Plants vs Zombies the Board Game

There's a strong trend for turning popular computer games into board games. There's a Starcraft board game, a World of Warcraft one (I own this one but it's so gargantuan and takes so long to play that it pretty much never comes off the shelf) a Doom one etc . . . even I'm putting together a board game from a computer game :)

But now, there's a Plants vs Zombies board game!

I haven't been able to get much information about the actual gameplay, but I love the idea of taking the rules of a simple computer game and translating them to a board game. How do you deal with going from realtime to turn based? How do you create a simple algorithm that can reflect a game's AI in a simple and easy to play way? I'm looking forward to seeing how they answer these questions in the Plants vs Zombies board game.

Spy Wear the Board Game

About a year ago, I was part of a team that made a game in 48 hours, Spy Wear. It was for the Global Game Jam 2010. We won the Jammers' Choice award for our game, which was about Cold War spies trying to hide in plain sight while carrying on their agendas of building up dossiers of information or killing other spies.

It mixed a couple of different ideas . . . hiding in plain sight and trying to appear as if you were just another member of the populace, while at the same time trying to watch everyone else and determine who was and who wasn't a spy.

A few weeks ago I had a couple of conversations with my workmates . . . one was thinking of getting into Game Jam and the other was talking about board games (in particular, Power Grid). Something sparked in my head and I decided that the ruleset for Spy Wear might actually turn into a really interesting board game.

So far I've incorporated the idea of hiding in plain sight . . . which is a lot harder in a board game where everyone can see which pieces everyone else is using, but I think I've got something worked out that will do a slow reveal of a person over a series of turns . . . the rules aren't really locked down yet, so I can't really elaborate on it. I kept the game mechanics of needing to visit locations to build up information dossiers, and also being able to lay bombs as booby traps for other spies.

It's all still up in the air . . . but I'll put up some information once I've got a playable version.

Nerd Games (Board and Card Games)

A friend of mine has rekindled my love of boards, cards, dice and little wood or plastic figures :)

Dominion was the first thing that got a group of us hooked. It seems to have this universal appeal . . . I haven't been able to find anyone who didn't enjoy it, regardless of how skeptical they are of "Nerd Games".

It's a card game with a few simple principles . . . you play as a feudal lord trying to buy more land than the other lords around you. Every card you buy goes into your deck, which is continually cycled so you see the same cards come up over and over. There's a delicate balance between buying money, action cards (that let you either do wonderful and exciting things or stab the other players in the back during your turn) and victory cards. It has a nice timing feel to it . . . when is it good to build up a deck of actions, and when is it time to just start hoarding victory points for the fast approaching end of the game?

For more information, check out Board Game Geek.

Another beautiful game I just bought (at CanCon, Canberra's board games convention) is Dixit. This beautifully designed and illustrated game is all about aesthetic creativity rather than numbers.

It's a game of storytelling that's incredibly simple yet amazingly enjoyable. Everyone has a hand of cards that have cute little abstract pictures on them that could have many meanings. They choose one and tell a story about it . . . the trick is that if everyone or no one gets it, then the storyteller gets no points . . . you have to be obvious enough that someone gets it, but not obvious enough that everyone does. You end up with those classic "How could you not have guessed that?" moments :)

There's also info on Dixit at Board Game Geek.

I'll talk more about other games later . . .