31 Flavors of Naga Demon

This is my second post regarding NaGa DeMon - National Game Design Month. Participating in this means that my card game project must be created with all of its necessary pieces entirely within the month of November and then played at least once. So far, I've decided my card game will have mechanical elements that emulate the prisoner's dilemma situation. Currently, I still haven't yet decided on a theme, despite the helpful feedback I've received from fellow NaGa DeMon Hunters.

As I said in my last post, while it's very normal and possible to design games without a theme (just look at all the card games that use a standard deck of playing cards), having that flavor established early on can help further game designing which in turn can help influence the theme and so on and so forth.

So, right now, I'm going to focus on cranking out some theme ideas. To help me in this process, I've decided to theme this blog post with a title referencing Baskin-Robbins' "31 Flavors." So thematic. So productive. I'm going to force myself to come up with thirty-one different themes right now as I write this. I've only got a few swimming around in my brain, so I'm excited to see what I come up with! 

This is what I really should be doing at this stage. No second-thoughts and such during the brainstorming process! Just let it all flow out of my mind and put it all down. Only until after the brainstorming is finished must I begin to think critically about the theme possibilities.

But before I begin, I will first define the game mechanics that must be described within the context of each of these themes. Here they are:

• The scenario - This has to be a situation that the players are involved in such as a high school rally, a fantasy dungeon quest, or a series of therapy sessions.
• The players - The players have to be somebody or something that's doing all this simultaneous cooperating and competing. Who are they?
• The "loot" - The players will be trying to be collecting the most of ...something. In Mario, this would be coins. Zelda has rupees. Note that this doesn't have to be gold or jewels nor does it need to be a tangible object. Also, the verb (player's action) associated with this "loot" doesn't have to be "collect." In summary, they need to be [VERB]-ing [SOMETHING].
• The "health" - I want to add a layer of complexity to this game that makes this more than just an iterated prisoner's dilemma. As such, the "monsters" can hurt the player's "health." This "health" may influence the player's decision-making. Anyway, what is this "health" within the context of the theme?
• The game-ender - The game, mechanically, will end at an indeterminate time. But what is the flavor that causes this scenario the players are in to end? This quality of the game seems to not be as important to define but would definitely enhance the game that much more if defined.
• The encounter-able "things" - The players, within the scenario, will encounter ...stuff. Within the context of a typical swords & sorcery fantasy adventure, this would be monsters, treasure, traps, puzzles, etc. There's going to be bad stuff and good stuff and a lot of these things will yield the "loot" mentioned above.

So, here we go! Oh, and for the themes I list, I won't repeat ones that were already suggested to me, like an treasure hunting theme escaping from a crumbling temple due to a stolen idol (Indiana Jones). Anyway, 31 themes:

