Viking Funeral

So in today post we will be looking at another one of the games I intend to do a case study of, and is yet again another of Rob Daviaus creations: Viking Funeral.

So as the images may suggest, VF (Viking Funeral) is certainly in a less serious tone that Risk Legacy, and as the images and name may suggest is about Vikings at a Funeral (who would of guessed). VF is a 2-player card game that uses a, preferably old and even damaged (balance is not important), pack of traditional cards. The cards represent individual Vikings and the gameplay revolves around the funeral of one of these Vikings (cards). It's not as morbid as it sounds.

The problem with Vikings (evidently) is they seem to like fights, even at Funerals. The gameplay (per funeral) starts with one player declaring their like or dislike for the dead card/viking, and the other player either agreeing (with the same coloured viking) or disagreeing (with a different coloured viking). If they disagree their is a fight (surprise, surprise). Fights revolve around players adding more allowed vikings (defenders allowed is same colour, aggressors is same suite), and the player with the highest total value (values of the cards) wins. The winner then gets to deal beatings equal to the remaining wounds of their last viking played (a vikings wounds is the number of symbols of that cards suit - damage taken, so an undamaged 7 has 7 wounds, and undamaged King has 2 wounds).

These wounds are represented by drawing over the suit symbols on the card - one for each bit of damage caused. you can be a bit more theatrical about this if you want a draw some more damage and the like. When a card runs out of wounds, its dead - kill it how you see fit (destroy it, have fun, etc...). The winner of a fight claims all the vikings into his/her mead-hall for scoring (if an agreement happens they go to the highest cards players mead hall)

For Viking Funeral theatrics are encouraged as they add to the creativity and add investment into the cards (sometimes you end up just wanting to kill a particular card, it gets odd like that but is strangely compelling...)

Image References

Viking Funeral Rulebook, Rob Daviau, 2012. Available at: http://media.wix.com/ugd/981066_8dabeacae2821153c6c7e9e10f807b47.pdf

Risk Legacy

So here we are again (and a bit later on), and I've started to do my (more formal versions of) my case studies (woo!). So without further ado I present you (again, for the Nth time) Risk:Legacy (applause) and a brief overview of what I'm looking at.

So Risk Legacy is a version of Risk that has you do all sorts of scary things (for board-gamers) such as ripping up cards, writing on the board and making decisions that are actually permanent (and not just for that round, for all rounds there-after). It's fairly Punk as board games go (it even has a Graffiti style font on the box, the horror)

The general gameplay and core loop is still very Risk (get dude, get countries to get more dudes to get more countries, etc...). Although the new victory condition (get 4 'Red Stars') is a nice change from the infinite grind fest that is classic risk. Where Risk Legacy really gets cool (yes cool) is in the permanent decisions, destruction and customisation/creation. Each player picks a faction (and that's who they are now stuck with for all the games to come, well at least the next 15, and I'll get to that) and picks ONE power up from a card to physically peel off the card and stick on their faction card. You now bin, rip and destroy the remaining powers you with never need them (chilling). Factions can get more powers as more games of Risk happen (its designed to played as a 'campaign' of 15 games - note the list on the bottom left of the board, the winners name gets written here and they get to pick bonuses, funky).

In addition to Factions changing so to does the board, Cities get built (and named by the players, in pen, forever), areas get 'scared' (gameplay changes represented by stickers, un-peel-able stickers) and sometimes whole countries can be removed. All in all, its pretty rad.

So I will likely be spending some time doing a (much) more formal analysis of Risk Legacy and its Auto-Destructive gameplay in the coming week.

Auto-Destructive Games, Influences and Early Steps

So the Analysis has been continuing along with some 'very' early concepts and prototypes (mainly revolving around how to have the main game loop involve destruction in some fashion or another). The idea of intentionally spilling a fluid on a 'specific' chart/sheet of paper with drawings on and letting the areas it spills onto be involved in some weird 'your a sangromancer' (blood mage) sort of game (red food dye of course).

Also been messing with the concept of using ice-cubes and building blocks in some form of vs. Jenga game combined with curling (elastic band - ping ice along table towards opponents, the more melted to more slidey but less weight it will have)

The issue with some of the early concepts I have had is the value of the destruction. As the stuff had be made to be destroyed (and had little value) it wasn't all that satisfying to destroy it. It lacked the 'deface your darling' value that Rob Daviau mentions when describing his design of Risk Legacy. One slight exception to this was for prototypes where the player had to build something themselves (thus having invested time, etc...), it's always sad to see something you've made get destroyed (thinking sandcastle and the damn sea!). I think I'll be looking at a design that incorporates a sense of creation and ownership to really give the destruction some weight. Even better if I can fit it in with 'deface your darlings'

(For those who haven't read my Proposal, 'deface your darlings' is a concept that the destruction of objects and things that are owned and hard(ish) to replace is inherently a more valuable experience, and a bit punk. These objects and things being 'your darlings'.)

