Board Game Analysis 2# – Pandemic
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Introduction: This is my second board game analysis for the Advanced Game Design class. About the game: Pandemic is a co-op board game for 2-4 players, where you play as the member of a medical team that tries to find cures for four different diseases that are spreading around the world. Every player has a different role with their own special ability, and you have to work together to find the cures and prevent the diseases from spreading before it’s too late. Short summary about the gameplay: Disease blocks are placed out on the board at the start of the game, and where they’re placed depends on the location on the infection cards that are drawn during this phase. The game is played in turns, and during a player’s turn there’s two phases: – First there’s the action phase, where the player makes their actions and then draw 2 player cards from the deck. (If there are fewer players than 4, more cards are drawn.) – After that, there’s the infection phase, where the player draws cards from the infection card deck and places out disease blocks on the locations on the cards. The amount of infection cards depends on the Infection Rate, which level is increased every time an epidemic card is drawn by a player. At the beginning of the game the level is 2, which means that the player draws 2 infection cards at the end of their turn. This is then repeated by every player and for every next round. When an epidemic card is drawn by a player, the player has to do the infection phase a bit differently during that turn. (For more information see Cards of Pandemic – “Epidemic Card” below.) Otherwise the game is played this way until the players win or lose the game. Winning conditions: Losing conditions:
Cards of Pandemic: -Role Cards: There’s one for each role, and the cards describe their special ability. -Player Cards: There are three different types of player cards, the majority of them are location cards, but there are also special cards and epidemic cards.
-Infection Cards: The cards used during the infection phase. They have a location on them which tells the player where to put the disease blocks. Other important objects of the games are:
– – – The Core Game System: Basic Actions:
Special Actions:
They are all the same for every player and role, but some roles have special abilities that are similar to the special actions, but with advantages. The different roles and their special abilities are: Medic – You can cure all disease blocks on the area that you stand on. When there’s a cure for a disease, you may remove all blocks of that type for every area you walk through that’s infected. (It won’t count as an action.) Researcher – You can share a card to another player as long as you are in the same location as the player that you’re giving the card to. It doesn’t matter which location it is on the card. Scientist – You only need 4 player cards of one colour to create a cure. The game’s core is the players working together to find the 4 cures while trying to prevent the diseases from spreading and creating outbreaks, and in order to do so, they have to synchronize their actions and movements on the map and take as much advantage of their special abilities as they can. Since there only can be 4 of the 5 different roles during a game, and they’re chosen at random, the players have to adjust their strategies to the different kinds of roles and abilities that they have. We found some good strategies/role combinations that we used while we played, and they were: Scientist + Researcher = The Researcher could give the Scientist the player cards that they needed to create a cure easily, since they could meet anywhere on the map and didn’t have to move to a certain location. This also meant that the Researcher could give up to 4 player cards to the Scientist during one turn, and because the Scientist only needs 4 cards to create a cure, there was a chance that a cure could be created during the same round. Medic + Dispatcher = Medic was a really powerful role since they could take away all the disease blocks in one location instead of just 1 (using only one action), and when a cure was found for a disease, they just needed to walk around in an infected area on the map and could cure up to four locations just by walking around. The Dispatcher, who can move around the other players’ pawns, could therefore choose to move around the Medic instead of their own and cure locations the same way. So that way, a maximum of 8 locations could be cured just by walking around during one round. Choosing what to do and how to do it is what will decide whether you and the other players win the game or not, and discussing and cooperating with the other players is vital for success. If a player would try to play the game and do their actions independently from the other players, they will find out that it’s a lot more difficult than working together. As a single player, you can’t manage to get far on the map or cure that many areas during a turn since you only have 4 actions. To create a cure for a disease you need to collect 5 (or 4 if you’re playing as a Scientist) player cards of the same colour, and if you don’t exchange cards with the other players it means that you can only create a cure if you’re really lucky when it comes to drawing player cards and manage to get several of the same type. But, if the players combine their forces together and plan all actions for every player at the start of each round, it’s more like there’s one player/pawn with 16 actions that can be used to fight the diseases and find cures, instead of four separate players with 4 actions each. Most Interesting System: I thought that the outbreak system was the most interesting system, because it could really mess up the game sometimes and created a lot of drama. An outbreak is what happens whenever a disease block is added to a location with 3 blocks (during the infection phase or caused by a nearby outbreak) and instead of adding a fourth block on that location, the player adds 1 block to every location that is connected to that location. Most times we played, especially during the beginning of the game; it wasn’t that terrible when an outbreak happened. Often it was in a location where the connected locations didn’t have that many blocks (or none), and adding 1 block to them didn’t really make the situation that much worse. However, when it happened in a location where there were many locations with 2-3 blocks nearby, it could turn everything into a complete disaster in a second. It created chain reactions which caused new outbreaks in nearby locations, and it made the disease spread very fast and violently. Even a location that only had had 1 or 2 blocks in the beginning could end up with 3 blocks after outbreaks in connected locations, or in worst case it could get 4 blocks too and cause another outbreak. And since one of the losing conditions of the game is when there have been 8 outbreaks, a chain reaction resulting in several outbreaks could lead to a sudden game over. But there were also other situations where it could turn devastating. When we played the game we actually managed to get game over during the first round after only two people had had their turns because of outbreaks. There were many blocks of one colour on the map, and the first and second players managed to draw one epidemic card each during their turns. It resulted in outbreaks and chain reactions, and we ran out of the disease blocks of that colour which lead to game over. So even though there were only perhaps 2-4 outbreaks, we lost because there weren’t enough blocks to put on the map. So outbreaks was something that all players wanted to prevent from happening, and we did try to avoid them by removing at least one block on any location with 3 blocks on the map, but it wasn’t that easy. Many times it happened anyway, and we even knew a few times that it was going to happen because the infection cards that had been drawn and discarded before had been put back on top of the infection deck.