1. Blood-sucking Vampires - The players are vampires trying to suck the most blood before the sun rises. Vampires have a physical health (yet can never truly die, of course) and face humans and animals of various types.
2. Meat-eating Werewolves - ...This may or may not be cheating, and this may remind you of Twilight, and maybe it's because I've got Magic: The Gathering's Innistrad / Halloween on my mind due to building my cube: The players are werewolves trying to eat as much meat before the full moon disappears. Werewolves have physical health (but are superbly resilient) and face humans and animals of various types.
3. Brain-eating Zombies - Oh, boy, another horror theme: The players are zombies trying to eat the most brains before the military nukes them all. Zombies' "health" is represented through their body parts. Losing body parts doesn't impact your abilities - it's just a flavorful representation. Losing all of them, though, causes you to need to re-attach your body parts, which costs you. You fight against humans, mostly.
4. Booty-Plundering Sexy Pirates - I apologize in advance for this one: The players are sexy pirates trying to "plunder" the most "booty" before the voyage ends ...or whatever. Since the core mechanic of plundering booty is already a sex euphemism, the rest of the game will also play into this by using thematic pirate things and terms. Like a nice-looking (treasure) chest (it's like this stuff writes itself!) The players' have libido they must not let "get too low." ...Again, I'm sorry!
5. Rising-in-Fame Musicians - The players are musicians/bands gaining fame and trying to become the most famous before they all die or go to jail or become too old to play anymore. Etc., etc. During cooperations, this can be seen as playing at a show together. The players have gigs/private shows/entertain fans/etc. Their "health" can be inspiration, motivation to rock, soberness/cleanliness until they eventually hit a low place and lose some fame as a cost to getting back on their feet again.
6. Book-Reading Library Nerds - The players are book nerds trying to read the most books before library closes. Library patrons and various library-specific objects would be your encounters and your "health" is drowsiness or eye-weariness or something.
7. Laughter-Inducing Comedians - The players are stand-up comedians trying to get the most laughs by telling jokes, performing skits, etc. before the end of the show. Their "health" would be how funny they are. Or their originality.
8. Pizza-Eating Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - I'm gonna go ahead and cheat with an IP idea: the players are the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trying to eat the most pizza before Shredder shows up. The turtles can fight together or solo Shredder's minions in the meantime that Shredder hasn't shown up. What I don't get is why there would be so much pizza being carried by the bad ninjas - stealing them? *shrugs*
9. Competitive Space Bounty Hunters - The players are space bounty hunters trying to collect the most bounty earnings before ....something space-related happens. Some bounties are tough to hunt down and might be best to require cooperation!
10. Doughnut-Eating Cops - The players are cops trying to eat the most doughnuts before their shift is up. They encounter criminals of all sorts, and getting tired/injured requires them to recover by eating some of their own hard-earned doughnuts.
11. Stealing-from-Homes Robbers - The players are robbers trying to steal the most wealth from households before everyone wakes up in the morning. The robbers can work together for more difficult places to break and enter and/or wealths to acquire (like laser-guarded diamonds). Sneakiness can be health, and having zero sneakiness means you need to hide until you gain your sneakiness advantage again.
12. Competitive Fisherman - The players are fisherman trying to fish the most fish before the end of the day. Fish, fish, fish. Some "fish" are ridiculously heavy and may require more than one fisherman to fish up, like, say, a SHARK or KILLER WHALE?! Players encounter all sorts of fish. Players have bait to look out for.
13. Orgasm-Seeking Orgy Participants - This is just straight-up X-rated, as opposed to the innuendo-ridden pirate one above: the players are humans (!) in an orgy trying to get the most orgasms/sexual satisfaction before the end of the night. The "monsters" are sexual partners, cooperation with other players end up being those threesomes and whatnot, and the "treasure" cards are stuff like sex toys or sex machines. Health is stamina or libido.
14. Jehovah's Witnesses Sharing the Good News - And now for possibly offensive, but it fits so well with the unknown-when-it-will-happen game-ender: The player's are Jehovah's Witnesses trying to spread the good news to as many people as they can before Armageddon occurs. You can witness to people not already in the truth and even do so cooperatively. Their "health" is how much they're deviating away from Jehovah. Getting down to zero "health" means they must have a shepherding call, so they can be brought back closer to Jehovah.
15. Fun-Seeking Carnival Attendees - The players are attending a carnival and they try to have the most fun before the end of the day. They'll ride rollercoasters, play carnival games, etc. Their "health" is their excitement or fatigue - sometime they need to sit down and have a bite to eat or something!
16. Money-Making Food Chain Companies - The players are food chain companies trying to sell the most food  to climb to the top of the food chain (ahahah... hah. ...hah) before the economy goes bad. Meeting demand in various areas may take more than one food chain (player) to fulfill whereas others are perfectly fine with just one food chain. Your health is your food supply. Sometimes food shortages happen.
17. High School Kids Striving for Popularity - The players are "the popular kids" in high school trying to become the MOST popular before the end of the school year. Encounters would be students, teachers, various school events like clubs and rallies. "Health" is your confidence/arrogance or something.
18. Cross-Country Car Racers - The players are each racing in cars across the country trying to get the furthest before... hmm. Before Armageddon happens? I dunno. "Health" is running out of gas. And cooperation is... yeesh, this theme needs a lot of work. I'll take it, though!
19. Competitive Christmas Decorators - The players are trying to decorate their Christmas trees with the most decorations before Christmas comes! "Health" is their Christmas spirit. They'll encounter carolers, santa, and other Christmas-y things. Cooperation is kind of a stretch, though, since they each have their own trees to decorate. Perhaps they're just putting up decorations in general?
20. Competitively-Studious Students - The players are trying to study to gain the most knowledge before finals yet need to possibly share books! They must fight their own sleepiness or face the consequences of a short nap (health mechanic). 
21. Head-Collecting Fantasy Heroes - The players are trying to slay monsters and collect the most monster heads before heading back to their kingdom to be awarded the title of "Hero of all of everything ever" or something. Players may end up cooperating against more-difficult monsters
22. Affectionate Romantics in a Love ...Pentagon? - The players are all trying to show the most affection for their shared romantic interest before the romantic interest ultimately decides to enter into a relationship with one of them. Various encounters would involve different romantic gestures. Some are gifts (treasure) that earn you some easy affection as opposed to candlelight dinners, etc. Your passion is your "health."
23. People-Scaring Ghosts - The players are ghosts trying to scare the most people in a haunted mansion or something before dawn comes. Your “health” is your “presence” or how frightening/haunting you are.
24. Follower-Gaining Twitter Users - Twitter users trying to get the most followers before "something happens." Various tweets containing humor, links to articles, or links to blog posts would occur. You'll have some kind of Twitter "tenacity."
25. Competitive NaGa DeMon Game Designers - Game designers trying to design the most fun game before NaGa DeMon is over. You can work on game mechanics by yourself or cooperate in conversations for truly innovative ideas. Inspiration/creativity is your "health."
26. Taxi Drivers Making Money - The players are taxi cab drivers trying to make the most money by the end of the day. Some passengers will require a greater distance and might require a couple cabs yet will yield a lot of  money (cooperation). Your "health" is your gas? Hmm. That means you're always losing health. Sleepiness? Willpower?
27. Competitively-Fabulous Mall Shoppers - The players are going out shopping, and they're trying to have the most fabulous clothing before it's time to go home. When shoppers cooperate, they'll have to receive less fabulous-ness since they both bought the same thing. "Health" is fatigue.
28. Competitive Ice Cream Eaters - The players are in an ice cream factory after it's closed for the night, and they must try to eat the most ice cream before it opens again. Going after the same ice creams will mean less ice cream for each player. "Health" is how close you are to a brain freeze.
29. Pot Smokers Getting High - The players are all trying to smoke pot to get the most high before the party later on tonight. You can choose to go to various sources for weed, whether it's the next-door neighbor or that pot dealer you know. "Health" is how much you're coughing. Sometimes, you'll need to cough a bit too much, which costs you your "high-ness."
30. People-Saving Firefighters - Firefighters trying to get the most gratitude (or be the most heroic) from saving people from a building on fire before the building is completely evacuated. Sometimes, you'll need to cooperate to help carry out heavy people, but they'll REALLY gracious and will award more gratitude whereas easy ones like children give little gratitude. Pets and such are easy but don't give ANY gratitude. "Health" is your bravery/courage.
31. Vandals Competitively Causing Damage - The players are vandalizing anarchists trying to cause the most damage to the city during the night. There's all sorts of acts of vandalism you can attempt, but some are really hard to do without cooperation. Your "health" is how discreet you are.

Whew! That took longer than I thought. Well, some of these are just not doable like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one. Well, I could still do it, anyway; but that specific one doesn't even have a strong flavor, and I won't be able to go very far with this project without getting into trouble or something. I'd rather have an original theme.

While writing this, I was trying not to censor myself and just let the ideas flow, so a few of these I won't actually consider, like the Jehovah's Witness one since that might be offensive (trivializes the religion, etc.) and it's not the best theme for players to get excited about. A lot more people would rather pretend to be blood-sucking vampires than Jehovah's Witnesses, I surmise.

So, now that I've written this list out, I'm going to need to decide. I could swap around some of the different parts of themes and mash them up for a better theme, too. For example, ice-cream eating firefighters. O.K., maybe the ice cream can melt, so you put the fires out? ...Bad example, but you get what I mean. 

Perhaps you can help! Which of the above themes do you like most? Or perhaps you have a different idea? Thanks in advance! Let me know by leaving a comment on this post or tweeting at me: @bradleyrose

The Naga Demon Dilemma

For about a week now, I have had tabs in my internet browser open for Wikipedia articles including "Prisoner's dilemma," "Unscrupulous diner's dilemma," "Peace war game," and "Nash equilibrium." Why? Because of NaGa DeMon - National Game Design Month. NaGa DeMon is where you create a game along with all the necessary pieces and play it at least once all within the month of November. This month is going to be the month where I design my very first original game.

Yes, for those participating in NaGa DeMon like I am, I know that research could (preferably) have been done before November started. During the latter half of October, however, I was focusing my efforts on building a Magic: The Gathering cube and designing Magic cards for the set pitches contest for the Goblin Artisans 2012 set project. But excuses, excuses; right? Anyway...

So, a week has gone by, and the percentage of my game I have completed by now amounts to about diddly-squat. This is what I've decided on so far: it's a card game, and the mechanics will have elements of the prisoner's dilemma. Why a card game? Because, like The Joker, I adore card games. And they're easier to make than a lot of other games. Why the prisoner's dilemma? Because I've been fascinated with it, especially since when The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords implemented it.

The prisoner's dilemma is a situation where two players are given the same set of choices that they will each make secretly from each other: cooperate or betray. There are four outcomes with two players with varying degrees of rewards. The best thing that can happen is one player betrays while the other cooperates. The worst thing is when you get betrayed while you cooperated. So why would you ever cooperate? Because the second-to-best thing is when you both cooperate. The second-to-worst thing is when you both betray each other. If you both keep betraying each other, you're both getting some bad rewards. So, then you both cooperate to get better rewards. But then somebody can get selfish and reap the best rewards and betray. Dilemma!

