Game Experience

During the course of the first three weeks of Game Experience tutorials, we explored and played a number of games; all of which I will analyse in the blog.

Game 1 – Secret Hitler

Platform – Tabletopia

Secret Hitler is a hidden identity party game that falls under the genre of ‘Social Deduction’ the game was developed by Goat, Wolf & Cabbage LLC and was manufactured by Breaking Games and distributed by Blackbox.

 It is a board game which is about finding and stopping the ‘Secret Hitler’, the player capacity is up to 10 players. The way it works is, the players are divided into two teams, the ‘Liberals’ and the ‘Fascists’, one of the fascists would indeed be Hitler. The fascists would be the only ones who know Hitler’s identity and the identities of the fascists would remain undisclosed to Hitler. The start of each round would call for the player on the left to be the President who would have to elect a Chancellor and enact a policy from the policy cards the Chancellor gives them. This is where the game gets interesting, the players can make deductions and suspect other players based on whether they enact fascist or liberal policy cards.

Sounds like an extremely fun game to play right? Wrong.

From personal experience, I’m aware that the board game is extremely entertaining but it did not prove to be as fun online, my friends and I could not figure out any of the controls on tabletopia and it just ended up being really frustrating to understand and use the website. It was an overall disappointing experience.

I would say that it’s not the game itself that was bad, but rather the medium we chose to play it on, I believe this game can only be enjoyed to its fullest as a tabletop board game because of the primary mechanics of the game itself, being envelopes, cards and chips.

Game 2-  Mint Works

Platform – Tabletopia

Mint Works is a very straightforward game, the player capacity is 1-4 players. Every player has a limited amount of mint tokens which directly represent their workers. Players can then utilize these mint tokens to earn more and more tokens to buy and build plans in order to expand their neighbourhood and earn points with certain cards. Players can earn points using plans but only some of them offer points, others give players extra powers. The goal of the game is for any player to earn 7 points and win the round.

Understanding this game was pretty easy, I went through the game rules and figured out it was just a worker placement game. Mint Works was fun for the first ten minutes or so, but honestly, the game lacked any kind of depth which is usually a selling point for me. I kept zoning in and out of the game and constantly had to be reminded to play my turn. Playing the game online also might have contributed to the fact that the game did not really gauge my interest. Tabletopia did a good job at creating the game room for Mint Works, it was pretty simple to get a hang of its controls. The physical version of the game usually comes with the first round of ‘mints’ which I thought was pretty interesting as that’s just a little bit unhygienic in the current world situation.

Game 3 – Monopoly Deal

Platform – Mdeal

Monopoly Deal is basically a card-based version of the game Monopoly. It was released by Hasbro in 2008. The main aim of the game is to collect 3 full-colour sets of properties or colour groups before any of the other players. To liven up the game, there have been various new cards that have been added such as Sly Deal, Debt Collector, Just say No, etc. all of these cards have their own advantages to the player who puts them down. The gameplay is simple enough, when it’s your turn, pick up two cards from the pile and play three cards from your hand. You can play either a money card and bank it or play a property to start your collection, and you also have the choice of playing an Action card which you can either bank to use as money or play it in the centre to use it.

I played this game both online and offline

Online –

To begin I had no idea what this game was and had a hard time figuring out the rules, so playing online really did not help in any way, I was clicking on random cards and options focussing on how much money I had in my bank not realizing it was actually the property sets that mattered. The action cards were also pretty hard to read and figure out on the website we were playing on. Though it was pretty entertaining watching everyone try to figure out how exactly they’re supposed to play the game.

Offline –

Playing the game offline was way more competetive and engaging for sure, It allowed the players to banter and make decisions based off of the atmosphere of the room to keep it lively but also helped me understand the game and play it better with the help of my peers. Monopoly Deal is an extremely thought-provoking game, it really keeps you on the edge of your seat trying to gather the properties and trying not to get ‘scammed’

Game 4 – Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and ladders is a classic game that has been played worldwide for generations it originated in ancient India and was originally called Moksha Patam. The player capacity for the game is 2 to as many players as you want. The rules of the game are simple, each player takes a turn rolling a single die and moves their token according to the number the die rolled to. When you land on a square with a ladder you climb it and when you land on a square with a snakes mouth you go down to the square with it’s tail.

Playing this game was a breeze, I’ve always enjoyed short and easy board games like this and was a nostalgic experience.

Game 6 – Penguin Trap

This is a tabletop game for children, requiring 2-4 players, the game is played with a set of hexagonal ice blocks and a plastic hammer for each player, the game has to be set up by fixing the ice blocks into the table and the goal of the game is to knock out the ice blocks by tapping on them with hammers without letting the penguin in the middle fall. Before each players’ turn, they’re given a spinner which will let them know which colour of ice block to drop or if their turn has been skipped.

The game was very easy to understand and set up, we finished the game in a matter of minutes when my team member dropped the penguin and lost the game.