Advanced game design – playing boardgames n’ stuff
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Hello! Along with the 3D course we will also study Advanced Game Design for this semester. For starters in the game design course we had to play and analyse a board game of our own choice and its system. and for you who know me, I just picked one at random, and here we are with one of the most complex board games I have ever seen. hope you can follow along!!
Heres a fancy picture of how the box look.
About the game. My group and I choose a strategic board game called “Dust”. At first it looked pretty similar to “Risk”; the board itself contains an image of the world map with areas evenly placed over it and the box contains a lot of figurines in different colours that acts like your armies. The gameplay itself is about fighting other player’s armies by rolling dices to see who wins each battle for taking over and defending areas. The main difference from Risk is that this game also has strategy-cards with special ability’s that will help you in in different ways in the game. And it has a more strategically depth than Risk as you can affect the game play by changing the players order, plan on playing offensive or defensive etc. Also in Dust you win by having the highest score after any player have reached a certain score and not by dominating the world. So it’s more about defending and keeping your score-incomes to climb the scores to victory than playing offensive and own as much as you can.
The best and worst part. The worst part of the game is the rulebook. First of there is two rule books in the box, and nowhere to be found it tells the differences between them except for how long time they each take to play. The first one is called “premium version rulebook” and the other one is called “epic version rulebook” so not even the names gives it away .You’ll simply have to read them both (and they’re about 24 pages each) to understand the differences. Except for the rules making the game actually being two different games with no separate definitions, the rules are hard to understand. As we played we had several situations with rules conflicting on how to do something, which means the rules aren’t finished or doesn’t cover all possible situations that can occur in a game session. Another bad side of the game is that it is really hard to The best part of the game was that once you actually get the hang of how it is played and can concentrate on the strategic part it opens up for a lot of different tactics. The cards are a big part of the game and if you get the good ones and play them right it will have a huge effect on your scoreboard. One other nice feature is that the playing order is changing depending on what card you play each round (the cards have numbers printed on them, and the person with the highest numbers starts for that round), so again, the tactics in this game are very deep, and everything is depending to how you choose to play.
Core system The core game system of “Dust” would be the cards, they control who starts each round letting you play with more tactical options. The cards have a number printed on them (this number also tells you how many attacks you can do, but I will cover that soon) and the player with the highest number will be the first for that round followed by the player who had the second highest number and so on setting the player order. If two players have the same number on their cards they continue to the movement number on their card and compare them letting the highest number play first. If the moving number is the same as well, the cards with most tie-breaker-stars plays first (the stars is printed at the bottom of the card). After the playing order has been set, anyone having a “Koshka” (the name of the card) card can interrupt and change the playing order by getting in between two players turns for that round. This card is played as a second card but must be played at this time. Using cards as special ability’s When it’s your turn you have the choice to play a second card, each card have special ability that improves your choice of tactics by in one or other way give you a favour in the game depending on the card. There is for example there is these cards I mentioned where you plays your turn in between two other players, there is cards giving you a second chance by letting you re-roll dices, there is cards giving you more troops, letting you do special attacks, making another player your ally, letting you force other players troops to move etc. If two players plays cards that are conflicting with each other the card with the highest tie-breaker-stars wins. Using card to produce The card you choose when It’s your turn also controls the amount of points you can use to build new troops. By adding points from your capital and your production centres to the number on your played card you get the total of how many points you can spend on building units or more production centres, or, if you want to you can use them to pick up more cards. There is a five cards limit on how many you can have on your hand (with exception for the very first round when you have six). If you forget to pick up new cards and have none left for the next round you won’t be able to move or attack for that round, so it’s important to remember checking the amount of cards you have for the coming round and buy more if it’s not enough. Using cards for movement The played card also controls the amount of movements you are able to do for each round. You can see how many movements you can do by the printed number on the card. It’s in this phase where you make your choice by placing your armies to either reinforce and defending a point or by make your attack units stronger with moving in more units. The movements can also be used to take over land or sea areas that are unoccupied to give you advantage in the victory-points-phase where you can get bonus points from owning most land, water, power sources, capitals or production buildings. You can always move as long as you please and as long as the two points are connected by your own units. There are some movements you can’t do though and that are when you want to transfer your land or air units over sea and the point where you want to put them down on are a sea area. Using cards for combat The card also controls the amount of attacks you can do for this round. The attacks can be done against any other player who has his or hers units next to yours (unless you or the other player have used a “Diplomat”-card that’s makes you allies). There are different types of combats. First of there is the standard combat where two land-armies are attacking each other, and where the person with the highest tactical supremacy rolls the dices first (if the two players have the same tactical supremacy the defending army rolls the dices first). The tactical supremacy is defined by what units the player is using for the combat. Then there are special combats, and that’s when there are submarines included in a combat. Submarines can attack land without the defending player is allowed to roll any dices. Submarines can attack other submarines and then both players roll their dices at the same time. And then there is when a submarine is attacked by a bomber and then the defending player isn’t allowed to roll any dices. Except for those types of attacks I mentioned, there is more special attacks you can do but not including units. You can use a card that lets you drop a bomb, gas other units out or in other actions interacts with the other player’s units. There is in total 45 cards with different building, movement, combat points and tie-breaking-stars, and these can have 11 different special ability’s that each have separate rules applying to them on when they can be played and what effect they will have, what other players will have to do or isn’t allowed to do.
The best system in this game The most interesting system in this game would be the victory points system as it tells who wins the whole game. The goal in the game is to collect as many of these points as you can before the game ends. After a certain amount of points (30 points if you’re five to six players, 40 points if you’re three to four players and 60 points if you’re two players) have been reached by any player it ends the game. At the beginning of the game everyone puts a tank one the score-board and as the game proceeds you can gain points in various ways and move your tank up the score-board. At the end of each round when all players have taken their turns there is the victory-point-phase and that’s when you count and gain your points. For starting everyone will gain a point for each capital they own. Then everyone will get a point for each power-source they have, then the player who owns most factory’s gain a point, then the player who own most land-areas will get one, and the player who owns most sea-areas. As the victory-points is what the game is all about it keeps the game going. Players who doesn’t have as many “victory-points” sources will try to take over areas from the other players, and as me and my group played we could tell that players being behind ganged up against the winning player to slow him down from reaching the end-game-score and give the other losing players more victory-points. This is considered as a negative feedback-loop, and is great for a more even end score.
Target group interpretation On the box there is only an age recommendation at +12 so I’m going to write what I think should be the target audience for this game. It would probably be for people who enjoy planning and strategy tasks, as you play against other people and you’ll have to play your cards right in order to be successful and win. And as the rules are pretty complex, each round is slow-paced, and there is a lot you as a player need to have control over and remember I would recommend this game for someone a bit older and mature so 12 is probably a good age to set the lower age at.
Summary Overall I enjoyed playing Dust; it’s a game where competition really strikes. The many tactical options you’re allowed to do as a player is in one way very demanding on your focus on the game, but at the same time, when you have played it for a few times you can use it against you opponents as there is just too much to control at once letting you surprise them. As the game is very hard to follow and its complexity all along for the first few times I would recommend this game to players who can give a few hours to even start playing it. For us it took just above two hours the first time just setting up the game, understanding what to do and what you can do etc. so as I said, I enjoyed the game and think other will as well, just give it a little time. But if you want a fast, simple game that can be played under one or two hours, choose another game to play.
Well, that’s all folks! until next time, take care! -Lui
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