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords implemented this by making collecting rupees a competition. The players must both cooperate to traverse the dungeon, defeat the monsters, and solve the puzzles. At the same time, there are treasure chests and rupees lying around alongside these important and dangerous obstacles that require teamwork. Players have the ability to mess with the other players, even being able to go so far as to throw other players into a bottomless pit.

So, let's say you just enter a room with this boss monster and some treasure chests lying around. The boss monster starts attacking the players, threatening the welfare of everyone. Three of the four players immediately start working together to fight the monster. The fourth player, however, decided that the other players will probably fight the monster, and three would be more than enough to keep the monster distracted. So, the fourth player sneaks over to the treasure chests and starts collecting rupees, helping them gain the lead in the rupee competition. The rest of the players are doing all the work while you're making out like a bandit!

In another scenario, EVERYONE gets this mindset of desiring to get to the treasure chests first before dealing with the monster. So all four players starts heading over there - but nobody is taking care of the monster. Then the monster attacks and hurts everybody. Sad times for all. But, hey, you might have been able to sneak one treasure chest or something. ...But if you ALL WORKED TOGETHER and beat the monster first, you could have still gotten one treasure chest or something but without all that damage you endured just now.

However, Four Swords doesn't just work like the prisoner's dilemma - it works like an iterated prisoner's dilemma. This is different in that there are multiple times where you must make the decision to cooperate or betray. And you have memory of all the outcomes and decisions made by the players from previous prisoner's dilemma situations. Knowing what has happened before can alter your decision in the next prisoner's dilemma. This is great. But then there's a problem.

The problem with the iterated prisoner's dilemma is that when there is a known finite number of times the prisoner's dilemma will be played out, this will usually influence the behavior of the players to betray during the last known round of the prisoner's dilemma - because there will be no consequence to their actions afterward. But since you know that betrayal will happen during the last round, you might as well gain the upper hand and betray during the second-to-last round. And then it goes on and so forth like this until you've determined that the best decision is to relentlessly betray right from the beginning.

So, what is needed is an unknown number of rounds of the prisoner's dilemma. How do you do that? Well, a deck of cards is great for randomizing things in an order that you do not know. However, simply using a deck of cards with events in it with a "game-ending" event inside of it won't be enough. Because you'll know how likely it is when the game will end the closer and closer you get to the end of the deck of cards containing the game-ender.

One solution is to have a deck of cards with randomized encounters along with that one card you'd want to POSSIBLY end the game. This one card would actually be random itself in whether you continue the game or end the game there. When you get a "continue card," you reshuffle this deck of encounters along with all previous encounters and include a new special event card that may, again, end the game or continue the game. Or you could use a new deck. Doesn't matter. Just as long as the randomizer of encounters does not reveal a good approximation of when the game will end.

Within the context of a "medieval high fantasy" theme (I don't want to use such a played-out theme, but I may end up ultimately using it), you may use a Dungeon Deck full of monsters and treasures and a single special card that determines whether you continue to the next area (shuffle up the deck again with a new special card) or you've found the dungeon exit. Of course, you can always associate boss monster events, etc. to these special event cards.

You can control the randomness of the special outcomes in the game by parsing the deck into multiple sections like what is done in Pandemic. In Pandemic, there are special Epidemic cards. In a regular game, there are four of them in the deck. However, during the set-up of the game, the deck is divided into four separate piles with a randomized Epidemic in each pile. Then the deck's four piles are stacked on top of one another. What this does is create four separate "stages," where, within each stage, you'll experience an Epidemic sometime. This way, you KNOW that the game will not suddenly throw three Epidemics at you three turns in a row and the game quickly ends from there. If you find an Epidemic card during your first turn, then you know you've got quite a few cards to go before you experience another one.

I think I need to determine just how long I want the game to last and then design the game in a way that the game will end within the general timeframe that I want it to end. This can be fine since knowing how much time you've got in the beginning before the game will end isn't as detrimental as knowing how much time you've got in the game left.

In terms of theme, this is what I've been banging my head against a wall over for the past few days. I just can't come up with one satisfying enough and whose flavor can accommodate the mechanics of the game. Having the theme determined from the beginning along with the mechanics of your game is a huge boon, if not vital, when you're designing the game. This is because design can influence the game's theme while the game's theme can influence the design. Design and theme play off of each other and reinforces one another. Perhaps that "finding love while riding a train" theme influences the design to contain some "crying baby" content or random large groups popping up to take all the seats.

I've got the general idea of how the game's pieces will be played out: you'll be revealing cards from the top of the Dungeon Deck (I'll be calling it this for the purposes of this article and perhaps even myself until I settle on a different them or a better name) that may contain monsters, treasure, or that special event card. These will be laid out face up for everyone to see to represent what's currently available to engage with. Then the players will, with their hand of "action cards," decide what they will engage with. This decision will be simultaneous (simultaneous turns) yet secret. What you can engage with will be one of the revealed cards (in a four-player game, I'm guessing having three cards revealed at a time would be best), another player, or yourself. When you engage with another player, you'll be putting them at a disadvantage. When you engage with yourself, you'll give yourself some kind of benefit. It still wouldn't be as good as engaging with the laid-out cards but it's at least a safe bet. Perhaps you'll hide or heal yourself (healing yourself would then force players to not always engage with themselves since the benefits of engaging with yourself every turn would have diminishing retunrs).

...so this is where I'm at. I've got some project planning to do, so I can make sure I keep on track, but I'll figure that out soon enough. Right now, as I write this, it's past midnight, I'm tired, and it's my nana's birthday later on today. Gotta snooze!

The Magic Halloween Cube

Lurebound Scarecrow by Nils Hamm

After drafting multiple times with two other players with my friend’s two boxes of Magic: The Gathering’s Return to Ravnica set, the experience was becoming stale. I suggested to my friends that we cube draft – something that none of us had done before. For those who don’t know, Cube is a casual format where you select at least 360 Magic cards from your collection intended for drafting or playing sealed deck with other players (typically eight people). After explaining what Cube is all about to my buddy, he desired to try this out. My soul… it’s so ecstatic. Problem, though: none of us have our own cube!

Between my friends and I, I have the most extensive Magic: The Gathering collection. I have enough material to at least be able to sculpt something fresh from among my cards and not just have it be something like Zendikar: Cube Edition. So, it was up to me to put together a cube. I was relishing this chance. I’m excited about crafting a Limited experience by my own hand for others to enjoy – this must be related to why I loved making Dungeons & Dragons dungeons during middle school.

Gimme Some Sugar Cube

What kinds of cards go into a Magic: The Gathering cube? First, what makes for a strong cube is to have a theme. Every person’s cube has a different theme just as different Magic sets have their own themes. The most popular kind of cube, however, is one full of the most powerful cards in Magic ever. In fact, for some folks, “a bunch of the most powerful cards” and “Cube” are synonymous. While I have no doubts in how fun playing with those cards can be, building a cube with this theme doesn’t excite me. Also, the most powerful cards in Magic tend to be some of the most expensive. And I don’t have these expensive cards. …I’m definitely doing something else.

