MIT OpenCourseWare http://ocw.mit.edu CMS.608 / CMS.864 Game DesignSpring 2008For information about citing these materials or our Terms of Use, visit: http://ocw.mit.edu/terms.Neil Dowgun CMS.608 Essay #1 2/25/08 Zombie Attack! For this assignment, I attempted to resurrect the family of ancient games called Hnefatafl (or Tablut, or just Tafl), played among the Vikings and later the Anglo-Saxons. These games were strategy based, but do not bear a direct resemblance to any games that are widely played today. There were apparently many variations on board size and number of pieces, but the rules that I started with (which were specifically for a game called “Tablut”) were fairly average for this set of games. My goal was to make this an enjoyable game without removing the complete dependence upon strategy. This took two major changes, one to balance the game, and one to make it more unpredictable and appealing to novices. The rules of Tablut are outlined in Appendix A, and at first it seemed appealing because of its asymmetric novelty and because there were strategies that would not be widely known. I had someone to play with who enjoyed strategy games, and we sat down to uncover its mysteries. My optimistic hope was that winning with the king would require careful planning an utilization of his small force. However, some flaws quickly became apparent. The main problem is that it is extremely difficult for the attacker (the Muscovite player) to win. Any piece that he moves adjacent to the King in order to surround him can quickly eliminated by a defender (a Swede) moving in behind it. After a few games, it became clear that the best strategy for the attacker was to patiently shift his pieces into a circular formation, and then close in. The term “absolute defense” was coined for this formation, although it was never actually achieved. The dynamics of the game usually devolved into the King pressing any openings he could find, andthe attacking army scrambling to cover each gap. The defenders of the King were used less and less, and the attackers often had very little choice in what moves he could make. To my chagrin, the strategies for both players were rather defensive – the attacker did not rush in because he needed to preserve his ring, and the defenders did not attempt captures because their numbers disadvantage made losing pieces disastrous. It is difficult to pick up and play a game where the immediate goal is just positioning one’s self for success – dramatic action is more appealing, especially to new players. Clearly, the mechanics of Tablut needed to be changed to make it both more exciting and more balanced. For the second iteration of the game, which I will refer to as “Citadel” (Appendix B), I focused on changing core mechanics to make the game competitive. The ability of the king to capture was removed, so that the king depended on his other men for protection. In return, the king was allowed to escape through any edge square, so that his victory seemed constantly imminent. The board size and number of pieces was reduced, in the hope that games would be shorter, but to compensate, the king was placed on a special “throne” space on the central juncture that he had to step down from, preventing him from winning in two moves. Additionally, I let the players choose where they started their pieces from, within certain limits, so that they could form strategies even before movement began. Citadel turned out to be much more balanced, and I was able to take the game to other people who play games but were not hard-core strategy buffs like my first partner. The mechanical changes were successful in that the attackers became more aggressive, but the King was still by far the most used piece, and whether the defender was winning or losing, he was usually moving the king a lot to either escape danger or press the advantage. Players using the defenders complained about all the pieces being the same, which affected them more becausethey were short-handed. This also kept the game from being interesting to several people, and it was clear mechanics were not enough - better aesthetics were needed too. As my main goal was to engage my play-testers, I decided instead to approach the design from the aesthetics side of the MDA system.1 I re-examined the ideal dynamics of the game, and decided that they were 1) to pit a small number of important pieces against a large army of highly similar pieces, and 2) to have an asymmetric goal structure (i.e. escape vs. entrapment). One theme immediately came to mind as I thought of these two core principles: Zombie movies. In these movies, there is always a small group of people, each with at least briefly sketched out personalities, trying to escape a huge mass of homogenous ravenous dead. This coupling gave me a new mechanic – when the zombies (the attackers) captured a human, that human would become a zombie. This actually turned out to be a key change in the dynamics, because a defender was no longer invulnerable simply because he was standing in an escape route of the king. This allowed the zombies to attack fearlessly, as every assimilation represented a two-piece swing in momentum and no longer opened lanes for the King piece. I also got a cast of characters from the stereotypical personalities in these films, and I tuned them so their abilities would be sufficiently unique but also not useless or overpowering. You can read the rules of Zombie Attack (Appendix C) for full descriptions, but they were reduced to 1) a weak old professor who can save the human race if the other characters help him escape, 2) a hero with a bike who can help the other characters escape quickly, 3) a heroine with a torch who can push her way through the zombie hoards, 4) a war veteran who can blow up zombies and sacrifice himself for the greater good, 5) the professor’s loyal dog who is always protecting him, and a few “extras” who have no particular skills but could always end up beingunexpectedly useful. If these characters sound familiar or at least intriguing, then I have partially succeeded already. This new aesthetic added elements of fantasy and narrative to the game, making it more fun to explain and making it easier for people to grasp. The mechanics and formal rules became significantly more complicated, but that has led to more exciting game-play, because future moves are now much harder to predict. An