Review: The Resistance

The Resistance has missions they must accomplish, but unbeknownst to them there are spies among their organization who are out to foil their plans.  Each side (spies and resistance) has 5 chances to achieve their own goals, the side that achieves their goal 3 times out of those 5 chances wins the game.

At the beginning of the game, players are given a card that determines whether they are part of the resistance, one of the spies, or the mission leader (the mission leader will also get a spy/resistance role card after he reveals he is a mission leader).  Just like in the beginning of Mafia, all players close their eyes and all the spies reveal themselves to each other so they know who they are working with.

The mission leader chooses a set number of players (based on which mission number they are on) to go on a mission.  All the players then vote on whether they approve of the team or not.  If the team is denied, the current mission leader passes that responsibility (and its card) to the player on their left and players repeat this process until a team is approved.

Once a team is approved, each team member gets a mission fail and mission success card.  They pass one of their choice to the  mission leader and the others go in a discard pile.  Resistance members MUST pass a success to the  mission leader, spies can choose either one.  Once all cards are distributed, the mission leader reveals them.  In 4 out of 5 of the missions, a single fail card revealed will be a success for the spies, otherwise the resistance wins.  The other mission requires to fail cards to fail the mission.  This cycle continues until one side has 3 victories.

This game is a very quick 30 minute game for 5-10 people (best with 7 players).  This game plays like a mix between Mastermind and Mafia.  There are relatively clear strategies/methods to figure out who is on which side, but just as many methods of deceiving each other.  I'm not sure how well this game would hold up if you played with the same group of friends repeatedly, but I guess that's a general problem with games of this sort, like Bang and Mafia.

Review: Dixit

One of the few games I remember my mom playing with us kids was Balderdash.  In that game, one player draws a card with a rarely used word and its definition, other players write down their own definitions of the word, all definitions are revealed and players vote one what they think is the real word.  Players score points if they can trick others into choosing their definition and if they vote for the actual definition.

Dixit is essentially the exact same game, but instead of words and their definitions, players have beautifully drawn cards and a story to tell.  One player is the Storyteller.  They select one of their six cards, they tell a very brief story (it can be a sentence, a word, or even a noise), and every other player picks one of their card that best matches that story.  All the selected cards are shuffled and revealed and all players except the Storyteller vote on which one they think is the Storyteller's card.  If at least one, but not all players select the Storyteller's card, the Storyteller scores some points.  Other players score points for choosing the Storyteller's card and having their card selected.

I'm not sure what exactly it is, but I just suck at this game.  I can't seem to figure out how to do well.  My stories are either too obvious or too vague and I can never seem to guess the correct card when I'm not the Storyteller.  So this isn't one of my favorite games, but everyone else I've played this with seems to love it.  For me personally, this is not a game I choose to play often, but that is in no part a fault of the game.

Review: Bananagrams

If Scrabble and Speed had a child, it would be Bananagrams.  Play is quick and frantic as players try to use all their tiles to form their own personal Scrabble board.  The game starts with players taking a set number of tiles based on the number of players.  At the yell of "Split!", players reveal all their tiles and try to form them into a crossword-looking set of words that crisscross each other.  Once a player has used all of their tiles, they say "Peel!" and every player (including that one) must draw another tile.  If a player wants to get rid of a tile they can't play (say an X, a Q, or a Z), they can say "Dump" to put that tile back in the shared pile and draw three more tiles.  Once someone says "Peel!" when there are no more tiles to draw, the game ends.  All other players inspect that player's board.  If there is any mistake, that player loses and play continues until there is a winner.

I have only played this game once, so maybe I just don't quite understand things quite well, but it seems to me that there is no limit to the number of times you can dump tiles, so it seems like you can just repeatedly dump early on to have a much larger batch of tiles to work with.  This game also has the same problem I have with Scrabble and its nonsense words (especially the two letter words like Qi, El, Za, etc.).  But I guess this just means when I beat you with a whole board filled with real words, it will be that much more satisfying.

