasy-themed Race banners with different creatures and ability’s with 179 Race tokens that matches the Race banners. 21 Special Power badges that can be combined with the Race banners. An amount of different game pieces each with a specified ability, 106 victory coins with four types of value, 1 custom Die with six sides (three sides are empty, three sides are marked by a value of one, two and three) and last one game turn marker for keeping track of what round you’re on.

Typical game session

The game starts by place out the board according to the amount of players, and then each player is handed victory coins with a total value of five. Then the player who last was in a cave or a cellar starts the round. The round is played clockwise and is played in the same order throughout the whole game. What the first player is doing is selecting one out of five Race-banners and Power-badges pre-combined lying on the table. This is the first tactical choice you make as you need to consider what type of race you want to start playing as (they all have different ability’s so it’s wise to choose one that fits whit your plan) and what you want your special-power shall be. In this phase you also have to consider the amount of Race-tokens you want as it is pre-set by adding the number on the Race-banner and the Power-badge together. The last of the things you need to consider before choosing your Banner and Badge is what the combo you want costs. The first of the five is free, the second cost one victory coin, the third costs two and so on. When one combo is chosen one victory coin shall be placed by the player on each of the cheaper combos. These coins will be given to any player who chooses the combo they are placed on.

One example of this first step of the game could be that the first player chose the third combo, which costs him or her two victory coins. These two coins are then placed on each of the cheaper combos. All combos that is more expensive move down one step to fill the gap and a new combo is placed on the table as there always have to be five pairs of combos. The next player chose the second combo and receives the coin placed on his or her Banner and Badge. The third player might choose the new third combo (the old fourth combo); he or she will have to pay two coins and place them on each of the cheaper combos and will not gain one coin as there is none on the current third combo. This goes on for the whole first turn and this method will be used for whenever a player chooses to play a new race.

When all players have chosen their race and the first turn is finished it’s the first players turn again. He or she now needs to decide between two things. First of the player can put his or her race in decline (I will explain that later) or to start conquering Regions. For this first round you will probably go for the conquering as this is the main income for your victory coins. By standard you can collect one victory coin for each area on the board that you have at least one of your Race tokens on. There is however some Race banners that allow you to collect more victory coins depending on how you have conquered; like what types of areas, if your areas are connected or if you have other player’s areas next to yours etc.

Every time you start conquering with a new race you need to start conquering from the edge of the board (including the water areas). When conquering areas you need either an amount of race tokens to take that area over or to roll the die if you don’t have enough. For the water areas you only need one token (but it needs to be moved at the moving phase), for a standard area you need two tokens, for special areas you need three tokens, and for areas occupied by monsters or other players you need one extra token for each monster or race token present in that area. When conquering an area the amount of tokens it takes to conquer that area needs to stay there until the moving phase. If your amount of race tokens isn’t enough to conquer an area and you’re three or less tokens short to conquer you can roll the dice to see if you will succeed anyway. By adding the numbers on the die with the amount of race tokens you have left you either succeed or not. To succeed the total value of tokens and the die you rolled needs to be higher than the amount of tokens it takes to conquer the area.

When you have conquered the areas that you can and want to take over, you’re entering your moving phase which is when you move your race tokens within the areas that you occupy. This can be used for defending the areas you own or in advance for next round as you may want to conquer more areas. To achieve your victory coins for your areas you need to have at least one token left in each area, so don’t abandon an area unless you have to or really want to (for tactics as an example).

When you have moved your race tokens and your round is finished (if there isn’t a special move or rule for your race that is) you can collect one victory coin for each area that you occupy, and additional victory coins as result of your Race, Special Power, Popular Places and/or Righteous Relic’s benefits. You can also collect one victory coin from each area of a race that you have put in decline.

Decline is, as mentioned before, a choice you can make at the beginning of your turn. When you have declined your race you aren’t allowed to do any movement or conquering for this round. By entering your race in decline you flip your Race banner and your Special power over and these are no longer benefitting you (except for some special powers that still will have effect after declined). You also flip one Race token for each area you occupy and remove all other tokens of the race you’re putting in decline. For this round you still collect one victory coin for each area you own, but you don’t receive the bonus from your Race, your Special Power, Popular places and/or Righteous Relic’s unless they state otherwise but then it’s over. When it’s your turn again you shall choose one of the five combos placed on the table (just like in the first round when you selected race for the first time. They still cost you more or less depending on their placed order. When you start a new race you shall start conquering from the edge of the board.

The tactic is to defend your declined race with your new one as you will still gain victory coins from those areas you occupy with declined race tokens. You can only have one declined race and on active race at a time so you need to consider declining your race or not as you lose all your declined areas when selecting a new race for the third (or more) time.

The game ends when the Game turn marker has reached the last spot on the Game Turn track and all players have completed their last turn. The victory coins is revealed to everyone and counted. The player with the highest value in victory coins is the winner of the game. If there is a tie between two or more players the player with most Race tokens, both active and in decline, in the board wins. The rulebook doesn’t tell who wins if the amount of victory coins is the same and the amount of race tokens is the same between the players, so I’m going to assume that in that case it is a tie.

