Have you ever played Foursquare? — A Designer Diary for Kill the Overlord!

 Blog, Design, Development Logs, Games, Minigame Library, News  Comments Off
Jun 182012
 

When I was in elementary school, we used to play a game at recess called Foursquare. (It’s got no relationship to the GPS-driven location visiting game we play now on our modern phones, sorry)! So how does a friendly playground game like foursquare become a card game about political murder? It’s not so far off as you might imagine…

In Foursquare, the players arrange themselves in a 2×2 square, and have some sufficiently bouncy ball–usually a dodgeball or basketball, which they toss between them. The game is based on tennis–when the ball is passed to you, it can bounce at most once in your square, and then you have to return it to one of the three other players. You can’t catch or kick the ball–you can only bump, volley, spin, or spike it with your hands.

There was one other interesting concept to foursquare at our school recesses, which I think must have been borrowed from card games like ‘Chairman Mao’, now that I consider it. Each space was numbered one through four–King, Queen, Jack, and Knight. The King was able to set the rules for each round of play. He could outlaw certain shots, require the play to pass a certain way, or the like. When a person was knocked out of the game by being unable to return a serve, this ended the round, and the knocked out player would be demoted to Knight (or to the waiting queue, if there were more than four players). Everyone else would rank up accordingly.

The game created its own kind of ruthless balance. Players would invent cunning shots, including everything from backspins to passing to a player’s feet (which usually stopped the ball dead if it worked) to ridiculous two-handed spikes (called bombs) that sent the ball so far away that returning it would be impossible. If the King found these new shots too dangerous, he could outlaw them. If the players found the new rules too oppressive, they could gang up and oust the King.

The game was as much about politics as it was about skill. The Queen player usually wanted the King gone, while the Jack would settle for either King or Queen to be gone, and the Knight and King would be happy to eliminate absolutely anyone but themselves. Thus, it was up to the King to appease the other players as much as to referee, as well as for the other players to make sure that a power-hungry usurper couldn’t get within range of the throne.

Kill the Overlord! was a game that I designed before I became a professional designer–in fact, one might say it launched that career, as it’s the first game design that I ever submitted to a publisher.

Years after college, I was feeling nostalgic, thinking back to those playground days. I started looking for a game that would recreate that same mix of politics and pressure that Foursquare had created. Ultimately, I resigned to invent my own. The medieval theme for the roles was already in place. For the ball, I decided to take a page from Guillotine and make it the overlord’s executioner. Now I had a game where various players were playing Hot Potato–trying to pass the executioner amongst themselves, and not be the last to have it. It wasn’t enough to have the most powerful cards–you would also need to convince the other players to work together with you in order to get to the top.

For the roles, I wanted to stray away from the “King makes all the rules” element of the playground game. That could work on a playground, where peer pressure and playground ingenuity would keep you from making a rule like “I can’t be knocked out” (everyone would take the ball and form a new game a few paces away from you). It wouldn’t work for gamers, who want to run everything by the book. Besides, being Jack, Queen, or Knight in Foursquare was pretty boring, truth be told. It would be better to give each role its own unique power.

The powers were then structured so that the higher ranks had powers more tuned for manipulating the help of the lower classes and for scheming against the top, while the lower players had powers tuned for longevity. In Kill the Overlord! the Slave has the most longevity of any other player (he can get rid of the ball by paying coins, which he usually has in reasonable supply), the middle ranks like Captain have offensive powers (making players shed extra cards), while the Overlord has the least impressive power (he gets a free pass at the start of each turn).

(Female gendered roles. Image courtesy of BGG)

Foursquare on the playground lasts until recess ends, but conditions like that also don’t work so well in a card game. To give the game an ultimate goal, points were introduced, in the form of gold coins. In the playground game, you might consider the player who had maintained higher rank for the longest time to be the winner. This idea was built into the scoring system: the higher your rank, the more gold you’ll rake in each turn. Maintain higher ranks for a longer time (even if you don’t get to the top), and you’ll have much more gold than your neighbors.

It was also around this time that I was playing Citadels (specifically the Fantasy Flight Edition that comes with the expansion in the box). In the Citadels expansion, there are 9 roles, and 9 alternate roles. Each role can be switched between one of the two, and the game changes vastly depending on which roles are swapped in and out. An expansion in the box so you can fine-tune your game experience! How cool was that? I decided to create a second set of roles for Kill the Overlord! that could ship in the box with the base game. Once you had played the game with the first eight, you could make it brand new again by trying the other eight. You could even fine-tune the game’s level of cutthroated-ness by including or excluding certain roles (as a fan of customizable gameplay, this is one of the most important aspects of the game, IMO).

Another important aspect of the game was the illustration. Even though this was a game of political murder, I wanted to make it a family friendly one, like Guillotine or King’s Blood. I commissioned an artist named Tori Parker to do lighthearted characters in both male and female genders, making the cards double-sided. When you become General, for example, you can switch the General’s face to match your own gender, creating an instant sense of connection with the character.

Once APE had acquired Kill the Overlord!, development continued, and gameplay was smoothed out and refined. Ranking up had a bit of overhead associated with it, and so we determined that it would only happen when the Overlord was killed, to minimize shuffling and downtime. We tried some outlandish changes (like running two execution orders at once–WAY too complicated), and ultimately found a game that flowed quickly, was simple to pick up, and which got people interested.right away. It’s the kind of game that quickly fades into the background after a few hands, allowing you to talk and banter while you play. It’s a game that I’ve played with my 10-year old step brothers and my 40-year old gaming friends, much to the delight of both.

