5 of the coolest board game mechanics in games I've played recently

I try to play a new to me board game at least once a week I actually stream on Friday nights where I play games with my members and you can become a member by clicking on the join button Below in addition to Friday night game night we also have a members only Discord channel members only streams and early access to videos like this one besides the fact that playing board games is super fun as a designer I want to play as many board games as possible it's like being a scientist doing research on a topic before they find an issue or question they think hasn't been explored or answered already it can be really difficult as a designer to come up with a game that doesn't already exist or that does something better than a game that already exists and it's even harder if we're not keeping up with or paying attention to all of the games out on the market already to us our idea might seem Innovative or brand new but to Publishers they have likely heard several pitches for similar Concepts play testing your game with as many different people as possible will increase the likelihood that someone might tell you that your game is very similar to another game that already exists that is one of the main benefits of having a lot of people play your game especially other designers or people who play a lot of board games this will save you a lot of time and energy that can be put towards a game that is actually new and different so play testing with a variety of people will help you avoid creating a duplicate of a game that already exists but so will playing as many games as you can and this doesn't mean you have to go out and buy a ton of new games join a local board game Meetup where people bring in their own games for for people to play go to your local library and check out their board game section and you can also play a lot of board games online on websites like board game arena or tabletopia you can then use this knowledge that you have gained to make sure you don't make a game that already exists but can also be inspired by the innovation of these games to create something new yourself you can maybe take one aspect of one game add in another element from a different game you played that you liked sprinkling something you thought of on your own and voila you've created something new and different now in this video I'm I'm going to share five of the most interesting and coolest mechanics I have seen in board games that I've played in the past few months starting off with viticulture which I actually played last night on stream if you want to check that out viticulture is a game about building your own Winery and it uses two of my favorite Mechanics Work replacement and engine building worker placement means players have meeples they can assign to different action spaces but there is often a limit to the number of meeples that can be placed at each action space so there's a bit of a race for players to get to the action space they want and I really love that tension in worker placement games in viticulture you're also building an engine with the vines that you plant that you can then Harvest Ag and turn into wine you're also earning discounts and Powers with different structures you purchase for your Vineyard so while at the start of the game you can't do that much by the end you can do quite a bit because of the engine you've built up throughout the game but the specific mechanic that I hadn't seen before in a worker placement game is that there are summer actions and winter actions so you have to decide how many SU summer actions you're going to assign your workers to and how many workers you're going to save to do winter actions later this idea of having to choose whether to earn or do something immediately or wait until a later phase is really interesting because it requires you to think ahead and decide what needs to happen now and what do I need to hold off and wait to do later I find this decision-making space very interesting and it adds a Twist to work rep placement that I hadn't seen before now moving on to number two which is the backup plan in too many bones there is a lot going on in too many bones but one of the most interesting parts of the game for me is the backup plan for your dice so too many bones is a game about going on adventures defeating monsters and building up your skills in progress to eventually face off against the final boss or bad as they call it which I absolutely love and the skills that players are learning are represented by dice so players will roll more and better dice as the game goes on but most di have the bones icon on them which is a blank and has no effect rolling bones can be really frustrating but the designers added in what they call a backup plan so if you roll a certain number of bones you will still get something good out of it just not the specific effect you were hoping for unfortunately the character that I was playing called patches doesn't get a bonus for one set of Bones they have to roll at least two before they get anything other characters like Boomer get something for Rolling only one set of Bones which was really nice and soften the blow of rolling blanks in a fairly punishing game now let's talk about a really cool mechanic specifically for the solo mode of a game in the solo variant for distilled a game about building your own Distillery you are somewhat in control of deciding what goals you need to reach and what score you need to achieve in order to win you start off with two goals and can choose to try and Achieve one or both once you've achieved one of the goals you turn over the two cards above that goal card you can choose to stay on that row and try to achieve the other goal or you can try to achieve one of the newly revealed goals on the row above but once you do you will move up to that row and now you cannot go out after any of the goals below that row now the goals that you achieve will sometimes give you bonuses but then others will tell you how many points you need to earn to win the game so you might focus on achieving goals that will add up to a lower final score you need to reach to win I'm not a huge fan of solo games where the goal is just to try and get as high of a score as possible I really like how in distilled you need to achieve at least five goals and reach a minimum score that changes throughout the game based on your decisions moving on to two games from flat out games verdant and cascade one thing I like about both of these games is the restrictions placed on how you select tiles and cards from the market in most games you can choose any of the face up cards or resources in a market but inverted and Cascadia you are restricted to the columns the resources are in inverted you can only pick a token and a card from the same column they do have special tokens that allow players to break this rule but you have to earn those tokens and be strategic about when you play them in Cascadia you also must pick a token and a tile in the same column and again there are special tokens you can play that allow you to break this rule it's interesting how restrictions like this can actually make a game more fun and strategic you have to think about how much you really want a certain tile or token even if you don't particularly want the tile or token it comes with there can also be combos that you really really want and hope that no one snags them before you now moving on to libertalia Winds of Gail Crest in this game players are pirates diving up Loot and one of the most interesting things about this game is that every player will have the same pirate cards in their hand but it's when they play them that will be different so each player starts with duplicate cards of the exact same Pirates and players secretly choose one card and then reveal at the same time you then place the Pirates in ascending order on the island space on the board you move down the line taking any daytime actions the Pirates have and then move back in sending order to do any dusk actions which includes taking loot so if you play a lower number card you get to do a daytime action first but then might be the last to get loot and some of the loot is not good at all but you don't know what cards other players are choosing so if there's loot you really want on the board you might want to be really aggressive and play your highest number card remembering what other players have already played and what they still have in their hand and if players play the same card the tie is broken by reputation which will go up and down as the game goes on so there's some really interesting hand Management in this game and this idea that every player will have the same cards throughout the game but each player's outcome will be different different is really cool it reminds me of another game called karuba where players are trying to build path through a jungle to reach temples each player will have the exact same tiles but they can choose where to place them on their grid so you will have completely different maps for each player at the end of the game but everyone was working with the exact same tiles it also makes me think of one of the greatest TV shows of all time Taskmaster in this show comedians are given a task and then how they approach that task is usually wildly different and that is the charm of the show seeing how people interpret the same thing in different ways all right so there you have it five of the coolest mechanics I've seen in games I've played recently please let me know in the comments if you've played a game with a mechanic you had never seen before and really enjoyed happy gaming and designing and I'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Pam Walls Game Design

Views: 8,935

Keywords: board games, party games, Toronto, ProtoTO, Hasbro, Hold That Face, playtesting, Pam Walls, Vancouver, SpinMaster, Ravensburger, pitching, prototype, gaming, design, designer, tabletop, video games, Act Fast, board game design, playtest

Id: GAM2n1eK15A

Length: 8min 35sec (515 seconds)

Published: Sun May 12 2024