Some cubers (people who play Cube; or, incidentally, people who solve puzzles like Rubik’s Cubes) have pauper (all commons) cubes or “no rares” cubes. Others have tribal cubes (cards that care about creature types and a bunch of creatures with the same creature type, so you can have Elf decks or Goblin decks and whatnot). Fittingly, I ended up building a tribal themed cube; though, I didn’t do so intentionally.

Delif's Cube by Mark Tedin

I was wracking my brain for what theme my cube would be all about when I started thinking of the kinds of themes other games tend to cover. Free-to-play games, the part of the games industry I have experience in, tend to generate a lot of content (usually weekly) with all sorts of different themes, and the kind of theme always-leveraged are holidays. So, that’s when I thought of Halloween – perfect!

Here’s why Halloween is an awesome choice of a theme:

1) It creates a deadline for finishing my cube. I tend to not define deadlines for the projects I work on (a bad habit of mine). As you can imagine, the projects I begin typically are never completed. I couldn’t let this happen, especially when there’s a friend who’s waiting on me to finish building a cube.

2) A Halloween-themed cube lends itself to being consisted of the cards I love. Obviously, because Halloween is related to horror, we’re going to use cards from the Innistrad block. Innistrad is one of my favorite blocks, but so is another block that is fitting for this cube’s theme: Shadowmoor (It's the closest to a Nightmare Before Christmas feel, which is great). Shadowmoor was the first set to be released when I had gotten back into playing Magic: The Gathering after “quitting” during Fifth Dawn (Yes, this does mean I missed the original Ravnica block, Kamigawa, and Time Spiral), so it holds a special place in my heart.

On an aside, I returned to playing Magic: The Gathering after Morningtide had already released, and partly due to the nudgings by my friend while I was in college. Another part of me getting back into Magic was getting pumped by this commercial.

So, Shadowmoor block has a lot of artifact creature Scarecrows in it (over twenty of them). Mashing it up with the races of Innistrad meant that we’d have SIX major creature types. This was instrumental in deciding that my cube would have a major tribal theme – something that Innistrad wasn’t before.

You see, Innistrad is a set with mechanical themes that related to creatures dying and spells in the graveyard; also, the mostly-werewolf mechanic of double-faced cards was a big mechanic. The tribal part of Innistrad was only a lesser component – it was never a major theme. The Halloween cube is the chance to bring back Innistrad’s Werewolves, Spirits, Vampires, and Zombies and make building a deck with a bunch of creatures of a certain creature type actually matter.

Drogskol Captain by Peter Mohrbacher

The Six Faces of the Cube

So, here’s what’s new being brought to the table with using these Innistrad cards: creature types matter even more than before, there’s a new tribe (Scarecrows), and cards from the previous tribal blocks, Lorwyn and Onslaught, would be used to support the tribal theme; so cards of old would be interacting with the new cards in a meaningful way. Lastly, for Humans, Vampires, Zombies, and Spirits: there’s a lot more older cards to use to join and/or replace their Innistrad counterparts.

Human creatures, obviously, are in all the colors. In Innistrad block, they were green-white focused. However, curiously, there are a significant number of red “Humans matter” cards when Avacyn Restored was released. There are also the red Werewolves that start out as Human before they transform into non-Human. So, when combining cards from Innistrad, Dark Ascension, and Avacyn Restored; you get Naya Humans (red-green-white). This led to me looking to stretch the colors of the other tribes to an extra ally color (yet another twist)! And because Shards of Alara block existed, there would be the mana-fixing cards to include in the cube to support a three-color mana base for decks.

Sadly, however, black Werewolves and blue Vampires are scarce (there aren’t any monoblue vampires). But how could I NOT include the original black Werewolves? Luckily, though, blue’s got access to “vampires:” The Mistform cards from Onslaught block. Also, for every color, there are the Shapeshifters with changeling (a keyword that says the creature has every single creature type ever). So, it’s not that bad to decide on Jund (black-green-red) Werewolves or Grixis (blue-black-red) Vampires. Though, Esper (white-blue-black) Zombies is kind of awkward, since there’s not that many white Zombies either. Well, besides the changelings.

I decided to go ahead with having three-color mana support cards, anyway; to shake up the two-color tendency of Limited Innistrad decks. Also, this enables the Naya Humans and Bant (green-white-blue) Spirits decks.

Vigilante Justice by Steve Prescott

I won’t provide my actual cube list because it’s not optimal as it is now – I don’t have all the cards that I would like to include, and I’m missing certain dual lands. This led to not having Greater Werewolf and Lesser Werewolf and me choosing to use some less-than-stellar cards in lieu of others I would have preferred but don’t own. But, I will tell you about some interesting things I’ve found when building the cube.

The first thing I did was grab all the Scarecrow cards I had. I had just about twenty different Scarecrows. Sadly, though, I don’t have Straw Soldiers or the original Scarecrow card (Straw Soldiers is totally going into this cube in the future)! So, in order for Scarecrows (and Werewolves) to be able to compete with the other creature types in terms of numbers available in the cube, I was going to need to build a smaller cube than some of the ones that others have.

The number of 360 cards, the smallest suggested amount for a cube, was perfect. This meant 45 cards for each category: white, blue, black, red, green, artifact, multicolor, and land. And there would be just over twenty cards in each color that would have creatures – this meant that Werewolves would be able to shine, and this also meant Scarecrows, being about twenty in number, can effectively inhabit the artifacts slot as if it were a “sixth color.” Lastly, building the minimal amount of 360 cards is a great place for me to start, as this is my very first cube.

Building Blocks

Having a starting point for the Halloween cube with tribal cards very much helps narrow down the decisions you make. If it weren’t for deciding upon horror creature-type tribal, then I wouldn’t have been able to narrow in on using cards of only those creature types and tribal cards to support them from Onslaught block and Lorwyn block. It also helps narrow down the kinds of cards you need to include for every color.

Moonmist by Ryan Yee

For example, Moonmist is a Fog-like effect that is a Werewolf tribal card. Green usually has a card that has an effect like Fog. Thus, since I know I’m including this card, I was able to eliminate all the Fog-like cards I had in my collection from taking up any of the remaining twenty-or-so noncreature card slots. Rise from the Grave made the creature you bring back a Zombie, which is great for this cube, which meant I didn’t need to consider other cards that bring creatures back to the battlefield.

The same goes for the kinds of abilities on creatures. Green usually has a creature that taps to give you mana. Avacyn’sPilgrim is a Human and does fulfill that criterion – this means Llanowar Elves and Birds of Paradise are not eligible for including in my cube!