APE Games is currently running a Kickstarter for Kill the Overlord!. I’d encourage you all to pick it up! In the tradition of large-party games like Seven Wonders and Bang!, it’s easy to get into and fun for gamers and non-gamers alike.

If you’re interested in more lightweight games that travel in your pocket, check out our Minigame Library, now on Kickstarter as well. It includes 4½ new games to add to your collection, plus a carrying case!

Thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings, and I wish you all happy gaming!

- Brad

Rules for Pixel Tactics are now here!

 Design, Games, Minigame Library, News, Noir: Killer vs. Inspector, Pixel Tactics  Comments Off
Jun 142012
 

We’ve just posted the rules for Pixel Tactics! Download them here.

The Kickstarter Project for our Minigame Library is nearing 30% funding. This is the tipping point for a lot of projects, and we’re going to need everyone’s help to break through and make this thing happen. You can make the difference by telling your friends on facebook, twitter, reddit, digg, youtube, google plus… well, there’s a pretty exhaustive list these days :)

Please try NOIR and write a review! I’m also open to sending out P&P copies of Pixel Tactics, Grimoire Shuffle, and Infinity Dungeon to those who want to try them and talk about them. Just let me know!

Thanks again to everyone who has backed us so far! I’ll be putting up rules for Infinity Dungeon and Grimoire Shuffle as soon as possible, so please keep looking out for those.

Also, in case you missed them from earlier, the rules for NOIR are now downloadable here!

Card Games and the Meaning of Life (part 1)

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Jun 122012
 

What’s the most important question you ask when you’re about to pick up a game in the store?

Do you think about the weight of the box, how well-made the pieces and cards are, or who the designer is?

I’ll bet the biggest question you ask is the same as me–answered so immediately and subconsciously that we sometimes don’t realize it:

“Who will play this with me?”

It turns out that I have far fewer games in my closet than most of my gamer friends. Many of them have massive collections that cover whole rooms (or whole floors) of their houses (and of which I’m quite envious), but when we get together it’s generally the same–Tichu, Magical Athlete, Biblios, Bang, Battle Line, For Sale, Incan Gold–these are the games that actually hit the table over and over again. A handful of games that would fit in a tote bag outplay all the other games in the collection combined.

By contrast to my friends, too, most of my games are heavily played. I own one or two that only see the light of day on special occasions (we play a giant game of Arkham Horror every Halloween, for example), but on the whole, most of what’s in my collection is there because I can break it out in a moment’s notice or toss out the bulky box and carry it in my pocket.

So what are games really all about? Why do we enjoy them? Why do we seek them out?

Most of us use the games we own as a medium through which we can connect with others around us. We play the Battlestar Galactica for tense cooperation and betrayal. We play Bang for lightweight fun at a party. We play Chess for an intense battle of wits. The game creates a stage for communication, socialization, and the enjoyment of each others’ company even when conversation and small talk fail. A game breaks the ice and puts people at ease. Rules, contest, and a clear goal give us a stage on which to gauge one another and appreciate one another.

A game lets us connect. And that’s what it’s really all about.

Talking with friends in hobby game publishing and distribution, I asked them why do we (publishers) make our small games so big? Why are we making games harder to carry with us (and thus harder to play) than they need to be? It turns out that it’s all about the sale–you have to have a bigger box to set a reasonable price point, and to justify a bigger box you need more bits, and so to make more bits you fluff the game. So we get games like Magical Athlete, which really ought to be the size of a poker deck and retail at $10, but which get expanded to be a whole box with punches and boards in order to justify a $30 price tag.

Not only is this practice making games more expensive and bulkier, but it’s making them harder to enjoy! How many people who would love to play Twilight Imperium end up playing Race for the Galaxy instead because the first game is too ponderous to even carry over to game night?

How many games are there in your collection that could be distilled down to cards and counters without sacrificing any of the gameplay or fun? How many games would fit just as easily into a much smaller box?

I was just starting to think about this question when I developed NOIR. It was a simple game that could be played with just a deck of cards and nothing more. My wife and friends immediately became huge fans of it, and urged me to publish right away (the local game store owner even began selling my gamecrafter prototypes to visitors). The real charm of the game was complexity in simplicity. The game could carry in your pocket and took only five minutes to learn, but it could be played over and over without getting stale.

But I was torn between the idea of making a tiny game that wouldn’t have the store presence to survive outside my local game shop, or fluffing the game needlessly with punch outs and tokens, which would defeat the ‘carry in your pocket aspect’ that I loved so much. It was a bit of a dilemna.

That was when the big idea for the minigame library was born.

Imagine a carrying case filled with smaller game boxes. If you’re going to game night, you can bring the whole thing and tote it by the handle. If you’re going on a business trip or to meet a specific person, you can bring just the one game you wanted to play. A game for each kind of audience, for each kind of party, for each particular genre. If I couldn’t reach players with one game in a small box, I could just put a bunch of small boxes into a big box.

How many games would really fit into a format like this though? It turns out that restrictions breed creativity. As soon as I restricted myself to a single deck of cards, ideas started to flood in. And this is how the Level 99 Games Minigame Library was born.

Not only would the games be small enough to carry, but they would need to be different. It doesn’t do to have two mystery games in the same set–nor to have five head to heads or three steampunk themes. Each game would need to be unique on four planes–genre, style, weight, and play group. By diversifying, the library would be ultimately accessible and available–a game collection that had a little of something for any player and any occasion.

But could it be possible to fit a game for every occasion into a single deck of cards? I decided to try.

(… to be continued in part 2)

Please check out the Minigame Library, now on Kickstarter!

 

 

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