The analysis has found me an interesting one: traditional playing cards do have a lot of usable inherent values (and may well have some of that deface your darlings vibe that I'm looking for).

Traditional Games & Material Analysis

One thing I feel I hadn't explained properly in my previous posts was that the game prototype I'm looking to develop is a traditional game, and by this I mean card/board games.The reason for this came about during my research stage in which during Siegel's (2006) research of Auto-Destructive and Auto-Creative art he notes;

“...destruction of physical objects is inherently more valuable an experience 

than the destruction of a simulated object”

Putting it down to the time and effort required to create something physical, compared to the ease of recreating a simulated object.

This plan to develop a traditional game should help to explain some points mentioned in the previous post: the case study of two traditional games (rather than Auto-Destructive video games such as Curiosity (22Cans 2012)), and the material analysis.

In the original Auto-Destructive manifesto Gustav Metzger (1959) mentions a list of potential materials that can be used, as well as mentioning some potential methods of destruction:

"Materials and techniques used in creating autodestructive art include: Acid, Adhesives, Ballistics, Canvas, Clay, Combustion, Compression, Concrete, Corrosion, Cybernetics, Drop, Elasticitv, Electricity, Electrolysis, Electronics, Explosives, Feed-back, Glass, Heat, Human Energy, Ice, Jet, Light, Load, Mass-production, Metal, Motion Picture, Natural Forces, Nuclear energy, Paint, Paper, Photography, Plaster, Plastics, Pressure, Radiation, Sand, Solar energy, Sound, Steam, Stress, Terra-cotta, Vibration, Water, Welding, Wire, Wood."

Using this idea to form the basis for analysis I started doing my own, looking for potential materials that could be used for traditional games, how they can be 'destroyed' and also inherent values to these materials/methods.

Rather than post up a big chart here I'll pop in some (brief, simplified) examples:

Material

Paper

Inherent Values

Easily Obtainable

Customisation

Easy to Destroy (+ ve and - ve)

Can be used to create

Writable

'Ethical' *

Sides

( * Ethical refers to the issue of Auto-Destructive games potentially being consumable and thus costly to the players, (an issue Rob Daviau touches upon in his design for Viking Funeral), ethical materials/methods are either cheap and/or easily replaceable, reducing this issue.)

Material

'Event' Cards

Variables

X-Mas/Religious Holidays

Birthday

Get Well

Congratulations

etc...

Inherent Values

Come with values that can be used for gameplay:

• Year
• Date
• Gender (Too, From)
• Older/Younger (Too, From)
• Length of Message (Lines)
• Word Count (All, Handwritten, Auto)
• Can also be used for is handwritten greater than auto (and vice-versa)
• # of People Too/From
• Colours & Images

See paper, although is slightly less 'ethical', at the same time what else do you do with old cards...

I will be continuing this sort of analysis (with such wonderful things such as Train Tickets and Traditional Playing Cards) whilst also looking at their value for making a game as well.

Auto-Destruction (Introduction)

Hello again!

So the purpose of this series of blogs is to discuss the development of my innovation project during Semester 2 (having spent Semester 1 doing research which I will touch upon from time to time).

The innovation question I elected to take on was:

"How can Gustav Metzger's 1960's Auto-Destuctive art movement be used during the development and design of innovative game prototypes as both a catalyst for innovation and inspiration?"

With this I then set out my Aim as:

"The aim of this research is to explore and gain an understanding of how art movements, with particular focus upon Auto-Destructive, can be influential in the development of innovative games."

With the Objectives:

• Investigate and analyse the influence art movements can, and have had, upon the development of different games.
• Investigate the Auto-Destructive art movement and determine how it could be used as an influence in the development of innovative games.
• Using information from the previous objectives, conceptualise and develop game prototypes based upon influence from the Auto-Destructive art movement. 

So by the end of Semester I had finished the project proposal, including the literature review and research that really hit upon the first two objectives.

Throughout the upcoming weeks I will be looking at doing some further research, notably case studies of the two (arguably) auto-destructive traditional games; Risk Legacy (2011) and Viking Funeral (2012) (both developed by Rob Daviau), before moving onto the development stage.

During the development stage I'm looking to identify and analyse potential materials and approaches that can be used/taken, before beginning developing an auto-destructive game prototype of my own.