Art Enthusiast Focus for early 2020
- Concept #1 Murder Your Friends 18
- Concept #2 Don't Be Dragon Food 22
So I've been thinking about changing this Art Enthusiast tier up a little bit for a few months, by using it as a window into a project I'm starting.
I've come up with a couple of concepts for a simple board/card game, but I can't decide which one I want to pursue. They're both similar in some ways, and I've come up with some preliminary rules for each variation over the past year+.
It's time to finally focus on one, and I thought that once I do, this tier could be a behind-the-scenes look as it develops, each month showing sketches and art as the game coalesces. At the end, if it's fun and playable, I'd see about actually printing it.
So with that said, I'd like to let you guys vote on a poll to tell me which idea sounds more interesting to you.
Concept #1: Each player is one of the Players (1, 2, 3, and 4) and the goal is to murder all of your friends. You run around the Players' apartment, finding objects from each room to maim your opponents (stab them with a fire poker, smash their head with a Playstation) and cause inuries. Injuries are drawn from a deck based on their type (impale, slice, bludgeon) and have a point value. Once you reach a certain point threshold, you die. However you can also use objects you find to mitigate your injuries (a stapler to staple up a slash wound, a dish sponge to plug a puncture wound, etc).
Movement, laying traps, and combining items (adding a chain to a knife to create a ranged knife) would all contribute to the strategy of being the last person standing. Also toying with a mechanic where you can claim "control" of the Players' regeneration chamber, so if you die while you control it, you come back... but the chamber can also be sabotaged by other players so you regenerate but with weird deformities and then have to play the game with strange rules because you have banana hands or whatever.
Concept #2: You play as the Players' RPG alter egos from the Campaign (Groff, Cake, Flizwit and Tobyn). You've just stolen treasure from a sleeping dragon, but the dragon woke up. Now you have to escape his lair as he chases after you. The goal is to escape with the most treasure.
The game is played on a series of randomly drawn corridor tiles as you race towards the exit. Each round, you move forward, but so does the dragon. Each tile has additional loot to pick up, as well as traps and obstacles. The more loot you carry, the more you risk being slowed down. If the dragon catches you, he eats you.
Likewise, as the old adage goes: "I don't have to outrun the dragon, I just have to outrun YOU." The players can fuck with eachother, hurling treasure, shoving and boxing out their friends all in an attempt to get ahead and/or slow others down enough that they become dragon food and they gain some breathing room while the dragon snacks.
The catch is, if you're eaten by the dragon, you then get to play AS the dragon. You draw from a special deck of cards that add to the dragon's abilities. You can no longer win the game, but you can try to get revenge on whoever fucked you over.
So vote on the poll and tell me, which of these two game ideas would you like to see fleshed out more?