Velocimancer Games

The end of 2020 draws near! I’ve done plenty of meta self-analyzing this year, particularly with my quarterly plans.  And perhaps I’ll finish the year out next week with one last one of those, before starting 2021 with my M:tG-inspired series.  But this week I figured I’d do an external look back; on some of the video games I sunk the most time into this year, what compelled me about their design, and which of those experiences can translate over to analog game design. So I dropped some time into Pokemon Shield but I didn’t finish it and I really don’t have much positive to say about the game.  It feels notably easier than any of the previous iterations I’ve played, and not in a scalable-accessibility way.  A weak story was further undermined by low stakes, and the most-lauded part of the game, the Wild Area, failed pretty spectacularly to impress me.  I don’t care about Raid battles, I strongly resented that attempting to catch over-level pokemon was forestalled, and its small size hi

Hello hello.  It’s Friday, and I’m done with work, I figured I’d get this week’s blog post out prior to the last minute.  So I’ve got Meet Me At the Altar blaring and the kettle’s just gone so let’s carry over some momentum! Giving you a sneak peek here to try and hold myself accountable: I’ve been wanting for a while to do a series of Mechanic Mondays where I take M:tG abilities and spin out what they could look like as the primary mechanic of a standalone board game.  I’ve got just a couple other ideas I want to get through before I kick that off - and I’d like to get a buffer of 2 or 3 of those together to start with, to ensure the idea has legs.  Particularly since I don’t actually play MtG myself (although Strixhaven sure seems like a good entrypoint into playing, considering I haven’t bought Magic cards or built a deck since I was a magical high school student myself). Anyhow - that’s yet to come.  For the time being, I still want to write a year-end reflection on boardgame mecha

Honestly, I just want to get through Mechanic Monday today.  It’s been a long week with plenty of stress and disappointments, and I don’t have much cute noodling to offer for filling in the blanks.  So let’s get to it, shall we? Movement Based On Adjacency Strength GREEM is a 2-player area control game where 25 Markers are up for grabs on a 5x5 grid.  You and your opponent start out in control of Markers on opposite corners of the grid.  On your turn you either move pieces from one Marker or add a piece from your reserve to a Marker you control.  The distance that pieces may travel from their starting Marker are determined by the number of friendly pieces on the starting and adjacent Markers; on a turn, any number of friendly pieces may be moved from one Marker, and pieces may be moved together to another Marker or split up to multiple Markers, but the maximum number of moves is determined by the number of friendly pieces adjacent to the origin Marker.  Control of Markers is determined