board game research

 

Pandemic:

Set up/understanding:

The rule book and the instructions are far too confusing and wordy for how simple the gameplay is. I would simplify the wording and rule book to help every player to understand the game properly.  

Mechanics:

The game has multiple different difficulties, we used the introductory mode as we were learning the game. Even for an introductory difficulty it still felt too easy, I found that I wasn’t able to learn of the game’s mechanics in this mode as it was so easy to win, I would’ve made the introductory difficulty harder but still find a balance to ensure that every player can still learn every mechanic comfortably in a single playthrough.

Pandemic has multiple mechanics at play, the game is mainly dictated with cards and a pawn this is how the players interact with game.

An interesting mechanic is that every player is issued with a role to play. Every player receives a random card with their role on it this gives them a special ability that they can perform in the game, for example I had the scientist role, this role allow me to cure a disease with 4 cards of the same colour instead of five like the other players, there were other roles like the medic which allowed that player to cure individual cities of disease without the cure having been discovered.

I enjoyed this mechanic the most as gives the player a sense of importance that’s very rare in other games, it makes the player feel that they can contribute to the players efforts by playing their designated role correctly. This mechanic also adds more strategic decisions as all of the players are working together to get certain players around the board to perform their roles effectively.

I didn’t like the why the infection spreads in the game, I feel like a system of the infections spreading on its own of the course of the game would be better, but this may be too complex.

If I were going to introduce one mechanic from pandemic into my board game it would be the roles as I feel like this is as very unique system that gives the player a sense of responsibility that they wouldn’t get in other games and it works extremely well with team work focused gameplay.

 

Pandemic:

 

Pandemic is a board game set during an outbreak, the board itself is a map of the world and the main task of the players is to work together to stop the outbreak. There are very few games like this that involve all the players working as a team I believe this makes the game fairly unique in the space.

 

Features and mechanics:

. the games board is a map of the world that Is split in to four sections denoted by a colour: blue- north America/western Europe. Yellow- south America/Africa. Black- middle east/western Europe. Red- Asia/Australia. The game utilises cards and pawns as the way the players interact physically with the game. There are four different types of cards: roles, infection cards epidemic cards and city cards.

ROLES- each player receives a random role card at the start of the game this will be the role that they are playing throughout the game, for example the role I was playing throughout my playthrough of the game was the scientist, this role allowed me to cure a disease with only four cards instead of the usual five, their were other roles like the medic that allowed that player to cure a city of infection without the cure for that infection having been discovered.

INFECTION CARDS- one infection card is picked up at the end of a players turn, the city on the card that you picked up denotes where you will place one infection cube of that cities colour. if the city has three infection cubes already on it then you must place the infection cube on an adjacent city of the same colour.

CITY CARDS- you receive two of these at the end of a turn these have a city and a colour on them, these are the cards you need to cure the disease, if you collect 5 of the same colour cards you can cure the disease, or if you are the scientist, you can do it with four.

. the role system and the fact players have to work together contributes to an interesting gameplay loop in which every player is using their own abilities to make another players life easier, so you are able to win the game faster. Players have four actions they can do on their turn, these include moving your pawn to connected cities, clearing infection from the city that you are currently in and constructing research stations.

. you win the game by finding the cure for all four colours of infection, you achieve this by getting 5 city cards of the colour of the infection you are trying to cure.

. each player has four moves that they can complete a turn, these can include curing, moving and building research stations

 

Strengths and weaknesses:

A core strength of the game in my opinion is the teamwork aspect, it provides great gameplay in which all of the players are trying to play to the strengths of what each role can do, when all of the players click and figure out how they can help each other it creates a satisfying situation as you start to get things done quickly.

A key weakness of the game is the way the player is introduced to the rules and mechanics. The rules and roles and how the game is played is not particularly complex once you start playing however the way the rules are worded in the rule book is very confusing its easier to skim it to get the gist and then start playing on introductory mode, the player should be able to understand the rules better from the rule book.

 

Improvements:

I would word the rule book a rule cards in a simpler way, this will help onboard players better.

I think adding another layer of depth to the roles would be an interesting idea, the game has the curing mechanic, but it also has movement, so for example the medic role can do what it previously did before, but it can now also move between research stations without using one of its moves, so the player is able to do more in a turn. This would be implemented by adding new functionality to the already existing role cards this makes it a simple addition to game but adds some new dynamics that can be exploited as a team.

Conclusion:

In conclusion I believe that adding more functionality to the roles system and suggesting that the onboarding experience be more difficult will improve the initial experience of the player, if the initial experience of the player is better than the player is more likely to spend more time with the game whereas we found that we got easily bored with the introductory experience and after that we no longer wanted to spend any more time with the game. Also, another benefit of adding more complexity to certain systems makes it more difficult to figure out all the systems  

munchkin: 

this game had RPG elements in that you can change your characters class and weapons/armor through the use of treasure cards that you receive from defeating monsters. I liked this element of the game and would definitely be one of the elements that I may consider taking some inspiration from for my board game. 

I didn't like the death system in this game as it keeps you in the game but prevents you from leveling up, I feel that there should be a way for a player to bring themselves properly back into the game.