Super Dungeon Explorer

Super Dungeon Explorer is a board game for 2-6 players above 10 years of age. The game is built so that one or two of the players will play as the dark consul and the rest will play as heroes.

Dice:

Die rolls is the most prominent feature in this game as it determines everything that happens in the game. There are three different types of dice, blue ones, which are the weakest, red ones which are stronger and green ones which are the strongest. When we played, the only character that ever got to use the green dice was the boss (dragon).

Die rolls are used before starting each turn to decide which “team” initiates the round, this being dependent on the Will of the character on each team that has the most. They are also used to determine if an attack will do damage or not, if the character being struck has less points in armour than the attack is worth, they will take one damage. If the character has armour that is dependent on die roll they will roll to see if they are able to defend themselves.

When a hero player rolls a heart or a potion, they either gain a health point or a potion, both which they can choose to give away to other players.

Health System:

Each character (including enemies) has a heart on the character cards that state how many health points they have. Every time a character is successfully attacked, they receive one damage token, which means losing one health point.

Many consul characters have only one life which means that if they are successfully hit they will die. If the consul player(s) have spawning towers left, they can however spawn the character again.

Hero characters can use potions to heal themselves or sometimes each other; they can also use loot cards for regaining health points.

Board System:

The number of boards used, which decides how big an area the game will cover and in the end also for how long each game will take, is dependent on the amount of players. As we played with three heroes we decided to use three boards, which also meant that we could use the boss. The consul starts by choosing one board and connecting it to the “information board” (a board which shows the progress of the game, when heroes get loot and holds loot, treasure and adventure cards). Then the heroes get to choose another board and connect it to the first, leaving the third board decision up to the consul, again connecting the previously laid board.

There are some boards with narrow paths that will force the character close together, and small rooms that can make the players move across the boards a lot more, slowing their advance. There are also bigger rooms that have obstacles such as lava which can be used to protect or to slow down.

Once the boards are set, the consul decides where to place their spawning towers and treasure chests (one of each on each board), taking into consideration obstacles and range of the hero characters’ abilities.

Spawning System:

At the start of the game the consul has a certain number of spawning towers; in our case we had two players playing the consul and three players playing as heroes, which meant that we had three towers.

Before the start of each round the consul gets to spawn four skulls worth of characters around each tower. The skulls is a resource that is used to spawn characters, different character types cost either one, two or three skulls to spawn, depending on their strength. The amount of skulls that they cost to spawn is synonymous to the amount of health points that they have.

In addition to these four per tower, the consul can spawn an extra amount of skulls if they have been collected through the progression bar.

Progress bar:

Every time any player deals damage, a token is moved one step on the progression bar on the “information board”. On some of them there are skulls, the amount of skulls that has been passed each round is added to the number of skulls that the consul can spawn. Halfway through there is a special skull that states that a mini-boss will spawn and when the end of the progression bar is reached the boss will spawn.

Loot system:

Each time that a hero deals damage on an enemy character, a token is moved on the loot area of the board, which is made up by a series of squares. Once the token is moved to a square that has a loot symbol on it, the player who dealt the damage gets to pick a loot card. The player can then choose to take it for themselves and use it to level up their character, put it face down until the end of the round when the group will decide together who will receive it, or they can choose to discard it to give a health point back to any hero player.

Levelling up:

The hero characters can, as said, level up by picking up loot or treasure chests; this can give them additional stats, such as extra attack power or armour, or abilities such as flight and immunity to knockback, poison etc.

The loot cards can be power ups that increase damage, will, dexterity etc. by adding additional dice to roll. There are also some revive cards that can be used to resurrect a dead hero player. There are four colours of “power up cards” that corresponds to each side of the character card; a player can only hold one card of each colour at the same time.

This system is essential to give the hero players a chance as the game progresses towards the boss fight.

The consul has no possibility of levelling up their minions; this is balanced by them being allowed to spawn a mini-boss halfway through the game and a powerful boss monster at the end of the game.

The characters:

There are several different types of characters, some are best with ranged attacks, some with melee and some with magic. This is shown in how many and what kind of dies the player can roll for each stat corresponding to each type of attack and the range that is stated on the character cards if applicable. This is true for both the hero and the consul characters.

How many times a character can move per round is also stated on the character cards. This is essential to strategize defences and attacks. How many actions per turn each character can perform is also stated, some special abilities might cost more than one action to perform while standard attacks only costs one action.