(Due to an epidemic card.) The locations that had recently gotten disease blocks would get new ones, and it wasn’t always possible to get there and cure them before the cards would be drawn again. Outbreaks were a system that made the gameplay very tense, and preventing them from happening or dealing with them were some of the biggest challenges of the game. (Along with the search for player cards to create cures.) Target group interpretation: It says “for age 10 and up” on the box, but I don’t really think that the game is aimed for 10 year olds. The game isn’t that difficult to play and had a very clear instruction book though, so it’s not like I think that they can’t play it. The problem is the whole “role” part of the game, and playing as a team for a shared goal. Because all roles except “Medic” tend to get a bit passive or feel very limited, and I can’t really picture a 10 year old playing for example the “Dispatcher” or “Operational Expert” without getting bored. (The Medic is the one that gets to cure the diseases, while the other roles mainly support.) I’m not sure how much they would like the cooperation situation of the game either, since most games for children are about competing and winning against others. It really depends on the children though, because maybe there are some 10 year olds who really would like to imagine themselves in a medical team on a mission to cure life-threatening diseases and would go wholeheartedly into the different roles, even if it meant taking on a passive role and supporting other players. It would actually be a really good game for children to learn how to cooperate and work with others, but I’m just not sure if they would get that much into the game… Anyhow, when it comes for games that’s targeted for children, I think it’s important that all players have the same possibilities and abilities, except maybe a special power of their own. That way, the player gets to decide for themselves how active or passive they want to be, and everyone will be in the same boat. Otherwise they may feel that the game is “unfair” and don’t want to play it. If the game would have had a similar setup, but all players are playing as Medics and the mission is to cure all disease blocks on the map for example, I think it would have been more well-suited for 10 year olds. As it is now I think it works really well for teens and up, but it depends a lot on what kind of person the player is.
Best part of the game: It was a very interesting experience to play a co-op board game, since it’s something I don’t think I’ve ever played before. It was a totally different focus than I’m used to, and there were constantly discussions between the players about what to do and what kind of strategies to use. Everybody was involved in what every player did, and there was no way that a player would just do something random during a turn. All actions for the players were planned very carefully and often a long time before a player’s turn. The game really managed to make the players feel like a medical team, and it simulated the feeling of the chaos that comes with epidemics very well because of the infection and outbreak/epidemic systems. Seeing the infection spread on the board map was terrifying, and you could really get into the game and the mission. You wanted to stop it from spreading, and you wanted to cure every location. It was something I really enjoyed with this game. It was also very easy to understand and get into, so that was a big plus as well.
Worst part of the game: The fact that you could lose the game during the first round, after only two players had had their turns, was pretty bad. It was just a struck of really bad luck for us, but at the same time it felt really strange that things could escalate so fast and so early in the game. When we talked about it in the group, we thought that this problem could have been easily solved if all disease blocks that are placed on the map at the start of the game would have been selected from decks with each colour separate, instead of picking from the infection deck with all colours/locations together. Because the problem was that there were too many disease blocks of the same colour and too close, which caused massive chain reactions when the first two players managed to pick up an epidemic card each, and we couldn’t really do anything about it since we had barely started the game. So if the disease blocks had been more spread out at the start, it would have been less likely that the same situation would occur. In general I think that the unpredictability of the game due to many elements being random (such as the player cards and infection cards) got a bit frustrating at times and difficult do adjust to. At the same time it really simulates the unpredictable nature of diseases and how they spread, so the game would have felt a lot less thrilling and “realistic” if the spreading of the diseases and epidemics had been more predictable. It would have been a lot less of a challenge as well. Conclusion: The systems felt very well thought out and (mostly) well-balanced, except the occasional times when things got really bad and really fast because of extremely bad luck when drawing cards. The action and infection systems were really interesting and along with the epidemic and outbreak system they created a very challenging and unique gameplay. The unpredictability when it came to drawing player cards and infection cards really simulated the unpredictable nature of diseases, and along with the outbreak system it made the game feel very realistic and the diseases of the game just as threatening as in real life. The different roles and their abilities were a very interesting element too. You could only have four of the five different roles during a game, which was given out at random to every player at the start, so you had to adjust yourself and come up with strategies depending on the line-up of roles during every game. It was a challenge of its own, and it created some nice variation for every game session. The rules were also very simple and easy to learn, so it didn’t take long to get into the game. What was probably the worst part of the game was that it can be lost during the first round, which happened once when our group played. It was because the first player and second player picked an epidemic card, and due to extreme misfortune it mostly hit one part of the world which led to outbreaks and that all the disease blocks of one colour ran out. It didn’t feel completely right that bad luck should affect the game that much and drastically, and it was a bit strange since the game otherwise felt pretty well-balanced. Even though we lost the games more times than we won, our group really enjoyed taking on the challenge to cure the diseases and went all-in during a game session. It was a really good game, but even though the box says “for ages 10 and up” it would probably fit an older audience better.  |