This is a pic from mid-game of the play session

The best part of the game

The best part of the game would be the high replay value. The amount of different combinations between Races banners and Special Power badges is allowing for a different game session every time. The game change by having different maps (by playing a different amount of players) which also adds a lot to the replay value, as there are new worlds to play in. It’s simply a different game every time you want to play, which in the board game genre is something rare.

The worst part of the game

The worst part would be the goal of the game. The game has a really flat basic goal; which is to collect as many victory points as you can. This isn’t something new or special in the history of board games. I’m not saying the victory coins-system should be removed as they have an interesting interaction with the rest of the game, just that the relationship between victory coins and the goal of the game seems boring and could have been improved a lot with missions or objectives for the players.

The core system of the game

The core system of Small World Underground would be the conquer system as it is by conquering new areas and then defend them you receive the victory coins (the actual goal of the game). So as better you are at conquering and defending areas the grater the chance of you winning. I considered the victory coins to be the core system at first, but I think that the victory coin system can easily be replace by switching to another goal of the game, like having a “mission” for each player (like in risk), for example they maybe need take over all areas of a specified type, defeat all monsters or take out another player etc. This type of play style can also replace the Turn marker and the Turn marker track as the player to first complete his or hers “mission” will win. If this was an included system in the game I would say that this would be the core system, but as it isn’t I still state that the conquering system is the core of this game. There is also a lot of smaller system that is related to the conquering system, such as some Race banners and Special Power badges is directly related to what to conquering and how etc.

The most interesting system of the game

The most interesting system would be the Race banners and Special Power badges, as they have a really high amount of different combinations making them really interesting. As you choose a new combination you need to consider so many things, adding depth to the gameplay and makes players have a higher amount of tactical choices. It also adds to the most interesting system as you might need to spend victory points to get to play the race with the special power you want.

The target group interpretation                 

The recommended age for this game is (as I mentioned earlier) eight and older. I think this actually is a good recommended age as for first of; the aesthetics of the game really suits a younger age with the cartoony art style. But it also suits for an eight year old as it isn’t too complex to play and pretty easy to follow along, there are some minor parts that might be too complex though like understanding all the races ability’s and what the special powers brings to you and how you shall apply that in your tactics. Even though the game targets for such a young audience it doesn’t mean it gets boring for older players as the game have such interesting systems in it.

Summation

I think overall this game was real great; it was funny and not too complex to understand how to play without getting boring and actually offers a wider range of tactical choices and play styles. Some systems of the game can be change though like the goal of the game. I would much rather see an object or mission you have to complete instead of just collecting victory points in a pre-set amount of rounds. It might be getting a bit too hard or complex for the youngest players but I absolutely think it should be an option to the current goal of the game.

Until next time; take care!
-Lui

Advanced game design – playing boardgames n’ stuff

Hello!

Along with the 3D course we will also study Advanced Game Design for this semester. For starters in the game design course we had to play and analyse a board game of our own choice and its system. and for you who know me, I just picked one at random, and here we are with one of the most complex board games I have ever seen. hope you can follow along!!

Heres a fancy picture of how the box look.

About the game.

My group and I choose a strategic board game called “Dust”.  At first it looked pretty similar to “Risk”; the board itself contains an image of the world map with areas evenly placed over it and the box contains a lot of figurines in different colours that acts like your armies. The gameplay itself is about fighting other player’s armies by rolling dices to see who wins each battle for taking over and defending areas. The main difference from Risk is that this game also has strategy-cards with special ability’s that will help you in in different ways in the game. And it has a more strategically depth than Risk as you can affect the game play by changing the players order, plan on playing offensive or defensive etc. Also in Dust you win by having the highest score after any player have reached a certain score and not by dominating the world. So it’s more about defending and keeping your score-incomes to climb the scores to victory than playing offensive and own as much as you can.

The best and worst part.

The worst part of the game is the rulebook. First of there is two rule books in the box, and nowhere to be found it tells the differences between them except for how long time they each take to play. The first one is called “premium version rulebook” and the other one is called “epic version rulebook” so not even the names gives it away .You’ll simply have to read them both (and they’re about 24 pages each) to understand the differences. Except for the rules making the game actually being two different games with no separate definitions, the rules are hard to understand. As we played we had several situations with rules conflicting on how to do something, which means the rules aren’t finished or doesn’t cover all possible situations that can occur in a game session.

The best part of the game was that once you actually get the hang of how it is played and can concentrate on the strategic part it opens up for a lot of different tactics. The cards are a big part of the game and if you get the good ones and play them right it will have a huge effect on your scoreboard.

One other nice feature is that the playing order is changing depending on what card you play each round (the cards have numbers printed on them, and the person with the highest numbers starts for that round), so again, the tactics in this game are very deep, and everything is depending to how you choose to play.

Core system

The core game system of “Dust” would be the cards, they control who starts each round letting you play with more tactical options. The cards have a number printed on them (this number also tells you how many attacks you can do, but I will cover that soon) and the player with the highest number will be the first for that round followed by the player who had the second highest number and so on setting the player order. If two players have the same number on their cards they continue to the movement number on their card and compare them letting the highest number play first. If the moving number is the same as well, the cards with most tie-breaker-stars plays first (the stars is printed at the bottom of the card). After the playing order has been set, anyone having a “Koshka” (the name of the card) card can interrupt and change the playing order by getting in between two players turns for that round. This card is played as a second card but must be played at this time.