Attacks:

Each character activated can move the amount of squares stated on their card and attack any enemy player that is within their reach. Only one character can be activated at a time, they will choose one character to target and which attack to use.

The player will then roll the amount and type of dies that corresponds to the chosen attack. If the attacked player has armour that is decided upon die rolls, they will roll to see if they get equal or a higher number, which means they managed to defend themselves.

Most consul minions have a set armour value of one or zero, which means they automatically die if the hero player rolls one or higher.

Most interesting:

I find that the most interesting system is the levelling up system. In combination with the increased difficulty provided by the mini-boss and the boss it created a sense of progression in the game. It created a great build-up towards the big boss fight that inevitably would come.

The game designers managed to translate the standard RPG (role playing game) into a board game which takes you on a journey from quite easy to epic boss battle. In the beginning it is letting you get the hang of it, none of the characters are very powerful and it is looking good for the heroes. Then the game takes you through the levelling up, heroes gathering their strength and the consul rallying their forces, constantly building up tension, and finally the journey ends with a giant boss fight.

The best:

I find that the best part of the game is the build-up towards the boss fight in the end. Even though the game felt uneven a lot of the time, tension was increased throughout the game. This was aided by the social aspect of playing as teams instead of all players against each other. In the end of the game there was a lot of excitement, and even if the dragon we played with had very powerful attacks and a lot of health points, making it feel as if it would definitely win, we were on our toes and really excited to see who would actually come out alive.

The worst:

For me, the worst part of the game is how it is balanced. In the early part of the game it felt too easy for the heroes, playing as the consul we sometimes felt cheated as our minions were killed before we had a chance to use them at all, leaving us with little options.

The health system also felt very unfair as no matter how many times the heroes were damaged they would just heal themselves as they have so many ways in which to do so. It felt almost hopeless playing as the consul and it felt as if your actions were meaningless as they did not really have an impact. This was also apparent when the heroes started to level up their characters, getting stronger and gaining more abilities.

In the middle part of the game, especially when the mini-boss was spawned, it felt as if it was levelling out a bit. Even though all damage made was healed, the game felt more even. This could be considered a positive thing as it means that the players will play through the entire game; the heroes will be alive all the way through to the boss fight in the end. It did create a build-up towards the end that was interesting but I feel as if it could probably have been designed somewhat differently so that it would feel more even all the way.

Once the boss spawned, the table was turned on the heroes and it seemed inevitable that the giant dragon would win, which it did. One of our group members who have played this game before said that they had never experienced the heroes winning, so I believe there is room for improvement.

Target Group:

The age on the box says 10+; I think that this is pretty accurate, from 10 years up to younger teens. It is quite complex, many things to keep track of, but I believe that this agegroup could comprehend it and play it.

The cute, somewhat childish, chibi style is something that I believe could potentially scare away older teens and adult players which is a strong contributor to my opinions regarding the target group.

The type of game combined with the visual style of it makes me believe that it is not targeted at either a male or female audience. From my experience RPGs are usually targeted at boys, while cute art is targeted at girls, this is a combination of both, although probably more dominated by features that are generally targeted at boys.

In conclusion this was a very entertaining game; it made rolling dies interesting and feels important. Even if the balancing felt off and parts of the game felt really unfair it was enjoyable and had a great build up towards a climactic end.

The parts that feel unfair have their purpose though and I believe them to be necessary to make the players sit through the game from start to finish without feeling cheated. But I think that these parts should have been designed somewhat differently as they sometimes felt unfair, even though in the long run they were not.

Board Game Analysis: Battlestar Galactica

For our Advanced Game Design course we have been assigned to groups and given the task of playing and analysing board games. In total we will analyse three board games, for this week’s assignment we have chosen Battlestar Galactica the Board Game.

  




















Battlestar Galactica is a card and board game in which 4-6 players team up to save humanity by winning the game. Some of the players are not human though, they are infiltrating Cylons who are out to sabotage for the human players so that they will lose; their goal is to exterminate humanity.

Character Cards:

Each player starts with choosing a character card based on a character from the TV-series, each character has two positive abilities, of which one is an action that can be used only once per game, and one negative trait.  Each character also has a set number and types of skill cards that they are to pick up when it is their turn, these are correlated to which category the character belongs to.