Spirits

Spirits were exciting to work with since they are found in every color. Also, there are quite a few Spirit token-making cards! Sure, there are creatures from Innistrad that gave you Spirit tokens upon dying, but there’s Funeral Pyre, Spectral Procession, and Midnight Haunting all available to be used together! Because of this, I knew there was now a tokens archetype in my cube, so I included cards like Intangible Virtue and strongly considered anything that made tokens, whether they were Humans or Zombies.  An example of this is Penumbra Spider, providing not only the reach keyword that green needs but the token that token decks care about. Finally, black has Aether Snap to combat the tokens (and counters of any kind) specifically (don’t worry, though; the other colors have ways to handle a bun of tokens, too; Evacuation in blue, for example).

And Kamigawa was a gold mine for Spirits, giving me cards like Wandering Ones (a vanilla 1/1 for blue with a creature type that matters) and Harbinger of Spring (protection from non-Spirit creatures? How tribally-relevant). The big thing was having Spirits to include that had Soulshift, a mechanic that returns Spirits specifically from the graveyard to your hand. It’s combining cards together like these that made me discover how much I love putting together a cube.

Zombies

Ghoulflesh by Igor Kieryluk

Zombies provided the most extensive amount of creature cards available to choose from, so I’ve got cards like Cemetery Reaper, Grave Defiler, and Soulless One in the cube. I was most excited by using Ghoulflesh! You see, black has a thing where it has both negative Auras (cards you’ll want to enchant your opponents’ cards with) and positive Auras. Often, the positive Auras can also be negative in that it might provide more in exchange for taking away from toughness. In Ghoulflesh’s case, the fact that it turns the creature into a Zombie matters in this cube. In fact, it might become a positive card when you want a non-Zombie you control to benefit from a card you have that cares about Zombies.

Sadly, alongside not having the card All Hallow’s Eve (a must-have for a Halloween cube) I do not own Zombie Apocalypse. Once I acquire one, it’s totally going in. And when I eventually cast it, I'll enjoy the relevance of Flight of the Conchords' "Humans Are Dead" song.

Vampires

For Vampires, I had to include the iconic staple Vampire of Magic: The Gathering: Sengir Vampire. Next, the fact that Vein Drinker is a black Vampire with as red activation cost made it a perfect inclusion. To support the potential for a Grixis Vampire deck, I had Szadek, Lord of Secrets included among my gold cards (he also supports the milling strategy).

Sengir Vampire by Kev Walker

Werewolves

Now, the Werewolf-y cards in Innistrad block didn’t just care about Werewolves – they also cared about the creature type Wolves. So, I made sure that both green and red had Wolf cards alongside the Werewolves. Howl of the Night Pack has never been so exciting! What was really cool was finding Tel-Jilad Wolf in my collection. Its ability is perfect for interacting with opponents’ Scarecrow cards! Lastly, having Tundra Wolves in white to fulfill a one-drop slot and the need to have first strike in white somewhere was awesome.

Humans

Since there are so many Humans to choose from, after auto-including the cards that mention caring about Humans specifically, I looked to include any Humans that support any archetypes. While Hedron Crab and Merfolk Mesmerist are fine cards for supporting a milling strategy, Cathartic Adept’s “Human-ness” made it more valuable as a milling-related creature in my cube.

Actually, a note about Hedron Crab: It’s a powerful milling creature. I would love using it in my own milling decks. However, it would be so wrong to include in this cube, and it’s not because it’s a Crab creature instead of a Human. It’s because the card cares about lands entering the battlefield, which detracts from the tribal theme of the cube. This is a lesson in Magic: The Gathering design – the cards you have in your set (or Cube) need to pull their weight in contributing toward the greater good, especially the commons.

Scarecrows

Because Scarecrows were going to be a major tribe, it needed to be on the same level as the other tribes. The other tribes have cards that “hate” against them. Human Frailty destroys Humans and Angel of Glory’s Rise wrecks Zombies. I needed a way for players to foil Scarecrows (but not too much – Fracturing Gust would just be mean). Thank goodness Magic R&D decided to design Boggart Arsonists. I love this card so much for specifically referencing Scarecrows AND for actually having plainswalk, a rare ability to find on a creature.

Boggart Arsonists, while awesome, isn’t enough. It’s a good thing there’s already red, white, and green cards that destroy artifacts. I actually considered including Terror for the unique situation of black NOT being able to have an answer for a creature with a major creature type when facing Scarecrows, but my cube was too small to include this destruction spell when I already had tribe-related “destroy” effects in the form of CruelRevival, Pack’s Disdain, etc. In fact, I may have too many! But I opted to include potentially too many awesome tribal effects like these rather than not have enough. Part of having a cube is that you often update it at least four times a year due to a new set releasing with new cards that would be applicable for your cube.

Ancient Stirrings by Vincent Proce

Ancient Stirrings was beneficial when playing with Eldrazi back in the Rise of the Eldrazi set. Ancient Stirrings in this cube’s context means you can pick up a Scarecrow! Sa-weet. Also, blue’s Fabricate pulls more weight in this Cube with being able to tutor for the Scarecrow you need (perhaps a Reaper King?).

Also, props to Innistrad for adding one more Scarecrow, which was an appropriate decision given the setting of the plane.

Solving the Cube

Creating a Halloween cube was one of the best decisions I could have made for myself in terms of Magic: The Gathering. I’m a Magic design enthusiast and creating a cube helped my development sensibilities. As I was going through the cards in my Magic collection, I was sorting the noncreature cards by the types of effects they provide. Now, I know I’ve been involved in Magic design theory and know what sort of effects go in each color, but there’s nothing quite like seeing all the iterations of the same kinds of effects in front of you. All the Giant Growths, Murders, and Lightning Bolts; and deciding which ones will matter most with the context of the other. And when I play this cube with my friends, I’m going to see what worked and what didn’t. And that’s doing Magic development.

Doubling Cube by Mark Tedin

The decisions I was making from the starting point of Halloween theme all the way down to the individual card choices were like solving a puzzle and placing down the puzzle pieces. I love that. But, this puzzle was like solving a Sudoku puzzle. When you select a card to put into your cube, it’s not just putting that metaphorical ‘3’ in a square for a row – you’re also fulfilling the ‘3’ needed for that same column and larger square it is in. Again, Hedron Crab wasn’t quite the ‘3’ you needed for the collection of milling cards in the cube – the Cathartic Adept was. And it’s a Human, for cards like Human Frailty to care about (not that there will be many games where someone will actually cast Human Frailty on it rather than a more-threatening Human card). And it’s a creature that costs one mana, to fulfill the need for a certain number of cards in blue that cost one mana. God, I love how it all fits together.

It’s Halloween as I write this, which means I’ve got a completed cube and a Halloween board game party to attend (cthulhu-themed and zombie-themed board games!). And the after-party: Magic: The Gathering Halloween cubing! Happy Halloween, guys!

All Hallow's Eve by Christopher Rush

Gnomes in Magic: The Gathering

Bottle Gnomes by Ben Thompson

Eight. This is the number of gnome cards in Magic: The Gathering – seven Gnome creatures and one Gnome-token-creating card. Of all the 10,000+ unique cards in Magic, Gnomes are represented on a severely miniscule portion of Magic cards. To put this into perspective: the rare, mythical Yeti appears on MORE Magic cards than the Gnomes. As beings that appear prominently enough in multiple other magical fantasy-related properties, Gnomes are due for their time in the Magic spotlight. With all of the vast number of unexplored planes of the Multiverse, there HAS to be a plane amongst them home to Gnome creatures – and I’m not talking about artifact creatures.

