Print and Play Exploration

36D6 (Or my rendition 20D10)

   36D6 is a very simplistic game about pitting dice against each other. The original game involves putting 36 D6 dice in a 6x6 array and rolling them against adjacent ones until there is one die left. The two players then add up the points they got and whoever had that most won. 

   Since I only had access to 20 D10 dice I played 20D10 where there were two teams. Each team started with 10 D10s and the game mechanics were the same, except rather than waiting till one die is left, waiting till one team is fully defeated and then counting points.

   This 2 player is very abstract, with a minimal level of skill required, and a purely chance based victory system. Though it's gameplay is so simple I wouldn't count this against the game quality. Due to the simplicity and speed of gameplay there was no sense of distraction and the games goal is very upfront. This allows for players to be sucked in and have moments of surprise when one die manages to take out 5 others consecutively due to the luck of rolls. Making it overall an enjoyable, quick game.

   36D6 works very well as a print and play game because all thats required is to print it and own dice. No amount of prep is needed since all thats required is the board.

   I admire the way it engages people with such simplicity, but at the same time I wouldn't call it a great game due to it's lack of skill, challenge, and complexity.

Allegiance

   This game involved a lot more complexity than the previous, in fact at first it seemed very convoluted. However behind it's large text based manual the game was very enjoyable and had a flow to it that allowed for good and understandable gameplay. The issue with uncommon card games is the initial view of piles of cards is intimidating since the player doesn't start out knowing anything about them. 

   The design involved a good level of complexity, not too much to be impossible to play, not too little to just be rolling dice. There was a way to strategically place down cards that helped you play to your own style, giving players the illusion of ability to win. I type 'illusion' because of how ambiguous it is which team will win. There's no way to know whether the Temple or the Thieves are winning and therefore which ever side you choose is a 50/50 chance. There's also an imbalance between choosing the Temple and Thieves since if the Temple wins, all temple players win; if the thieves guild wins, only one thief can win. This rule seems both arbitrary and balance shifting, making it one of the flaws that stuck out.

   Therefore, what I admired was the level of complexity that was just right, but I disliked the ambiguity of the victor and what one should play.


 

Zombie Plague

   Zombie Plague was probably the most fun of the three games I played. There was an intense way of creating a sense of fear in the human player as they're overwhelmed in numbers. It's design quality was that of a common zombie game in which the human is doing a mixture of running and attacking and the zombies were constantly on the hunt. It's presentation also proved quite pleasant. With a large well designed house over view and good visuals the game felt immersive. In terms of how much to cut, there was a fair bit. Cutting out small barricades and piecing together the large map took quite a bit of time and got a bit tedious.

   There was a lot that I admired about this game. It wasn't too complex, you could kind of skim the rules, start playing and address the manual with usual questions that came up, without disrupting the flow of gameplay too much. It activated the imagination as the game played on, as the human I felt like I was getting into tight situations and just barely scraping by before running away. There were times when I just managed to get around a corner and barricade it off to be safe. I would actually feel elated when such a thing happened, encouraging me to keep going. There were also moments of extreme surprise where a search box wouldn't give me a gun, but throw a zombie right next to me. These search boxes of chance would make or break a scenario I was in and really kept the intensity up.

   However. There was one big flaw behind the game play. Zombie combat was very hard on the zombies. Requiring them to roll 2 dice, getting the same number on both, and then requiring the human to roll and get a 1 to die. This didn't work because the chance of the zombie actually managing to hurt the human was so minimal that it was almost never going to happen. I, as the human, inevitably won even though I'd been attacked 5 or 6 times.

   Despite it's flaws this game was very fun, and with only a few changes this game would easily be a very fun game without much in the way of flaws.