Using cards as special ability’s

When it’s your turn you have the choice to play a second card, each card have special ability that improves your choice of tactics by in one or other way give you a favour in the game depending on the card. There is for example there is these cards I mentioned where you plays your turn in between two other players, there is cards giving you a second chance by letting you re-roll dices, there is cards giving you more troops, letting you do special attacks, making another player your ally, letting you force other players troops to move etc. If two players plays cards that are conflicting with each other the card with the highest tie-breaker-stars wins.

Using card to produce

The card you choose when It’s your turn also controls the amount of points you can use to build new troops. By adding points from your capital and your production centres to the number on your played card you get the total of how many points you can spend on building units or more production centres, or, if you want to you can use them to pick up more cards. There is a five cards limit on how many you can have on your hand (with exception for the very first round when you have six). If you forget to pick up new cards and have none left for the next round you won’t be able to move or attack for that round, so it’s important to remember checking the amount of cards you have for the coming round and buy more if it’s not enough.

Using cards for movement

The played card also controls the amount of movements you are able to do for each round. You can see how many movements you can do by the printed number on the card. It’s in this phase where you make your choice by placing your armies to either reinforce and defending a point or by make your attack units stronger with moving in more units. The movements can also be used to take over land or sea areas that are unoccupied to give you advantage in the victory-points-phase where you can get bonus points from owning most land, water, power sources, capitals or production buildings.

You can always move as long as you please and as long as the two points are connected by your own units. There are some movements you can’t do though and that are when you want to transfer your land or air units over sea and the point where you want to put them down on are a sea area.

Using cards for combat

The card also controls the amount of attacks you can do for this round. The attacks can be done against any other player who has his or hers units next to yours (unless you or the other player have used a “Diplomat”-card that’s makes you allies). There are different types of combats.

First of there is the standard combat where two land-armies are attacking each other, and where the person with the highest tactical supremacy rolls the dices first (if the two players have the same tactical supremacy the defending army rolls the dices first). The tactical supremacy is defined by what units the player is using for the combat. Then there are special combats, and that’s when there are submarines included in a combat. Submarines can attack land without the defending player is allowed to roll any dices. Submarines can attack other submarines and then both players roll their dices at the same time. And then there is when a submarine is attacked by a bomber and then the defending player isn’t allowed to roll any dices.

Except for those types of attacks I mentioned, there is more special attacks you can do but not including units. You can use a card that lets you drop a bomb, gas other units out or in other actions interacts with the other player’s units.

There is in total 45 cards with different building, movement, combat points and tie-breaking-stars, and these can have 11 different special ability’s that each have separate rules applying to them on when they can be played and what effect they will have, what other players will have to do or isn’t allowed to do.

The best system in this game

The most interesting system in this game would be the victory points system as it tells who wins the whole game. The goal in the game is to collect as many of these points as you can before the game ends. After a certain amount of points (30 points if you’re five to six players, 40 points if you’re three to four players and 60 points if you’re two players) have been reached by any player it ends the game.

At the beginning of the game everyone puts a tank one the score-board and as the game proceeds you can gain points in various ways and move your tank up the score-board. At the end of each round when all players have taken their turns there is the victory-point-phase and that’s when you count and gain your points.

For starting everyone will gain a point for each capital they own. Then everyone will get a point for each power-source they have, then the player who owns most factory’s gain a point, then the player who own most land-areas will get one, and the player who owns most sea-areas.

As the victory-points is what the game is all about it keeps the game going. Players who doesn’t have as many “victory-points” sources will try to take over areas from the other players, and as me and my group played we could tell that players being behind ganged up against the winning player to slow him down from reaching the end-game-score and give the other losing players more victory-points. This is considered as a negative feedback-loop, and is great for a more even end score.

Target group interpretation

On the box there is only an age recommendation at +12 so I’m going to write what I think should be the target audience for this game. It would probably be for people who enjoy planning and strategy tasks, as you play against other people and you’ll have to play your cards right in order to be successful and win. And as the rules are pretty complex, each round is slow-paced, and there is a lot you as a player need to have control over and remember I would recommend this game for someone a bit older and mature so 12 is probably a good age to set the lower age at.

Summary

Overall I enjoyed playing Dust; it’s a game where competition really strikes. The many tactical options you’re allowed to do as a player is in one way very demanding on your focus on the game, but at  the same time, when you have played it for a few times you can use it against you opponents as there is just too much to control at once letting you surprise them. As the game is very hard to follow and its complexity all along for the first few times I would recommend this game to players who can give a few hours to even start playing it. For us it took just above two hours the first time just setting up the game, understanding what to do and what you can do etc. so as I said, I enjoyed the game and think other will as well, just give it a little time. But if you want a fast, simple game that can be played under one or two hours, choose another game to play.

Well, that’s all folks! until next time, take care!

-Lui