Sins of the Flesh

There are those who prefer Gnomes stay as they mostly have been established in Magic: The Gathering – as artifact creatures. I have a problem with this. When Mirrodin was first designed, initially, Gnomes were filling in as the small artifact creatures for the metal world. Creative didn’t like them and replaced them with the more-fitting Myr creatures. Thank goodness for this decision as the kind of Gnomes that are depicted on artifact creature cards are: lawn gnomes! And if Magic chooses to stick to its guns and keep the creature type Gnome only represented on artifact creatures, the potential for a rich array of Magic cards is killed and the type Gnome stifled from continuing to see more cards printed with that type. Magic isn’t exactly yearning for more lawn gnome cards. But the “lawn variety” is how Gnomes have always been in Magic, right? …Actually, no.

The very first (and the only one of its kind) Gnome printed in Magic: The Gathering is Quarum Trench Gnomes. This is a non-artifact flesh-and-blood Gnome creature that matches the flavor found in other popular works of swords & sorcery. In Dungeons & Dragons, the Gnome race is available for you to choose for your player character. In World of Warcraft, again, fleshy Gnomes are readily-available to choose for your character. And Gnomes are not just found in popular video games – in the board game Small World Underground, one of the races is Gnome. Red Dragon Inn 3 has a Gnome character deck. With Gnomes this prevalent in fantasy works, and with Magic’s recent focus on resonance, we’d be remiss to not create a plane of proper Gnomes.

An aside regarding World of Warcraft gnomes: Interestingly enough, the story behind flesh gnomes is that they were originally created as "mechagnomes," non-flesh gnomes. Later, they were affected by the "Curse of Flesh," which transformed mechagnomes into flesh gnomes. This whole flesh-and-non-flesh existence of gnomes in WoW is eerily similar to Magic: The Gathering's artifact Gnomes and... single flesh Gnome.

Gnome Man's Land

I’ve discussed this Gnome subject before on Twitter, and it’s been pointed out to me that Dwarves, one of the strongest and most popular races to use in a work of fantasy, don’t even get a lot of cards printed. The newest Dwarf cards in Magic: The Gathering make up four in Eventide – and that was four years ago! They’ve been trumped by Goblins as the core red creature race (which is fine) which causes Dwarves to sit on the sidelines (though, there are those who believe Dwarves deserve to fill in the role of white’s missing iconic race – a thought that is supported by Eventide Dwarves being red-and-white hybrid creatures). So with the ever-popular Dwarves not getting cards printed, what hope do Gnomes have?

Actually, in his column “Thirty-Two Short Columns About Dwarves,” Mark Rosewater confirmed that there WILL be new Dwarves in Magic: The Gathering someday and even went so far as to state that there will be specific Dwarf card names printed. So, really, Dwarves are not a question of whether they’ll return, which helps the case for flesh Gnomes being a possibility in the future.

Metrognome by Jeff Laubenstein

When I sat down to spellsling with Ken Nagle, Magic: The Gathering designer, in Oakland during the Magic World Cup Qualifier; I asked what he thought about Gnomes in Magic. He brought up the fact that Creative isn’t too keen on Gnomes (as they are now). But he also mentioned that Gnomes were a bit too silly for Magic, along the same lines as Squirrels. They don’t quite match the theme of dueling planeswalkers casting spells of a more… serious nature. To be fair to Ken, since he works on the inside of Wizards, he wouldn’t want to reveal something crucial like “Yes, we’re doing Gnomes again someday,” or “No, we will never do Gnomes.” when answering my queries in regard to Gnomes.

Whatever the case may be, I disagree with the claim that Gnomes are not serious enough to be included in Magic: The Gathering. Here’s why: Faeries and Noggles. Faeries seem a bit on the preposterous side, when you judge them in works outside of Magic, especially when you consider Tinkerbell from Peter Pan going into combat. However, despite this, the flavor of Faeries has been molded appropriately enough for Magic. In Magic, faeries are tricksters, something that aligns with blue’s illusory/deception tactics. It also helps that they fly, supporting blue’s dominance in the flying creatures department. Noggles, on the other hand, are anthropomorphic miniature donkeys whose heads are comically disproportionate to the rest of their body. …They’ve only appeared in Eventide, whose setting was more accommodating for this type of creature, but I fail to see how Gnomes cannot find a place in Magic while chibi donkeys can get printed on some cards.

The Red Dragon Inn 3's Wizgille by Rose Besch

So how WOULD Gnomes fit into Magic: The Gathering? When they do make an appearance in Magic, I’d put them primarily in blue and secondary in red. Here’s why: Gnomes, in at least Dungeons & Dragons 3.5, have a favored class: Illusionist. Illusions are a blue thing. Gnomes love pranks and giving nicknames to folks in Dungeons & Dragons – something I associate with being red. In Small World Underground, the Gnome race is represented by an image of a gnome with a giant drill burrowing – quite red AND reminiscent of Magic’s Quarum Trench Gnomes. In Red Dragon Inn 3, Wizgille the Tinkerer is a character labeled as a Gnomish Artificer. Also, her tinkering sometimes blows up in her face. This feels very blue with some red thrown in (Magic’s Goblins usually gets artifacts blown up, showing red’s relationship with artifacts). In World of Warcraft, Gnomes are known to be expert tinkerers who refine their works into reliable and useful pieces of technology – something that I associate with blue. WoW Gnomes are also quite eccentric and obsessive with their engineering, something that is fitting of Ravnica’s Izzet League guild.

In fact, I highly believe that if flesh Gnomes were something that appeared before Ravnica was created in some significant manner in Magic: The Gathering, we would have seen at least a Gnome or two within the Izzet guild. For example, take a look at Wee Dragonauts; those are supposed to be Faeries strapped to that jet-like device. But those could easily be Gnomes. I actually have a more difficult time believing them to be Faeries (perhaps they were originally concepted as something other than Faeries - perhaps Gnomes?). Another example is the faerie with goggles depicted in the art of the card Electrickery. Given that gnomes love trickery and fun names like Electrickery (or Magic 2013’s Switcheroo), a gnome depicted in the art would be more fitting than a red faerie. In fact, a monored Faerie creature card doesn’t even exist in Magic! The only red Faerie creature in existence is Wee Dragonauts, and that’s already blue, a color that Faeries are a better fit for (Faeries inherently have flying while red is the second-worst color at flying).

Wee Dragonauts by Greg Staples

Gnomes, Assemble!

When Magic: The Gathering was first created, Gnomes weren’t as prevalent as they are now in popular fantasy games. Now that Gnomes have more presence in these non-Magic works, I believe it’s just a matter of timing before we’ll see flesh Gnomes show up.