The personal traits can affect the other systems in many ways, for instance that there is one character that has to choose the first option of a crisis card if it is their turn and another character that can steal “miracle tokens” from other players, allowing them to use their once-per-game-abilities more than once and preventing the other player(s) from using theirs.

There are four categories of characters: pilots, politicians, military and support, the first three players must choose one of the first three categories and may not choose from the same one as there has to be at least one of each in the game. The rest of the players may choose freely which type of character they will play. The highest ranked player in each category receives a title of President, Admiral or CAG which gives them the responsibility of making certain tough decisions during the game – for instance there may appear a crisis where the president has to choose between either executing another player or losing all their skill cards, which might make the game more difficult to win.

Loyalty Cards:

Each player is then given a loyalty card stating that they are either human or Cylon, the loyalty card is to be kept secret from the other players. This loyalty system dictates whether you are playing to win or “lose” and urges the players to team up with each other. The Cylon players may at any time choose to reveal their identity and use an ability that is stated on their card, for instance to send another player to the brig. 

When the game is half-way through, when the Galactica has reached 4 distances, each player is given a second loyalty card. This means that there may be two or three Cylon players in total adding to the tension and build-up of the game.

The loyalty system divides the players into teams, but unknowing of which player has which loyalty the players are occasionally forced to work together to reach their goals. 

Skill Cards:

There are five types of skill cards: Politics, Tactics, Leadership, Piloting and Engineering, what kind of cards each player can pick up and use is stated on their character card. There are a few exceptions where players may pick up cards of other colours than their own though. These cards are spent to perform actions when it is a player’s turn and to pass(/not pass if you are Cylon) skill checks.

Crisis Cards:

At the end of each turn, with exception from revealed Cylons and players in the brig/sickbay, there a crisis will occur. The current player will draw a crisis card which may have a choice for one of the leaders to make, a choice of two evils and/or skill check or a regular skill check. Some crisis cards have symbols on them that can activate for instance jump preparation or enemy ships when they are drawn.

Resources:

One of the lose criteria is to deplete one of the resources which are food, fuel, morale and population, they can be both gained and lost by for instance performing skill checks. There are also resources in shape of space ships, both humans and Cylons have a few different types of ships that have varying damage and hitpoints.

The human ships can only be controlled by a pilot character, either by them launching themselves into one or by going to the control room and sending them out from the reserves. The ships can either be waiting in the reserve area, in the damaged aircrafts area or be completely destroyed and taken out of the game. 

Enemy ships are either activated by certain crisis cards or by a revealed Cylon player using their turn to build and activate ships.

Locations:

There are a number of locations on the board, each has their own action that players currently in them can choose to activate upon their turn. For instance a player in the brig might initiate a skill check so that they can be freed. Human players can only move between locations on human ships while revealed Cylons only can move to locations on Cylon ships.

Skill Checks:

A skill check is prompted either by a crisis or by a player triggering a location, this means that the players will need to spend skill cards of the corresponding colours to pass it. All cards are placed face down, together with two random cards from a destiny deck (2 skill cards of each type) to make it possible for Cylon players to sabotage and keep their identity secret. Cards of the wrong colours will count as negative points and the players must reach a certain amount of points to pass the skill check.

Destination Deck:

A set of cards used by the Admiral when the Galactica has performed a jump, the Admiral draws two cards and chooses which one to use and the Galactica will move the number of distances that is stated on the card, in order for the players to win they must reach 8 distances and perform another jump.

Jump Preparation:
To win the game the Galactica needs to perform jumps to evade the Cylons, in order to do this the players need to move a token five times on the jump preparation field of the board. The jump preparation is activated by symbols on certain crisis cards.

Boarding Party:

One type of enemy ship drops of a boarding party, if they move four times and reach the “humans die”-square, the game is lost.

A typical round:

The current player picks up the amount of skill cards that is stated on their character card, then they may choose to move to a location and/or perform an action or play a skill card. When the player’s turn is up or they feel that there is nothing that they can do, they will draw a crisis card.

If the card consists of a skill check, two cards from the destiny deck is placed on the board and players have the option of playing cards that will affect the skill check, for instance adding an additional colour as a positive, before the player to the left of the current player starting to place cards on the pile. 

