The board game project – Overview and personal thoughts

A few days ago we had our first meeting about the board game project. We had some ideas pretty early on.
One of these ideas was to have a game with toy guns which you have to physically shoot other players with.
We had all played “Jungle Speed” and really liked that concept and we discussed if we could recreate the feeling when playing that game.

I’ll Explain in short what Jungle Speed is for those who do not know:

In jungle speed a number of players sits in a circle around a small wooden totem. Each player has a number of cards before them with the back facing upwards. Each player takes turn flipping the top card in their pile. Nothing happens until two players get the same symbol. When this happens the players need to be quick and take the totem first. If both players grab it, then there is a “death match”. The one who lets go first of the totem loses. The players have to wrestle during the “Death Match” and the most things are allowed except pulling hair and poking eyes and such actions.

When a player wins he gives away some of his cards to the loser. The player who loses all his cards first wins.

So we was interested in the concept of jungle speed and we thought a lot about that game when we defined our game.

We wanted a tension filled game with a quick pace so that all players always needed to be on full alert.
We also wanted to have a lot of player interaction, that’s why the core of the game is dueling with other players.

So after some testing we decided on what the basics would be.

So we decided to have two guns in the middle of the board and that is mainly because if we have a gun for each player the number of players are limited to how many guns we include in the game and there would be no fighting over the guns. Each player takes turn flipping a card in front of them, like jungle speed. If the flipped card is a single color the player has to duel what ever player has that color. If there is two colors the players who has these colors must duel. There is also a silence card where the player does nothing and a free-for-all when everyone can stretch for the two guns and shoot who they want.

More information about the game and our meetings can be found at:
http://teamtetra.wordpress.com/

Personal thoughts

Personally I like our concept more than Jungle Speed and that is primarily because I do not like pain, but  who does? I guess it is more the idea getting hurt that frightens me. Opposite to most of my friends, I have never been interested in soft air gun fights or paint ball. However I have never tried any of those so the only thing that keeps me from testing them is the thought that it will hurt. So for me that fear of pain is not present when playing our game since it’s toy guns, it is more or less safe.

I however love the tension in our game and the fact that you always need to be on full alert. Like in the zombie game Dayz you need to always be alert on your surroundings because any player on the server might kill you. So every where you are you are always on the look out for other players if you lose your focus for a minute you’re a much easier target for other players.

Same goes with our game, if you do not pay constant attention you’re an easy target.