Take, for example, Werewolves. Werewolves had a scant number of cards in Magic: The Gathering – until something happened in popular culture. There were a lot more horror-themed and zombie movies than before. And Twilight happened, featuring vampires and werewolves. This caused Wizards to greenlight the plane of Innistrad, the horror-themed block, thus breathing life into the Werewolf creature type. I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be more Dwarf cards making an appearance in Magic due to The Hobbit trilogy coming out, featuring thirteen dwarves.

Here’s what I imagine could happen for Magic: The Gathering at some point in the future: a steampunk fantasy-themed plane with an artifact theme. This artifact theme would be different from Mirrodin in that there would be a focus on building steam-powered technological innovations. And with a focus on this steam-powered technology, I would imagine the flavor of the world would naturally have technologies that enable land-dwellers to take to the skies and the seas. Merfolk, the iconic blue race, don’t need technology to explore the depths of the oceans, and they certainly don’t tend to fly sky high. What other core race can we use in a steampunk fantasy block with an artifact theme? Oh, yeah! Gnomes! They’re pretty good at assembling contraptions, right?

Actually, in regards to “assembling contraptions,” a steampunk world would be perfect for actually finding a home for what’s teased on Steamflogger Boss: the Rigger creature type, and “assembling” Contraptions. Assembling can be a keyword action associated with a keyword mechanic. For example, scavenge’s reminder text says to only scavenge as a sorcery; a verb! A Contraption would be an artifact subtype, and a creature with the Rigger creature type would have something to do with Contraptions.

Steamflogger Boss by Warren Mahy

Gnomes in this steampunk world would make for great blue creature replacements for Merfolk. They would sport creature types like Wizard, Artificer, and Rigger. The inclusion of Gnomes with their ingenuity and intellect regarding artifacts could be contrasted with red Goblins being clumsy and volatile with their equipment with a tendency to scrap their artifacts or blow them up.

But that’s just one possible environment for Gnomes. What’s important is the fleshy Gnome becoming a significant creature type for at least one block, whenever that will be.

Gnomeward Bound

Along the way, another way for Wizards to tell the world, “Hey, we recognize flesh Gnomes as something that are possible in Magic: The Gathering.” is to include a Gnome creature in one of the Magic Core Sets. Ever since Magic 2012 contained one strange “Salamander folk” creature named AmphinCutthroat when there have never been humanoid Salamanders before in Magic, I’ve been given hope that there might be a Gnome creature given the same treatment. Magic 2013 increased the number of cards that showed glimpses of other planes with its legendary creature cycle and the Shandalarian Rings cycle. From now on, whenever a new Core Set is released, I’ll be on the lookout for a flesh Gnome creature card.

Small World Underground's Gnomes by Miguel Coimbra

Lastly, you might ask – who cares?  Well, I know I at least care. I don’t know how many other people are as much of a fan as Gnomes as I am, but I’d like to believe that I’m not alone. Mark Rosewater was passionate about bringing poison back, and it took him well over a decade to return them in Scars of Mirrodin’s infect mechanic. In this case, my own personal passion will be getting those fleshy Gnomes printed onto a bunch of Magic: The Gathering cards. If I end up designing Magic at Wizards of the Coast someday, on my agenda will be to increase the number of Gnomes in Magic from eight to a whole lot more.

Cheers,

Bradley Rose

Guts of Glory: A Kickstarter Board Game

Too Long, Didn’t Read: If you like board/card games and are a fan of thematic/flavorful (hah, literally) games that are humorous and easy to pick up and play; check out the Guts of Glory board game on Kickstarter.  It’s a game about becoming the eating competition champion and is set in a post-apocalyptic world. Radical, right? The game’s Kickstarter has already met its goal, so you’ll know you’ll get a copy if you back the project. NOTE: The Kickstarter has just 15 hours to go, so click here to check it out and become a backer if this game sounds awesome to you.

Now, for the long version:

Kickstarter at PAX Prime 2012

It’s PAX Prime 2012, and I was walking into the Sheraton hotel where the Kickstarter area was and saying hello to a couple peeps at the Cards Against Humanity booth.  I also meandered around, looking at each of the Kickstarter booths to see if anything interested me. One booth caught my eye – there was a card game project! If any game, physical or digital, has a card-based component; my infatuation with the game automatically increases in at least the tiniest bit, regardless of whether I’ve experienced the gameplay or not. This card game I saw, and eventually played, is glorious – no, really, it’s called Guts of Glory.

Technically, it’s a board game, but it’s just as much of a board game rather than it is a card game as 7 Wonders is a board game rather than a card game. It’s got the necessary non-card components, but the meat of the whole game is within the cards themselves.

All the Glory Details

I won’t go too much into detail in how to play Guts of Glory here, as that is best explained by the creators themselves on their Kickstarter. With that said, in this game, you chew and spew (spit out) foods and condiments, competing with the other players to be the first to make it to the end of the “road to glory.” The world that this food-eating game takes place in, though, is a post-apocalyptic one – a great design choice, opening the doors for all sorts of card designs with fun concepts.

If this game were set in the modern-day world, imagine the kind of food and condiment cards you’d include in this game – the craziest you might be able to get are the tofu/veggie replacements and foods that are more unusual like frog legs (depending on your audience, this might not be unusual). Not as exciting!

Nay, with the post-apocalyptic theme, where food is scarce and meager, you then have liberty to not only be unrealistic; but, storywise, being hard-up for food means you’re masticating and swallowing some more unusual stuff.

Where this game excels – besides being a game that is more accessible to a wider audience than a complex fantasy swords-and-sorcery type of game like a lot of products out there – is its flavor. The food-eating flavor is baked right into the design of the game. Here’s what I mean:

Instead of an abstract row of three cards that each player must place more cards into at the beginning of each of their turns (like with some card games); you “refill the tray of food.” That’s so grokable (something that is easy to understand and “get” the concept of) for a player. Of COURSE you refill the tray of food – it’s an empty food tray with no food on it!

When you choose a food or condiment from the tray to put into your mouth, you “chew” it. And – get this – your mouth’s flavor (hehe) has also been leveraged into the game’s design. Your mouth has empty card slots laid out in a row: the sides (of your mouth) chew food while your tongue (in the middle of your mouth) handles condiments (because you taste with your tongue!). When you finish chewing, you swallow it and get glory.

You always have to chew something new every turn, but your mouth can get full, so you end up spewing something every now and then. That’s when other players can “catch” this spewed food into their own mouths to chew and swallow. Doing this is “more glorious,” so it becomes worth more glory points.

The foods and condiments themselves consist of cards like: the Hot Hot Hot Sauce, Dentures, and Snack Product (which looks like a Twinkie – and if you’ve seen Zombieland, you’ll know that the Twinkie, humorously, doesn’t expire and survives even through apocalypses).

Do, Do, Do, Do You Have It? GUTS!

I found out all about the game by having it demoed to me by Jesse Fuchs, one of the creators of the game. Even while I was running late for a popular panel at PAX I wanted to attend, I wanted to finish up the game session that Jesse demoing with me. I enjoyed the game and wanted to return at a later time to talk more about card games and the advice I was asking for regarding production of them. And he gave me a demo copy of my own before I left! Nice guy!

