As I move forward on a couple of game designs I am working on, I found myself not a little surprised to find both game ideas I had were for a genre of board games called cooperative games. By far this has fast become my favorite genre, as I have discovered the challenge of facing a well designed game system with a group of friends to be one of the deepest pleasures I have experienced in virtually any kind of game. It is why I enjoy Dungeons and Dragons so much, and it is why I find myself often playing cooperative video games where players are working together to complete the game. Presently I am playing an anime style RPG game called Ni No Kuni II, as well as an RPG game called Divinity: Original Sin. Divinity: Original Sin I play exclusively in local coop mode with my father-in-law, and I have to say, while I enjoyed it before playing on my own, it is even more fun to play it with him.
So the question I find myself asking is, why exactly am I so drawn to this type of game? What is it about cooperative games that make for such a fun experience? Or from a game designer's perspective, what makes for a well designed cooperative game? To answer that question, I have decided to review some design aspects of what is currently my favorite all time cooperative game, a game called Spirit Island (along with its first expansion, without which we never play the game). This isn't to say I don't enjoy many other games in this genre, not the least of which is a massive game called Gloomhaven (perhaps a future game review); however, of my cooperative or semi-cooperative games, Spirit Island is a game I find myself returning to over and over without the game ever feeling old or stale. That, to me, is the hallmark of a well designed game of any genre, with a few notable exceptions being legacy games and, ironically enough, some CRPGs (a discussion for another post). If I am going to design games of this genre (and of course I am), I want my own games to have this same feeling of fun, balance, and complexity to make players want to keep my games from collecting dust on their shelves.
Modular Fun: An Explication
What makes a game fun is a rather loaded question, as for any number of people you ask, you will likely receive different answers. This is, largely, why different genres exist in virtually any entertainment avenue you can think of: movies, books, video games and traditional games. Each genre fulfills a particular interest for the many myriads of preferences that exists among people. This is only natural, and permits for many creative expressions for artists and designers, constrained only by two factors: the imagination and the objectives of the genre (in our case here, board games and in particular cooperative board games). In cooperative games, all players share a common goal or even a series of objectives, depending on how the game is structured.
For Spirit Island, the main goal is to eliminate all of the invaders to the island (which is made up of one board per player and is modular, meaning it will vary from game to game); this goal is modified by levels of fear that are earned throughout the game, becoming easier as you earn higher levels of fear. The invaders take three forms: explorers which deal one days and have one health; towns, which deal two damage and have two health; and cities, which deal three damage and have three health. Players take on the role of individual spirits which represent various aspects of the island and nature.
As these spirits, players have a few options for dealing damage to eliminate invaders. When the invaders attack, the Dahan, the native inhabitants of the island, deal retaliatory damage to the invaders after the invaders attack. Spirits also have powers that can be used on their turns to deal damage to, or even outright destroy, invaders. And last, there are some events that can damage or destroy invaders. Of these options, powers are by far the most common manner of dealing damage among the spirits, but as you might have guessed, it is not the same for every spirit.
One of the beautiful aspects of Spirit Island is indeed the differences among the spirits, and how these differences create a unique experience for every player. While there are many powers that deal damage, many powers do so in different ways. Some powers will deal damage outright; others might deal damage via the number of dahan in an area; still others might deal damage based on the number of beasts or plants or corruption in a particular area (more on beasts, plants and corruption later). Depending on the types of powers chosen, a player may choose to obtain other powers that focus on creating beasts (which often damage or destroy invaders) or plants (which prevent explorers from appearing) or even disease (which prevent explorers from building settlements). This will increase the damage that those damaging powers utilize, or manipulate the beasts, plants and disease already on the board to create large pockets of them for destroying larger numbers of invaders.
All of this damage dealing and manipulation takes place throughout the game, and is regulated only by the loss conditions of the game, which are threefold. First, players can lose running out of turns to eliminate invaders. Turns are tracked by the invaders deck, which is made up of an explore, build, and attack stage. The deck itself is broken down into stage one, two and three cards, each with progressively more difficult actions taken by the invaders. Each invader card shows one type of terrain (two types for stage three cards). Additionally, stage two cards often have an additional action taken by invaders, depending on the scenario being played (more on scenarios later). Once the last card of the invader deck is shifted and no more can be turned over, the players have lost.
The second way to lose is for players to run out of corruption tokens to place on the board. Corruption of each land area occurs when invaders deal at least two damage to the land. Corruption also cascades when it is placed into an area that already has at least one corruption, spilling out to a neighboring land. The amount of corruption available to place is controlled by the "Healthy Island" card, which starts with two per player, and refills when it runs out and the island becomes "corrupted," flipping the card over and generally causing a negative effect when doing so.
The final way to lose the game (excepting scenarios) is for any spirit to lose all of its presence on the island. Coincidentally, presence is lost when a land becomes corrupt, and its loss affects a player's ability to use his or her powers, which can target lands at zero, one, or two (rarely farther) distance from a spirit's presence (or sometimes holy site, which is two presence in any one area).
