Velocimancer Games

It’s honestly shocking that I did more than two Mechanic Mondays in a row.  What’s even more shocking is that I’m going to get back on the horse after taking just one week off.  That’s a good skill to have, btw: I used to dream of perfect records, unbroken streaks, only doing things if I was a natural winner at them.  Time and a vast curriculum of failure have taught me how many things you can only accomplish after you fall off the wagon and claw your way back on again. Not that taking a week off for Thanksgiving is - you know what? That’s a whole other topic for another time. Today I want to draw on one of my favourite design inspirations - subverting assumptions.  As with so many things, I first came across this concept by following Daniel Solis.  He has an ongoing hashtag conversation about the assumptions we have about games, and how much rich material there is from subverting just one of those.  Some examples: All cards in a deck must have their card...

So today I’m just going to be a bugbear, just an absolute gremlin about a mechanic that I think is great, and which I understand other people aren’t into, and which I will die before changing.  The nice thing about designing games non-commercially is that, while I do want people to have fun playing my games, there is no force in Heaven, Hell, or anywhere inbetween that could make me care less about whether something will help a game sell or not.  I love a good design constraint, but “that mechanic is not currently popular” is not a good design constraint. So, spoiler alert, the mechanic is different cardbacks in a card game.  As implemented in my design, Cowl & Mask . Now, in this two-player game, each player has the same 7 cards, each of which has one of three cardbacks; Ranks 1 and 7 share a cardback, Ranks 2 & 6 share a different cardback, and Ranks 3-5 share the last cardback.  Cards are played rank-face down into seven head-to-head lanes, so that you g...

Today’s Mechanic Monday is a little different, because this mechanic is muuuuuch fuzzier than the last couple.  It’s got a couple different directions it could go, but that potential is less fun than for the Action Wheel or the Conflict Chips because it’s actively getting in the way of my current design.  So today’s post is as much about talking out the problem, as it is sharing something shiny and fun and new. So I’ve been playing a lot of Stardew Valley.  As in, I bought a laptop this month specifically so that I could play Stardew, and so that my wife could play the Sims.  This is my first time buying a computer in… 12 years.  Games, they motivate us! Or something.  My sister plays, and I first tried the game on her Switch when I visited her last month, and a couple of my friends play it, and something that stuck with me was someone describing a playthrough as “I’m just building a maple syrup farm” and honestly that sounded terrific to me.  *I* wan...