Dynamic History in Games

I have a friend who is currently on an MMO run, jumping from one to the next, looking for the next Everquest (his personal favorite from the sounds of it).  Personally, I have only played two MMOs, World of Warcraft (thanks to a 7 day trial combined with a Christmas week off) and Star Wars the Old Republic (because it's Bioware and Star Wars).  Posting my thoughts on those games are two whole other posts, but the reason I bring it up is because there was one experience I had early on in my WoW time that I think should be built off of that only MMOs really have a chance of achieving.

For those who don't know World of Warcraft, players play for one of two factions, The Alliance or the Horde.  On a Player vs. Environment (PvE) server like I prefer, this really doesn't show itself in any way since players can't randomly attack each other.  However, if you attack an NPC from the opposing faction, you are open to be attacked.  Early on, players would organize raids on the enemy towns to try to wipe out all the NPCs.  The alarm was usually raised fairly quickly and a defending force of players would be rallied to defend the low level players trying to quest through the area.  There is no real benefit to this for the attacking players other than for funsies messing with the other team, but I think there should be.

One thing MMOs have going for them is the ability to emulate massive scale wars that players can take a part in.  This only really works if there is any lasting effect of the war.  So if attacking an enemy town will either wipe it out or take it over (thus increasing the size of your empire), the game can start to build a history.  If you take this a step further and allow factions to be completely destroyed and new ones made, you can completely emulate the rise and fall of great empires.  Obviously, this would have to be regulated in some way or another (for example, what happens if you were offline when your empire fell?  Is your character from that empire able to start a rebellion of some sort or is it converted to the conquering empire?).  Due to the persistence of MMOs, the NPCs would have to get involved in some way so that players can actually maintain lives outside of the MMO without worrying about their faction being lost while they were gone.

Adding in systems that allow a dynamic history like this would give a game the ability to have events with the impact of the The Cataclysm of WoW without having to spend developer time to manufacture it and let the game manufacture the massive events themselves.  It also gives players a wonderful reason to work together on a global scale that makes the world feel even more massive than it already is.

Review: Dungeons and Dragons Adventure Board Games

Wizards of the Coast has released three different board games (well, really one game with three different settings) that are essentially D&D Lite - Castle Ravenloft, Legend of Drizzt, and Wrath of Ashardalon.  These games have the same feel as Descent: Journeys in the Dark, but instead of one player versus the rest, these games are entirely cooperative.  They split up control of the monsters/adventure between players so everyone is involved and the adventure is even more of a team event.

The game starts with players selecting an adventure to go on with its own setup, goals, and villains.  Then they each select one of the five heroes to play.  Each hero has a whole slew of abilities that they must trim down to their starting set.  With the board and heroes all set up, any player can start the game (usually the fighter-type character should start).  On every turn, players can either move and attack, attack and move, or move twice.  If the players end their turn on an unexplored edge of a tile, they reveal another tile and a new monster (they might also have an encounter).  If they did not explore, then they draw an encounter card (which are usually pretty rough for the players).  That player then activates the monsters they control (such as they one they might have revealed on their turn) and play continues clockwise until the players achieve their victory condition or one character has no health left and there are no health surges (extra lives) left.

One of the first complaints most D&D players have with this game is that the monsters almost always get an attack off on the players before they can do anything.  However, if players got to attack first, this game would be way too easy.  As it is, they are perfectly challenging games.  I have yet to play a game where a player has not had 0 health and had to use a health surge.  There is a good balance between randomness and protection from losing/winning streaks on rolls.

My only problem with the game is that since everyone is working together, it's very easy to interpret rule ambiguities in the players favor, which sometimes felt like cheating to me.  For example, monsters generally move from one tile to another, but on each tile are 16 squares that they can be placed on.  I couldn't find any rule that says which square they should go on and having them adjacent to heroes will change what attack they do on subsequent turns, so deciding which square a monster should go on is up to the players and can drastically alter the difficulty of the game.  (My friends and I have made a house ruling that monsters will go on the monster spawn points on each tile when they enter a tile from moving so it's always a set location.)