So, Guts of Glory: a flavorful game – in more than one sense of the word – that’s easy to pick up and light-hearted. Pick it up if you’re looking for another multiplayer out-of-the-box card game to enjoy that’s different from the usual popular card games you might find.

As of the time I post this, though, there’s only 15 hours left for the Kickstarter, and it’s already met its goal, so you’re guaranteed to get yourself a copy. Check it out!

Super Retro Game Review or: How I Learned Something about Super Crate Box and Loved Super Hexagon

A couple weeks ago, despite being nearly broke; I decided that spending one dollar for the iOS app Super Hexagon is worth the investment.  And it was, as one dollar buying enough content for a blog post topic is quite cheap; compared to, say, a Borderlands 2 purchase! (Besides, you know, having a ton of fun. Though, it was not my intent to buy Super Hexagon just for the sake of writing about it.) When I purchased Super Hexagon and tried it out for the first time, I was visiting friends at their place at the time.  I didn’t expect this, but the three of us got sucked into passing around my iPad trying to one-up each other’s high scores – just like at the arcades of olden times I only hear about.

A few days after competitive Super Hexagon-ing with my buddies, I fired up Steam and re-discovered Super Crate Box. I played it some time ago on PC, and I remembered enjoying the game. I was in the mood to play it again, so I did; and I noticed something: it’s not as fun as Super Hexagon.

Why was this, though? Both games have much in common: retro graphics, simple gameplay, one-hit game overs, and the goal of getting as far as possible before dying. But I have MORE fun with Super Hexagon. Then I figured it out: Super Hexagon evolves the challenges presented to the player over time during the gaming session whereas Super Crate Box does not.

Super Fun Challenge

In the Super Mario games, you encounter koopas, goombas, and some platformer obstacles in each level. However, as you progress through Super Mario, you find that there are red koopas that are “smarter” than the green koopas you first encountered, flying goombas, different enemies such as flying cheep-cheeps and spinies, and more difficult and differently-arranged platformer obstacles. The challenges presented to the player keep changing as the player progresses further into the game.

Even with the matter-of-seconds gameplay of Super Hexagon contrasting with Super Mario’s lasting-quite-a-bit-longer-than-a-few-seconds play sessions, Super Hexagon still manages to increase and vary the obstacles over time. When you start up a game of Super Hexagon, you aren’t presented with the same challenge you find when you’ve passed the ten-second mark or thirty-second marks – and you DEFINITELY don’t experience what you find after you’ve survived 60 seconds. Instead, the game is at its slowest in the beginning, and you start off with some obstacles with multiple ways to get past them before being presented with a nearly-hexagon-ish obstacle with only one way to get past them – and so on and so forth. Super Hexagon’s gameplay changes up things and/or becomes increasingly difficult as you progress further into the game.

Even better, Super Hexagon doesn’t just throw the same obstacles at you at each point in time in the game – you might get Easy Obstacle A in the beginning in one game while Easy Obstacle B is thrown at you in the beginning of your next game. But this is like icing on cake, and I’m digressing.

In Super Crate Box’s case, the game doesn’t change up the gameplay as you progress through the game. It’s the same enemies doing the same exact thing – over and over again. The same map, the same open area at the top of the screen where enemies drop in from.

Wait! Don’t worry. I’m aware of Super Crate Box’s additional maps and the harder modes that have enemies spawn from other places other than the top of the screen. This is actually what I believe to be a mistake: you can only play on one map and in one difficulty mode with each session.

When you play Super Crate Box, it’s like you’ve got a D12 die for your weapons and another die for what and how frequently enemies spawn, and you just keep rolling and dealing with the results until you end up with an unfavorable outcome and lose. If it evolved its challenges like Super Hexagon does, then the metaphorical die rolled for challenges would change over time instead of being the same thing rolled over and over again.

Super Other Games as Examples

You might point out examples such as Pac-Man where the game uses the same map with the same enemies over and over again. However, as you complete each map, the ghosts become faster and the power pellets don’t last as long as before. The gameplay still evolves, just only in the difficulty manner.

Also, I consider Ms. Pac-Man an improvement over Pac-Man for the reason that it DOES add those additional maps for a player to play through within one play session. So, Ms. Pac-Man does have both “increase in difficulty” and “variance of obstacles” as part of the evolution of challenges presented to the player and this makes it more fun.

And why is having challenges that evolve important for a game (for single-player games, at least)? People’s brains like learning things. When you learn, your body makes sure that you feel good (“You’re having fun!”), so that you can keep on learning. When we play games, we have fun because we are trying to figure out how to solve the problems in the games – we’re learning. But once a player has learned everything there is to know about the game, the game becomes tedious and simply an exercise. This is why Solitaire is not as exciting as Magic: The Gathering when you’re looking to game (for those who like Magic, that is) – because you’ve already mastered Solitaire.

On a side note, Solitaire can still be enjoyable in the sense that it’s relaxing just going through the motions. It’s why some people bake or go for a jog when they’re stressed or need a time-out. Personally, when I just want a relaxing activity, one of the things I like to do is play the original Super Mario Bros. I already know how to beat the whole game and have saved Princess Peach multiple times – but it still feels nice to play Super Mario Bros. every once in a while.

So, with Super Crate Box, when I’ve already learned that two out of the three enemies simply, drop down from above, walk straight, drop down into the fire, then become faster and run straight until they die; I’ve stopped learning. When I’ve already figured out how to use each of the thirteen weapons in the game; I’ve stopped learning. Now I’m just going through the motions and dealing with random weapons and random rates of randomly selected-from-three-available-enemy-types enemies.

Super Crate Box is Still Super Fun

Don’t get me wrong: I still have a lot of fun with Super Crate Box. In fact, whilst writing this and stopping to check out something Super Crate Box, I ended up having stopped writing for quite a while and getting sucked into playing it. Gamers gonna game.

It’s just that it’s not as fun to me as Super Hexagon is – and I am fully aware that games can only be designed well enough to a certain point to achieve fun before the fun-ness of a game becomes based upon the player’s gaming preferences. For example, I’m not much of a fan of first-person shooter games, but I’m sure Borderlands 2 is a great game and does what it does well.

But even with Super Hexagon’s and Super Crate Box’s similarities, each game has something different to offer that can’t be compared with anything from the other game. Super Hexagon has simplistic controls and music and visuals that contribute toward a unique experience. Super Crate Box is a platformer, has more personality, and has as a deeper well of unlockable content that encourages you to play over and over again.

Super Crate Box could have been better. But, keep in mind that this game is still good, and it’s no slight against Vlambeer, the developer of the game, as circumstances and certain decisions determined the overall outcome of the game. And that outcome is a fun game with many fans; a feat that I have yet to pull off myself.

Until next time, may the challenges your players face during a play session of your game do what a Pikachu does when exposed to a Thunder Stone.