Board Game Jam 2 and an Untitled Hacking Game

Play Testing at the Jam

So last weekend was the second Toronto Board Game Jam, and it was great. A lot of returning faces from the first jam, and plenty of new ones to join them. There’s been several write ups of the Jam already, so I don’t feel I need to cover that territory, and instead I’d like to discuss the game I created with Paul at the event.

Approach
We decided to avoid too much deliberation on the jam-day (which can eat in to your build time) and work out a concept a few days before. Paul and I sat down to discuss the theme (Science) and hash out mechanics. We wanted something easy to learn and quick to play, with minimal pieces to ensure we completed in time. Additionally, we wanted something where players directly interacted with each other, something which flexibly accommodated about 4 players, and with those restrictions, we went to work.

Randomness 3

Today’s almost over! Somewhere between some graphic design work and some programming, I almost forgot to write a post for today!

So I’ve talked about different methods of randomness, here and here, and gone over some of their strengths and weaknesses. But we come back to the ‘why’ of random. Why would you want to use randomness in a game?

Like I mentioned in my first post on the topic; randomness can influence the feeling of your game a lot, and games can be ultimately measured on a scale between ‘random’ and ‘deterministic’; whether it’s luck or the player that control the game’s outcome. Very rarely is any game truly random, but there are a number of purely deterministic ones. Determining where on this scale your game lies is a vital decision in the design process.

So why do we use random, and more importantly — where?

Randomness 2

So, in the last Randomness post I went over the consistency of dice and the closed system of cards. There’s more to say about both of them, but I’ll address those some other time.

Today, I want to talk about a few more kinds of randomness: pseudo random number generation and pseudo random determination.

Randomness 1

It’s Friday! Let’s talk about randomness; this is a lengthy topic, so I’ll be breaking it up in to a number of posts.

A lot of games incorporate ‘randomness’, unpredictability in order to make the efforts of the players innately risky. Games can often be measured on a spectrum as to how random they are, where on one end winning and losing is entirely unpredictable, and on the other end all elements are completely predictable and deliberate. Different levels of randomness can invoke different sensations in players, and can be very important for creating the right vibe for the game.

There’s a lot of methods used for creating randomness. Lots of games will use multiple methods for randomness in some regard in order to influence various portions of the game.

Review: Bang!

Bang! on Board game geek

Here’s a gem for the card game lover; Bang! is a excellent table top game for any collection, representing the inevitable shootout of any spaghetti western film. It’s a charming and fast paced game that has players making alliances and enemies based on guesses and luck, generally by liberal application of bullets.