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Post by Dave on Mar 1, 2011 18:38:51 GMT -9
Futuristic prison break. Uses 28mm minis (or cardstock counters if you're a cheapie). Your mission is to escape from a life sentence in max security confinement. You've beaten up guys like Ridjohnny-o with all your limbs tied behind your back.
You'll have to dodge guards (or bash they heads in), steal a uniform, acquire weapons, ransack offices to find lock codes, and do other prison-breaky kind of stuff before you can get out. There'd probably be a timer or a countdown of some kind, so you'd have to accomplish these things before the heavies show up and jam you back into your cell.
Should work fine as a solo game, or with several players all trying to get out at once. The board would be constructed using standard 6" x 6" tiles. The guards would operate using programmed movement, and you'd have some cards for random events and/or special abilities.
There could also be a head-to-head variant where one player controls the prison guards.
Has anybody seen this sort of game before? Would you be interested in a game like this?
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Post by sammo on Mar 1, 2011 18:54:11 GMT -9
I must admit it's piqued my interest...
I'm not sure that I've heard of anything like this before, but my board game exposure is not really complete.
I think what would really make this game cool is the awesome variety of criminals you could play. If there were mutants and aliens and cyborgs and Jason Voorhees (He does make it to space after all).
It would also allow for expandability (new criminals and tiles).
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Post by Tommygun on Mar 1, 2011 18:56:11 GMT -9
There was a couple "Prison Break" video games and a French made board game also based on the TV series. boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/32184/prison-breakIf you do go ahead with this, I would suggest having the option of escaping by land or by water, maybe even bed sheet hang gliders.  |
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Post by onemonkeybeau on Mar 1, 2011 19:05:13 GMT -9
Sounds awesome!
Go for it!
We could even use Darkmook's prison zombies and try to escape without being eaten!
onemonkeybeau
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Post by sharanac on Mar 1, 2011 22:28:09 GMT -9
I don't think anything like this exist at board game market. I like it! I guess it will also be solo? In this case you are quickly becoming my favorite game designer I like the idea very much. |
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Post by Parduz on Mar 1, 2011 22:36:21 GMT -9
Funny how a friend at the italian Heroquest forum designed a game called "Prison Escape" But his game have a fantasy theme and who is escaping is a whole "canon" party. |
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Post by darkmook on Mar 2, 2011 1:11:09 GMT -9
The SURVIVAL HORROR game I am working on has similar elements (escape, finding and combining items/weapons etc) but set in a police station (for the base set) rather than a prison. Oh, and with zombies. Lots and lots of zombies. When researching to see if there were similar games out there to what I was working on, I didn't come across anything like you suggest; I'm not saying I exhausted the interwebs in my search, but I'd say it doesn't sound like you'd be accidently stepping on anyone's toes. Sounds good, and I'd certainly be interested in checking it out! |
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Post by Floyd on Mar 2, 2011 5:15:05 GMT -9
Not exactly like that. sounds cool. There are a couple of games in existence that share the theme and some ideas (ironically all share the same WW2 theme). There are three board games : Escape from Colditz (WW2 Prison Break) Escape from Colditz Caslte (Another WW2 Prison Break but other than the name and idea are not related to eachother). This one requires you to collect items and avoid patrol zones in an abstraction of a Nazi held Castle Prison. The other one which has a timer, escape, search & locate feel to it is the newer Hour of Glory by WarmAcre. Which is an excellent example of a lot of things done right. Raising the alarm, stealth, etc. I recommend picking up the print an play version if just for some fine game implementations. Look forward to seeing what you come up with. ~F ps. Oh and there is the "Futuristic" themed Star Wars:Escape the Deathstar which looks like a variant of Sorry with a fee additional wrinkles.
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Post by Dave on Mar 2, 2011 8:52:29 GMT -9
Okay, that's pretty encouraging news. Thanks, everybody.
What I have in mind is almost a "dungeon crawl" with interconnected corridors and a few rooms. Of the games you've shown me, Hour of Glory's physical appearance seems to be the closest to what I'm envisioning. I have something more jumbled in mind, but otherwise it would look pretty similar.
I really like how Hour of Glory places cards face-down in each of the rooms, but I was thinking that there would be specific points (not just in rooms) where the would-be escapees can pick up hints (from other prisoners), lock codes, weapons and equipment, shut down alarms, or block off certain corridors and prevent guards from approaching. I would like to use a deck of cards for some of these, but they could also be pre-established and possibly known by the escapees ahead of time, so they can try to make a plan. And if that fails, they might be able to pull off a back-up plan. Another possibility is using dice and rolling for results on a printed chart.
I'm kinda into dark, gritty, hard(ish) sci-fi. Aliens would be a little softer sci-fi than I prefer. But we'll see how things work out.
I'd probably want to use 2D flat tiles to create the corridors and rooms. These should be easy to use as generic game tiles useful for spaceships or futuristic institutions. 3D walls are a possibility, but if I want to produce this game myself, I have to think about making it printer-friendly, easy and relatively fast to build.
Instead of standard 6" x 6" tiles like I originally thought, I would probably make the most out of the 7.5" x 10" printable space on a letter/A4 sheet. I would have long corridors (in widths of 1 square, 2 squares, 3 squares), the necessary intersections, and rooms of various sizes and shapes. I could probably get a lot of different configurations from 8 or 10 sheets of components.