All of this is to say that, there are a number of loss conditions that players have to guard against while pursuing the objective of eliminating invaders from the island. In general, removing invaders serves to also safeguard against the loss conditions, but it is not always straight-forward. Often players will be unable to guard all areas that are under threat, or can guard those areas under attack, but cannot prevent invaders from building, which will make the next attack more difficult to prevent. This is often affected by the cards available to each player on their turn (more on how players obtain cards below).
As mentioned, each spirit has access to powers that can interact with the island (and some spirits even face restrictions on where they can interact, whether restricted by corruption or even by localization to an originating type of terrain), either dealing damage, manipulating objects on the map, or by preventing actions or damage from occurring. At the start of each game, all spirits start with four power cards to utilize, and can obtain more from their growth action taken at the start of their turn. A player typically chooses one of three or four options for growth, which can range from placing presence on the board from either the energy or card play limit track to gaining a card, energy or reclaiming their used power cards.
All of these power cards contain various elements that are used to power a spirit's innate powers, power abilities similar to the power cards, but that tend to focus on that spirit's style of play (i.e. manipulating beasts, moving dahan around, preventing explorers from appearing, etc). Power cards themselves typically cost power, anywhere from 0 to 3 for most minor powers up to 6 or more for major powers (though innate powers only cost elements). So on any given turn, players has to balance the elements needed to power their innate powers, the energy reserve they have to play power cards from their hand, and having enough for their subsequent turn with what they know will occur after this turn based on the invader deck.
And yet, even with the best of planning, there are yet additional factors that players have to take into consideration. One of these is the events deck. Events occur before the invaders' phase and will often present a choice for players between a better (though not necessarily good) option which costs energy and a much worse option (often making the event repeat itself in another few turns). These events will also typically interact with the various tokens on the board (beasts in particular) as well as adding strife (which negate the attack of one specific invader) and dahan to the island.
And if the events were not enough to contend with, the players also have the optional scenarios and adversary cards to play against. Both of these cards create additional win/loss rules for the game (sometimes removing or changing current win conditions) as well as creating additional effects that occur during stage two of the invader deck, or even removing some of the invader deck (and thus turns) or adding additional fear cards (that have to be earned to advance the fear conditions level) at the setup of the game.
The Sum of All Its Parts
All of these factors taken together, it should already be apparent why, as cooperative games go, it stands out as one of the best out there. The game designers have taken the core mechanics, the constant battle between the invaders' growth and the spirits' defense, and have layered on numerous ways to manipulate the board. Each spirit has been designed with flaws and strengths, and the approach required by each spirit is affected completely both by what spirits are paired with it and by what scenarios, adversaries, and even what events appear.
Even with all the complexities of the game, the game remains easy to learn by playing with the base set and by utilizing a limited and pre-selected powers method that teaches the same techniques used by the more complex spirits and powers. The variety of options to choose to add to each game is bordering on ridiculous, especially when considering that each adversary even has levels of difficulty that can be ramped up from one to six. There is just so much packed into this game that no two games every feel quite the same. The randomness of adding power cards to your hand, the logistics of the different boards combined with the random invaders' deck, the events that alter the board and often can devastate even the best laid plans, all of these factors (even take apart from the combination of different spirits) create a system that feels new with each play through.
I have found games that use complexity for complexity sake. Often times I feel those games are insane to learn and while perhaps they could eventually be fun for those who master the system, my friends and I rarely are willing to put enough time and play-throughs into the games to ever reach that point. One game, named Runewars, took my friends and I literally hours to even setup, and the game itself was supposed to take several more hours beyond that. We have never returned to it.
Spirit Island, on the other hand, requires a modest amount of setup, and has a reasonable learning curve. The basic maneuvers for the game can be learned on the first play through, while the basic strategies used require a few more gaming sessions. And yet, even having played through the game some dozens of times, I find myself learning new nuances and approaches to each spirit or scenario with every new session. The sheer depth of the game makes me want to return to the game over and over, while the randomness and numerous options for game play vary enough that I never get bored.
And for those who enjoy cooperatives as much as I do (rather than competitive games), this game strikes just the right balance between autonomous turns while forcing players to decide between managing their own part of the island with taking greater risk to help a fellow spirit struggling to fend off the invasion on their portion. Discussion and strategy are always at the heart of each game, with players often finding new ways of working together, using their spirits' unique talents in new ways, perhaps in previously undiscovered ways.
For my own games, this is the feeling I want to create; I want to present gamers in a cooperative game many paths to consider that will have a meaningful impact on whether they lose or win. I want them to engage with each other enough that they cannot simply ignore the other players in the game. And I want to have a modular approach, with multiple layers that can be peeled off or added, depending on what mood the players are in and how difficult they want to make the game. That, I feel, is the mark of a well-designed cooperative game, one that I aim to emulate in my own games.
Comentários