Here players have the opportunity to either help or sabotage for the team or a player that they might be suspecting is Cylon or human (depending on their own loyalty). When all players that wish to/can, has spent their cards, the sum on them is totalled. The skill check is then either passed or failed and the players will have to take the consequences.  When that is completed the player to the left will start their turn.

What is the best and the worst parts of the game?

After playing the game a few times we came to the conclusion that the best and worst sides to the game are closely linked. We felt that the best part of the game was the build up towards a climax at the end, while the worst part was the anti-climax that was the end of the game. As the game progresses and the inevitable doom comes nearer and nearer the game felt as if it was building up towards a dramatic end with lots of tension and excitement. In the end however, it culminated into practically nothing more than an “oh, we lost”, there was no real sense of winning either (something interesting to consider is the fact that every time we played the humans lost). At one time those playing humans got a card with a choice of dying by losing 1 morale or one fuel, at that point there was no possibility for them to regroup and win, although the “teams” were neck and neck.

As said previously, the build-up was the best part; the human players would try their best to survive, while the Cylon players would try to sabotage and make the other players lose. There was a tension created by the enemies constantly closing in, increasing in numbers and the resources depleting at an increasing speed. Knowing that someone is an infiltrator but not whom and that there is not really anything you can do about it, as well as being the infiltrator trying not to be discovered while doing as much damage as possible was also a big part of this. 

What is the most interesting system?

Our group was a bit divided when we discussed what was the most interesting system of the game; one member who had played the game a lot before felt that it was the loyalty system, while the players who had never played before did not feel as if it was something we had really used when playing. 

Some of us, myself included, felt that the most interesting thing was the social interaction that the game created, the loyalty system was though a part of this. Why we felt that this was so interesting was that it was very very subtle and different from other games we had played. It was a major part of the game although it did not create a witch hunt or create extreme paranoia, the game forced the opposing sides to work together while trying to evade/sabotaging for the others. 

Unlike other games, e.g. the game where someone is a police and another is a murderer that blinks at its victims, the game did not focus on trying to find out who was the Cylon, even though it felt as if it composed a major part of the gameplay.

What is the target group?

I would think that the main target group of the game is the fan-base of the TV-series, as a way of getting more money out of the brand.  The box states that the game is for player of 13+ years old, I do however believe that the target group is somewhat older due to the complex systems and the political drama of the TV-series. 

Although a thirteen year old might be old enough to comprehend and play the game I feel that the game is probably aimed towards an agegroup of 15-20 years old, both male and female Sci-Fi and Battlestar Galactica fans. 

It is an enjoyable game that we had a lot of fun playing, so I think that the game could be appreciated by a large group of people. The game is however very much based on the TV-series and I fear that it might scare away players who have not watched it and might not understand and appreciate the game enough to truly enjoy it. Had not one of our group members watched the TV-series, we would probably not have understood the game as much as we did and I do not think that we would have been able to experience the complexity and depth it offers, therefore I come to the conclusion that the target group is fans of the Battlestar Galactica TV-series.

Conclusions:

What most of us felt was the most interesting thing about the game is how the many small elements creates the great complexity that the game consists of. Especially the subtlety of the loyalty system, there was no individual part of the game that overpowered the others and it felt as if everything was meant to be together. When playing it felt different from many other games in this regard, the beautiful subtlety that composes the game felt very refreshing to us and was a major contributor to why we enjoyed the game so much.

Some parts felt a bit redundant though, as if they had put it in the game and found something for it to do just because it was in the TV-series, although it did not at all add to the gameplay. The boarding party is the most prominent example of this, as it seems very ineffective and played almost no part in the game. Only two or three times did we use them in the game and they never made it further than one or two steps even if we mostly just let them be, that is what made it feel as if it was there only to give the ships that drops them off a reason of being there, other than they exist in the TV-series. This is strange however, since them moving four times is one of the loose conditions.

The ending was, as said earlier, a bit of a let-down, the build-up promised so much but it did not deliver. It is something that could have profited by more playtesting and balancing to make the ending feel as dramatic and climactic as it was expected to be.

We enjoyed playing the game even though most of us had never watched the TV-series, but I do not believe we would have had the same experience if not one of the group members new both the show and the game very well. I believe that it is very much adapted to the TV-series and that it might alienate potential players that are not fans of Sci-Fi or the series, which might otherwise have really enjoyed the game. It could be considered a strong point though, that it is very much targeted at a specific audience.