Small counters could be used to add doorways, junctions, computer terminals, gates and checkpoints, guard patrol zones, sentry guns and escape points. I don't like games that have lots of bits, so I wouldn't include a whole ton of these.
I'm going to approach this more like a miniatures game than a board game. I could even include a simple experience/advancement system, like you keep getting caught and thrown back in prison, but you're smarter the next time.
Will think on this. Keep those suggestions and ideas coming!
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Post by Vermin King on Mar 2, 2011 9:17:48 GMT -9
I like the way you are going with this. Depending on how it goes, you can always offer Prison Break - Alien Planet or Prison Break-Zombie Apocalypse as a supplement or separate game later on.
I tend to think you are on the right track by making it a good basic game to start with.
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Post by Dave on Mar 2, 2011 9:26:17 GMT -9
I could probably set things up so that you build your escapee's abilities before play. This would let you use almost any sort of miniature. I could include some optional "weird" abilities for aliens or mutants, or whatever sort of mini you want to bring in.
I could do the same for the guards.
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Post by Parduz on Mar 2, 2011 9:30:38 GMT -9
Thinking out loud:
Hour of Glory is a game about sneaking; intruders and guards have two states: Sneaking/Assaulting (or Sentinel/Attacking for the nazis). It leads to a whole bunch of rules and actions related to the two states that i still find a bit confusing. But sure it is an original approach.
A thing that i "fear" when i hear about modular tiles for boardgames is that it implies scenarios. What i mean is that players should not have to invent anything, but instead should have a good number of tested scenarios to start and then new ones from the publisher at a "regular" time (again, well tested). Croc, for Asmodee, is a very good example of this for its Claustrophobia (which, now that i think at it, it is an escape game... you're just fleeing out of the Hell).
Another potential difficulty may be how to scale such a game: from 2 two ...4? or 6? players.
Do you plan to have a "Master" (a player that manages the "bads") or a Masterless game? Looking at BGG seems that there's a lot of ppl which will like a masterless (or full co-op) game, a niche that WotC missed with the two new D&D boardgames... which did'nt require a master but (just reading some reviews) ended to be somewhat dull games.
And finally: will the prisoners open their way mainly fighting and shooting, or it will be more a sort of "chess game" where positioning, hiding, and using "terrain bonuses" (shadow zone, obstacles, door) is more important than lead with cynetic energy?
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Post by Dave on Mar 2, 2011 9:55:59 GMT -9
Thinking out loud: Hour of Glory is a game about sneaking; intruders and guards have two states: Sneaking/Assaulting (or Sentinel/Attacking for the nazis). It leads to a whole bunch of rules and actions related to the two states that i still find a bit confusing. But sure it is an original approach. NPC guards should behave differently depending on their state of alarm. It should be possible to write fairly simple and straightforward rules about how NPCs react in different states. A thing that i "fear" when i hear about modular tiles for boardgames is that it implies scenarios. What i mean is that players should not have to invent anything, but instead should have a good number of tested scenarios to start and then new ones from the publisher at a "regular" time (again, well tested). Croc, for Asmodee, is a very good example of this for its Claustrophobia (which, now that i think at it, it is an escape game... you're just fleeing out of the Hell). I'm sure there are a few ways to approach this. I could write scenarios that include a specific map layout. That's what I had in mind originally. Maps and scenarios could be separate. The map itself is just a place. The scenario is something that's happening. You could roll for a random map, then roll for a random scenario, and put them together. Another possibility is "discovering" the map as you go along. Each time you look down a new corridor, you (randomly?) select a new piece. If it conflicts with another piece already on the map, choose something else. And yet another possibility is letting players set up their own maps and scenarios. Another potential difficulty may be how to scale such a game: from 2 two ...4? or 6? players. The card game I'm working on right now has taught me a lot about scaling. One way to do it is to set the number of opposition on the number of "heroes." There are lots of ways to handle scaling. Some games write scenarios specifically for a certain number of players, so I could do that. Ideally, I'd come up with rules for solo, cooperative, two players head-to-head, opposing teams, and game-mastered play. Initially, I would design the game to work as a solo game, then move on to rules for cooperative, then head-to-head, then head-to-head teams. Somewhere along the line, a game-mastered version would probably make itself obvious. And finally: will the prisoners open their way mainly fighting and shooting, or it will be more a sort of "chess game" where positioning, hiding, and using "terrain bonuses" (shadow zone, obstacles, door) is more important than lead with cynetic energy? Scenarios could be written that focus on fighting, or stealth, or combine the two. I'm thinking that it should be a nice combination. You'd probably have to start off sneaky until you can acquire some weapons. Then you might be able to blast your way out. But you might be able to succeed entirely by stealth. I'd like a variety of options in each scenario. |
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Post by Floyd on Mar 3, 2011 8:49:48 GMT -9
Mels (Ebbles) game GunCrawl is more or less an tactical escape game system. Since you are trying to complete objectives and escape to a specified area. He's got a lot of refinements, ideas and implementation that involves simple stat-ing of any figure/model /weapon/monster in your collection. A simple random map generator, scenario builder and coop game system. Of which is easily converted to a coop~competitive game system if you were to say be out to escape, but it's every man for himself. It's open enough to accommodate a Game Master (Warden in your case) .... so it's another something to look into... not trying to overwhelm you or anything... he also has a nice tile system (version 1 has more variety in map pieces, and is the sand box system).
The idea of using a card deck for a variety of mechanics is one I heartily advocate.
~F
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