I’m helping out with another open gaming project called W Tactics. The development is already at a very exciting stage.
I’m looking forward to playtesting it in a few days time 
W Tactics
January 25th, 2010Three Donkeys Podcast
January 18th, 2010A good podcast to listen to for any aspiring game designers is Three Donkeys. It features Richard Garfield, the creator of the Magic: The Gathering.
Hacker’s Gamble courtesy of Larissa
January 18th, 2010My friend did some artwork for which I’m very grateful. Here’s one of the pieces:
Star Wars CCG and Game Design
July 30th, 2009 |
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Images Copyright Decipher Inc.
I’ve been a fan of CCGs for a few years now, and during that time I’ve been seriously in to three different games: Magic the Gathering, Star Wars CCG, and Lord of the Rings TCG.
Magic the Gathering is still going strong, because the learning curve is shallow, yet deck strategy can get quite advanced. It also helps when you have a bullet proof parent company….
Lord of the Rings TCG on the other hand, died a rather grisly death. This is my favourite game, because it always had a sense of excitement about it. Deciding whether or not to move again in the regroup phase often took balls of steel. I’ve never come close to experiencing this sort of intense gameplay in any other game, irrespective of whether it’s online or offline. Unfortunately, the loss of the license, and a few bad decisions on behalf of Decipher, saw the game spiral in to a cataclysmic decline. It was a real shame, because it was a fantastic game.
Around about the time I got in to LOTR TCG, I also started playing Star Wars (another game produced by Decipher). It had already been around for a fair few years by this point, and the existing card base was extensive. For a newbie, Star Wars is very difficult to get your head around. It was just a very complicated game……but people loved it. Even though Decipher stopped producing new cards in 2001 after losing the license to Wizards of the Coast, a Player’s Committee has continued to release ‘virtual cards’ which can be used in place of existing game text.
This brings me to the point of this article: why has Star Wars been such an enduring success? Both the LOTR and Star Wars licenses are equally covetable, so I don’t think it’s purely an issue of fandom here. I think it comes down to the game play.
Practically every game developer aims for easily accessible games, with lots of hidden depth. Star Wars is a great game, there’s no debating that. But it’s not because it’s hugely accessible; it’s because it has huge depth. When people talk about depth in games, they probably think about being able to play it through half a dozen times without getting bored. Star Wars has been around for 13 years, and people still enjoy it.
The holy grail of game development must surely be ease of accessibility (like Magic), with depth (like Star Wars), and not to screw over the players (damn you LOTR!!).
As always, we’re interested to hear your comments.
Card template
July 3rd, 2009We’ve uploaded the card template. You’ll need to download Inkscape to edit it.
Cheers.
Details
July 3rd, 2009Following on from the previous post, we’ve decided to make our stuff Creative Commons (CC). We’ve decided to go for a Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 license. This means you CAN use it for commercial purposes, as long as you give us some credit, and make your own derivative works available under CC.
We think this is the best way to go. It provides you with the most creative freedom, whilst also keeping the spirit of CC sharing intact.
Anyone who has CC work of their own can post a link to it in our forum or in the comments.
Cheers.
The deal
June 29th, 2009Its been a while since I last updated, so I thought I’d let everyone know how it’s going.
When we set out on this project we never could’ve comprehended the difficulty in getting so much artwork done. The game took say 2 months to write, develop and test. But finishing the artwork has now taken about 6 months. The initial plan was to try and finish the game, and then release it all at once under a Creative Commons (CC) license. But we’ve changed our mind: from today everything to do with Project Utopia will be CC.
During the process of putting together this game we came to realise just how important CC is. There’s a plethora of artwork available online, but only a percentage, or a fraction of a percentage, is CC. Furthermore, a lot of those images don’t allow commercial uses, which seriously hampers what you can do with them.
So whilst we were bemoaning the lack of quality, freely available material, we were trying to retain copyright on this game. It made no sense, so we’ve decided to make it all freely available. If you want to do something with it, then go ahead. Have fun. Because at the end of the day, copyright is a pain in the ass, and we just want people to play the game.
We’ve uploaded our card designs to Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/27802924@N04/sets/72157620723209826/
If anyone wants high res images, or editable inkscape files, then email dragstarrgames at gmail dot com. If anyone wants to submit any pictures then email us at the same address (but only if they’re creative commons!!).
Cheers.
Mafia game
May 2nd, 2009I came across the Mafia card game recently, and it’s very close to what Zombie is trying to achieve. The game is nice and simple, and is really cool to play at a party with a large number of players. It also has a strong role playing element, which more than compensates for the fact that the cards used are playing cards (so aren’t particularly illustrative, or related to the game). And the final measure of its success is how many different people enjoy playing it. Even my flat mate, who is an avid non-gamer, loves it.
The game was designed by a psychologist in Moscow State University in the mid 80’s. Since then there’s been a load of spin offs, with slighly modified rules. So whatever flavour you’re in to, Mafia will make for an entertaining evening. Highly recommended!
Update: you can buy illustrated cards for the game. They’re done in a nice Sin City style.
Bionics and Tinkerer
March 16th, 2009Here is a Rebel card (Tinkerer) and a Bounty Hunter card (Bionics).
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Faction stories
February 25th, 2009Firstly, apologies for the recent lack of updates, we’re working hard to get some downloadable starter decks finished (see forum for more details). For now, we thought we’d make available more information about the different factions. This document was something that we created at the start of game development to give us an idea of how the factions varied from each other, so we could try and reflect that in the game play. The factions are not listed in alphabetical order, but rather in thematical order. We hope you enjoy it, and as always, feedback is most welcome either here, or in the forum.