Thursday, May 04, 2006

Ever have the problem...

So I'm spending my lunchtimes at work (the only free time I currently have for board games) building my latest version of Isla Margarita piece by piece (thankfully there's not a lot there) and trying to get motivated on building Restless.

As mentioned before, Restless sort of sits in a weird void between a board game, interactive fiction, and a choose your own adventure book. I'm pretty interested in working on this because it has a lot of mechanics that I want to screw around with to see if I can come up with something cool.

**It has a "mechanical" paper slider and sleeve for hiding information, which I think is sort of a lost art for game information.
**It can be played solitaire, or with multiple payers.
**It has some amount of replay value, to a certain extent.
**Assuming I have a relatively decent amount of writing capabilities (which I probably don't), it could be a fun little atmospheric piece.

Of course, the drawbacks are that it's probably not much fun for those who expect a "game" in a true sense of the word. Winning is defined by trying to understand the whole story of all the hauntings that are going on, as opposed to beating the game, or collecting the most Victory Points, or whatever. And, as stated above, I'm not sure if my writing standards are up to snuff for the full effect. Plus the fact that building the book of events that happen through the night is going to be a long process.

And it's pretty much un-testable by me since I know the story.

So then, for some reason, a lot of elements gelled yesterday for another game idea, which I've named Dark Sky Salvage. It's got a neat little mechanic that I've been wanting to play with from my half-baked Jump Ships concept, and a fairly unique theme I've been thinking about off and on for maybe 6 years as a "wouldn't it be cool if they made a movie of this" kind of thing. Things just sort of fell into place with all these various little mechanics I've been wanting to play with. So now, I'm back to spinning plates again for my time.

Or I'll just drop the Restless plate again. As is usual. Or maybe strive for 5 hour lunch breaks.

2 Comments:

Blogger Mark Mistretta said...

Hey, I've been following your blog since I saw the link on BGDF. Very nice set-up.

A few questions and comments:
1) Can Minsterpool be played solo?
2) Narrative gaming is a tough nut to crack and may not be worth the effort.
3) Dark Sky Salvage sounds interesting, would like to hear more.
4) Good luck in the About.com contest, I entered a game as well.

9:32 AM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Minsterpool can't really be played solo as a game. However, you can sort of start a game solo and play it to learn. I think.

2:17 PM  

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