All in all, if you don't have time or a DM for a proper D&D romp, these are a nice alternative with quests taking a couple hours each and an option to play a campaign of multiple quests.

What Got Me Into Games

The Extra Credits group had a Q&A panel at PAX where the question was raised to each of them, "What game or experience made you decide to make games your career?"  I thought that was a very thought provoking question, so I've decided I'm going to answer it myself.  I was very blessed to have parents who introduced me to games when I was little (or maybe lucky to have older brothers who requested things when I was still tiny/non-existent).  My first console was the Atari and my first computer was an Apple IIe.  Also, during elementary school, my mom was in charge of the carpool area (making sure kids found their parents and vice versa) so I had to stay late after school with nothing to do.  Fortunately, I was allowed to play the educational games our computer area had.  I think these games - Think Quick, Midnight Rescue, and Challenge of the Ancient Empire - fostered in me the idea that games can be educational AND fun.  With the Mac IIsi came World Builder, which helped me learn how to build and design simple graphic adventure games.  After that came Marathon, whose physics/game editor started to teach me how parts of game systems work and how they interact.  I think all of those, combined with my desire to tell a story like all the RPGs I played growing up (especially Chrono Trigger), are really what made me want to make video games to tell a story, improve peoples' lives in some way, and to make them happy by letting them have fun.

However, I've also had a strong desire to make board games that currently outweighs my desire to make video games.  Board games are capable of achieving those same goals I wanted to achieve with video games (and still do), but games like Fireball Island also taught me that board games can come with some really awesome pieces.  There's something about the physicality of the components that make them even more enjoyable to me and I want to bring that to others.  This is why my dream is to bring a touch screen table akin to the Microsoft Surface plus some physical pieces to combine the best of both worlds into the world.  For example, imagine Settlers of Catan without the tedious setup of the hexes/numbers on the board, but still with individual roads, houses, and cities.  Fortunately, that sort of idea is already being done.

PAX 2012

I didn't get back from PAX until late last night and my dog clearly missed me (indicated by his insistence that I play with him at 8 am), hence the lateness of this post.  Last year was my first PAX, so I was very distracted by the immense amounts of free stuff and ended up not really getting to do much of anything.  I made sure not to make that mistake again this year and gave myself goals to achieve every day.  Here are the results in my favorite form, a list:

• My card game was successfully play tested twice (which doesn't sound like much, but trying to wrangle a group of 5-10 people to play a game by yourself is quite difficult)
• Result - I'm going to finish the rule book of my game and make a print to play version for people around the world to try out in the very near future.
• I tried 10 new board games I have never played before
• Result - Disappearance of a lot of money and future money will disappear for the games I couldn't find
• I met, took a picture with, and got a signature from Ali Hillis, the voice behind Liara in the Mass Effect series

• Result - 
• I got to watch the fourth, fifth, and most of the final round of the Omegathon
• Result - I had to leave before seeing who won the Omegathon and missed my flight to San Jose, so I had to switch to a flight to San Francisco and got home even later...but it was fun to watch.  :)
• I met some other people who are making games of their own and got to try out some of their prototypes
• You can check out their print to play games yourself and see what you think of them

All in all, it was a very fun and successful trip.  I will admit I'm a little afraid that next year's PAX is going to be 4 days...hopefully I'll survive it.  I'll leave you with the only other two pictures I took while I was there (I'm not even sure why I have a camera if I never use it...):

Mario and Star cookies from the Cookie Brigade, fancy 20-sided
die acquired for buying said cookies in the D&D area and an
awesome figurine from the D&D Legend of Drizzt board game

My favorite cosplay of the weekend and pretty much the
only female cosplay I could take pictures of without
feeling like a creepy perv...for non-Godzilla fans, that is
Anguirus and King Ghidora