TIGSource Forums

(http://upload.npcfighter.de/files/36/7166/jack-hearts.png)



From the creator of "Super Mario vs. Programming in China"...

the next great blockbuster production...

which certainly will win your a**.


Prepare... (and get a fucking printer)

---------------------------------------------------
okay, it's done!
Fear not, leaf through the rules (they are not too complicated once you have read them) and start playing! I'd love to read some reports on how the game plays. :)

Download-Link: (many thanks to my homeboy C418!)


http://c418.org/ftacd.zip


BaronCid out.

Printer ain't working, so sorry.

If you have a laptop... that's okay, too... or a large PC-table... or a fast writing-hand (with a PEN!!!) or... a huge acceptance for pain.

~

Ah, man, it's a board game again? I thought you were talking about a computer game on IRC :D

Oh... please allow me to double-leak... still not obvious enough...

(http://upload.npcfighter.de/files/36/8567/tableofevents.PNG)

What the crapper?

You are giving me mixed signals? Jack of hearts with a beard? Board game? table of events? This may just be amazing, or very silly.

It's finished fo realz.

Downloading now... I am high on anticipation!

Meh. SM vs. PiC was funny, now it's just a bad joke.

Well, it's certainly interesting. :P

Well, if you think that my way of making bad joked is writing a 15+ page document with diagrams, tables, explicit rules and creating an overall fully playable game which took me some 20hours to design and "write down"... if you think that this is my way of doing bad jokes you are terribly wrong, my friend.  8)

Maybe it is a joke... but a serious one.

OH alright then. Nothing I'm gonna bother playing anyway :P

Looks amazing so far, but I am confused about page 4 of the rules.
It says "Shuffle the fate-cards in the lower right corner of the interface with every new turn.
Next lay out the cards in exactly the same manner each time:"
Then it shows a diagram, but I do not know which cards I place in the spots for "already flipped" "draw 2" Action 1,2,3".  Please help, as i am dying to play it.

Well, I expected someone would have some questions. It's normal and I'm happy you asked.  :)

You shuffle the cards and when laying them on the table you do it like... serving cards in a poker round. So you put the cards on the table in the manner shown in the diagram and put the other cards to the side. So you don't know what's on the cards you put on the table, they're facing down.
The card "already flipped" has to be flipped even before you start Action 1.
It allows you to predict (using the list-of-events and the event-by-draw-and-floor-table) what might happen since the card "DRAW 1" (which is already flipped) decides whether your draw is something between 0-9, 10-19 or 20-29.
So after you put the cards on the table in the given manner you just start playing the actions "action 1" "action 2" and "action 3", then you can build something and finally flip "DRAW 2" too find out what draw you have. (the draw decides over the event at the end of the turn)

Did that make things clear? :)


BaronCid

I think I get it now, I don't have any paper in my printer though! Could I somehow transfer the references to MS paint? Then I could write on them with ease.

Edit: It is possible!

I'm totally going to have to try this out some evening.  I do quite like the idea (including the printery-ness of it).  That said, I feel compelled to ask: what, if anything, held you back from doing a computer implementation of this?

I don't know, (I haven't done either) but I think that coming up with a playable tabletop game would be a lot harder than programming a computer game. Good job, although I don't think I'll play. (I have no one to play with. :()

Ahm... it's a singleplayer game.  :) (Although I'm thinking about including multiplayer-gaming)


Well, first of all... I'm no programmer. I could've taken some game-maker or some simple programming language but well... I didn't have the time to get into that.
Second, I like to do something *special*.
Third, "board" or "card" games leave very much to the player's imagination and they allow changing the rules seemlessly. I like that.
And last: I never actually played a game including playing cards which tell a story.

So I wouldn't say my games are "boardgames". They are "games which don't need a computer to be played". That's because they resemble many themes exclusive to video games.


BaronCid

Ah, sorry, I heard "dealing cards" and was all, "multiplayer."
I'll give the game a shot sometime, then.

Oh, by the way... for anyone who would like to play the game (or tried to play already) ... to adjust the difficulty, have more actions each turn.

In the rules there are 3 actions per turn. That turned out too hard and I recommend you to play 5 actions per turn. So just lay out 5 instead of 3 action-cards each turn.

So has anyone come to actually play the game? :)
Did your experience any problems? How was it?
Unfortunately, I did not find enough time for polishing the game before the deadline hit us. :/

BaronCid

I haven't yet, but I just came across this game working my way through the comp entries.  I'll print off the rules and give it a shot later.

Edit: Also, cheers for making a card game!  I know it'll get less attention and be less flashy (just like the mainstream board / card game market these days), but doing game design via board and card games is just as valuable from a design perspective as the digital kind.  Every game designer should be capable of prototyping ideas off of a computer and into a board game; it's often the best way to quickly and cheaply test out whether a concept will be fun or not.

