Board Game Analysis: Kill Dr. Lucky

Back again, after a minor hiatus! This time, an assignment was given to pick a board game, play it in a group, and analyze it, determining the core game system (including objects, properties, behaviours and relationships), the good and bad sides of the game, and the most interesting system.

The game we picked was Kill Doctor Lucky. It is a turn-based game for between 3 and 7 players ages 10 and above (according to the box), which works sort of like an inverted Cluedo, but instead of trying to figure out who conducted a murder, the players set out to perform the actual murder.

The game comes with a deck of 96 cards (42 Failure Cards, 20 Room Cards, 20 Weapon Cards and 14 Move Cards), explained below.

The game board during one of the rounds. This round, the dog was a player controlled character like the others, since we wanted to see how the game played without the dog NPC.

The goal is simple: murder the Doctor without being in line of sight of any other player (or the Doctor’s dog, depending on the ruleset chosen).

Movement in the game is quite straightforward: on your turn, you get one free move, which lets you move from one room to another. There are also Move Cards, which let you move yourself or the Doctor anywhere between 1 and 3 additional steps, depending on the card. (for example, moving from the Dining Hall (room #3) to the Lancaster Room (room #9) would require 3 rounds without playing any move cards). Additionally, Room Cards teleports you or the Doctor to the room specified on the card.

A murder can only be performed when a player avatar and the Doctor is standing in the same room, and that room is out of line of sight from the other players (or the dog, depending on the rule set being used). If both conditions are met, the player standing with the Doctor can attempt a murder with a murder value of 1. The murderer can also play Weapon Cards to increase the murder value to the number displayed on the weapon card, ranging from 2 to 8 depending on the room the murder is attempted in. For example, the weapon card “Monkey Hand” has a base value of 2, which increases to 8 if used in the Foyer.

In order to stop a murder attempt, the other players can play Failure Cards. These cards range in value between 1 and 3, and each player (going clockwise from the murderer) can choose to play any number of failure cards, until the combined value of failure cards is equal or higher than the murder value. If the murder attempt fails, the murderer collects 1 Spite Token (which increases the murder value by 1 when it is played), the failure cards are permanently discarded, and the weapon card (if used) gets put into a separate deck, which will be shuffled when the original deck runs out. If the murder attempt is successful, the murderer wins the game.

Line of Sight (LoS) is determined by the walls and doors of the rooms. LoS-lines are drawn in a straight line, either horizontally or vertically. For example, if the player stands in the Kitchen (room #8), he would have line of sight in the Winter Garden (room #7), the Wine Cellar, the Trophy Room (room #5), and the Master Suite (room #10), as well as the connecting corridors.

The Doctor moves in a set pattern throughout the house. Before the start of the game, cards are distributed from the deck until a room card appears. The Doctor starts in that room, and then walks to each room in numerical order, skipping over rooms with no numbers. For example, if the room card drawn is for the Trophy Room (room #5), the Doctor would start there, and after the first player’s turn, he would move to the Greenhouse (room #6), and after the next persons turn, he would move to the Winter Garden (room #7), and so on. If the Doctor is in an unnumbered room at the end of a turn, he moves to the connecting room with the highest number.

The dog always tries to follow the Doctor around the house, but has the same movement system as the players (that is, moving into a room with no number still counts as his one move in a turn). He always tries to take the shortest path to reach the Doctor, counted in number of rooms. If two paths has the same length, the player whose turn it was previously picks which way the dog walks. The dog has two different functions, depending on the ruleset. He either blocks murder attempts via LoS, like a player, or he can collect cards from the players in exchange for spite tokens, which he receives every time a murder attempt happens. He can also incorporate both of these functions at the same time, according to official rules.

If the Doctor moves into a room where a player already resides, the turn goes to that player. If two or more players stand in the same room, the player who is first in line between those two players (going clockwise around the table) gets the turn.

If a player ends his round in a named room without using any cards, he/she gets to draw a new card from the deck. When the deck is empty, the previously played move-, weapon and room cards are shuffled and create a new deck.

The best side of the game would probably be the simplicity of the game, while the LoS system makes sure the game isn’t shallow. The LoS system together with the predictable movement of the Doctor makes planning and executing the murder both fun and exciting, but also makes the other players feel like they can do something to prevent the murder, be it via position or usage of cards to block the murder attempt, such as teleporting the Doctor to another room, or making him move past an obvious setup via move cards.

As for the worst side, the game gets very stale when people realize how strong camping (standing around in one room and waiting for the Doctor to enter) and farming (moving ahead of the Doctor when he walks through several rooms, so it’s your turn each time he enters, which allows you to just keep drawing cards) is. It gives a gameplay where people just stand around out of LoS from each other and wait until it’s their turn, either by the Doctor walking into the room, or by natural order, at which point you either poke him to get a spite token and fish out failure cards, or just draw a card.

One of the reasons for this is the sheer amount of time it takes to move from one room to another. Taking the example from the movement section above (room #3 to room #9) would take 3 turns (or more, if the turn goes to someone else due to the Doctor walking in), with two of those giving no benefit what so ever (that is, no cards or murder attempts (which means no spite tokens)) since they are unnamed corridors.

Another reason is that the move and room cards are really, really strong, since you can pull off combos with them, such as teleporting the doctor to room A, teleporting yourself to the nearby room B, playing two Move2-cards to move yourself and the Doctor into room C and attempting murder with a Weapon8-card with 5 spite tokens, which is really  hard to stop. This means that players rather hoard cards until they can pull such a combo off, than use them to gain minor advantages. One way to prevent this is to add a maximum number of cards on hand at any one time. If you pick up more cards than the limit, you would be forced to drop your oldest card. This would mean that  more cards would get played in order for them not to get “wasted”, and would probably create a more dynamic gameplay.

The line of sight-system is the most interesting system in the game, in my opinion. Like stated above, it works by drawing straight invisible lines through the doors of each room. A murder cannot be attempted in a room where a LoS-line from a room which occupied by another player exists. This means that good positioning on the board is rewarded by blocking most murder attempts in the area, or by allowing you to attempt murder by being aware of who has LoS into where and crafting a plan around that.

Some other things we observed were the impact the various game pieces had on the game. The failure cards were the most deciding in the amount of time it takes for one round to complete. This makes sense though, since they basically exist for the exact purpose of extending the game. The dog had a similar role. Whether in LoS-mode or in spite-selling-mode, the dog always managed to extend the game in one way or another, be it via stalling thanks to LoS or by having a bunch of spite tokens that someone wants to buy. Since he had the same movement systems as the players, he would eventually lag behind the Doctor even without the usage of teleports.

The box states that the game is for people 10 years or older, and I’m inclined to agree with that. Determining line of sight as well as the dog’s movement is somewhat messy, and keeping track of whose turn it is and what a player has done in a turn easily gets chaotic with all the teleports and move cards involved. It also a somewhat mature humor, which would be lost on kids under 10.

We played 4 rounds, with some slight variations in the rules each playthrough (in order: standard rules (LoS dog), no dog & half the amount of failure cards, no dog, spite-selling dog). Out of these, the first round took the most time, about an hour and a half, while the second round was the shortest, clocking in at roughly 20 minutes, with an average round taking somewhere around 30-35 minutes.

To summarize, the game was quite fun to play, and I really enjoyed the way the mechanics play together, creating a tactical gameplay where you constantly try to think several turns into the future. However, the game quickly gets stale once the tactics of camping and farming got figured out, due to the amount rounds where nothing happens, and then suddenly an unstoppable combo of death.