Like I said in my review thread, it's pretty fun, but it can be annoying when you get an insta-kill event. I didn't understand why the first event fate card was flipped at the start of the turn when I read the rules, though it made sense when you explained it in this thread. You should make it clearer in the rules. However, I'm not sure how well it works as a mechanic because you're not *supposed* to look at the event list anyway, are you? So knowing that the event will be between, say, V and VII, is not going to help until you've played the game a lot.

Glad to hear you're considering a multiplayer mode because I think it would work really well.

Thanks for the support, guys. :D


Well, you are actually not supposed to look at the result-list. It is allowed to look at any other list.
And I understand the insta-kill thing. I just thought about it. I guess it should get better if you increase the number of actions per turn.

I'm pretty frustrated that I didn't get to actually beta-test the game with friends or something. I finished writing down everything during the two days before deadline. And those days where right in an evil exam-period at school, by the way.

So none actually read through the rules and played the game before I published it. That's never a good thing to happen.


I'm actually working on the multiplayer-concepts already. I think this could get really interesting. And since it's much more fun to have insta-death when you're with some pals... it's worth it!
I just realized that I did not just create a game but a framework there.
What about "Faith"-games about constructing towers with knights and princesses in them? Or about building huge space-stations? Or about building MMORPGS? (;) )
You'd just have to modify the reference-sheets and maybe make some slight changes to the rules and that's it: new game.
It would be so awesome if someone modded the game some day. :D :D :D


BaronCid (Vote for FAITH, it's the only way to get into indie-heaven)

That seems interesting, unfortunately I don't have a set of playing cards  :-[

Well, I tried it a couple of times, and found it rather hard initially.  I thought that the dwarves should be able to see the tiles (cards) that they were next to, so when I played, I'd flip over any cards that the dwarves could see.  Also, it's a bit hard.  Only once did I head down to the second level, where I was promptly killed by goblins.     My dwarves starved a bunch of times too.   :'(

Still, the concept is interesting enough.  The game reminds me a bit of the Lone Wolf gamebooks.

Nice work.

I like your game concept a ton, but in its current state it's nigh-unplayable.

Here is how my first game of Faith, to a certain Degree went: I used your suggestion of 5 actions per turn, but only got three resources because that many fate cards matched my miners. I didn't have enough resources to build anything, so I went to the event. I could only choose the worst option because I didn't meet the other requirements; this got me some evil points and sent me to another event, which again forced me to choose the worst option due to requirements, only this time it got me an instant game over. ON THE FIRST TURN.

I considered pretending that hadn't happened and continuing, but glancing through the result list, I saw so many GAME OVERs that I considered it pointless. The game overs can't be avoided unless you're lucky enough to have gotten the resources to build something. Making the game instantly over when something happens that the player can't control is just bad game design. It would be much better with some half-measure, like subtracting from an HP stat, or even just killing one miner, although the latter would still be pretty bad.

Really, I admire what you've put together here; the STRUCTURE of a really cool game is there, but the game itself is pretty much broken at this point.

Edit: I tried it again and managed to last several turns this time, and even build a couple of things. Due to the odd distribution of resource requirements, though, I ended up with a lot of resources yet unable to build anything because I had tons of hearts and clubs but only a couple spades or diamonds. I was able to avert the same event that killed me straight off my first game with structures I'd built, but on turn 6 I hit another event, the earthquake. I didn't have tunnel improvements, so I had a choice of two options, either of which resulted in game over. Terrific.

This game needs lots of changes to really be playable.

Thank you very much for the info!

Well, I'm somewhat ashamed I did such poor balancing there.
(I have to say that I produced the game 2 afternoons+evenings during an exam-period in school, so I had no time for beta-testing... I finished just before the deadline came.)

I actually wanted the game to be hard but of course playable.
I will definately take some slight changes on the rule to make the game playable...
Maybe more actions per turn and a new event-table in which less happens on the first few floors.
It's still hard to balance such a game without a full-fledged QA-team.  :D

This game actually was meant to be something everyone can work on. A "community-game" since anyone can customize and rewrite certain rules to improve the game.


Thanks a lot, BaronCid  ;)

while theres nothing wrong with creating a card/board type game and sharing it with a video gaming board I'm not completely sure if it belongs in this contest.  wouldn't be my kind of thing but hope you can tweak it so people who like the concept can enjoy it more

I refuse to play this game because of the period of time on #tigIRC where every 5 seconds was "PLAY MAI GAME PLZ"

a.) I don't see "Video Game Board" written here anywhere.
b.) My game has most characteristics of a typical video game.
c.) I still don't see a reason in not fully accepting my game as suited for the competition. I didn't break any rules. No wait... You have to read coherent sentences... which maybe kinda disqualifies it.


Yeah, I actually did that to attract more players knowing that people would take it serious.

I think I just stretched some people's mind's borders here.  ::)