The concepts below will be used throughout the semester. Please familiarize yourself with all of them.
Players use some form of mime or mimicry to communicate with the other players.
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When playing Charades, you have to act out each word or syllable in a phrase. The goal of the game is for the other players to guess the phrase correctly.
There is an amount of points per round that need to be spent to perform actions.
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In Dead of Winter, each player has a number of dice in a die pool. To perform actions during her turn, a player has to spend a die. Hence, the dice in Dead of Winter act as the points in an Action Point Allowance mechanic.
Every player secretly chooses what is going to happen over a number of upcoming turns, after which these decisions are played out.
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In Mechs and Minions, players have to program their mechs by placing action cards in the command slots. During the game, the actions in the command slots are played out automatically.
Players gain control of an area by having the most units or influence in it.
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In Kingdom Builder, the "lords" victory card lets players win gold for building the most settlements in a given sector.
Place or move pieces to surround as much area as possible.
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Go is a very well-known abstract strategy board game for two players that dates back to over 1000BC. In Go, the aim is to surround more territory than the opponent.
Area movement means that the game board is divided into areas of varying size which can be moved out of or into in any direction as long as the areas are adjacent or connected.
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In Dead of Winter, the game boards have a number of distinct areas. For example, there is a police station, a gas station, a hospital, etc. These areas are not subdivided in smaller areas, nor do they have a grid on them. A player is simply in one area or not.
To move from one area to the next, players do not have to move their pawns across a grid either. They simple move their pawn from the first area to the next area without including any in-between traveling.
This mechanic requires you to place a bid on items in an auction of goods that will help you to enhance your position in the game.
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The game M.U.L.E is an exercise in supply and demand economics in which 4 players are in competition with each other. The game features an auction system and one of the best strategies to win is to buy resources at a low rate when they are abundant, and then sell at a high rate when they become scarce.
Players bet real or in-game money on certain outcomes within the game.
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In Council of Verona, the goal of the game is to gain the most influence points by predicting how each of the game's characters will be aligned by the end of the game. During the game, gaining influence points is done by putting down bets on the eventual outcome of the game.
Bluffing games encourage players to use deception to achieve their aims. All Bluffing games have an element of hidden information in them.
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As Poker is all about privately collecting a hand of cards that is more valuable than your opponent's, bluffing is a key strategy to winning. If you can bluff successfully and make your opponents believe that your hand is better than theirs, they might be scared off, fold their cards, and let you take the pot without you even having to show your value of the cards that you are holding. Bluffing in Poker is typically done through betting large sums of money, but sometimes there is also a verbal exchange.
Players deliberately pick cards from a limited subset of cards to gain an advantage or to assemble a hand or deck of cards.
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In Council of Verona, the players have a character drafting phase at the beginning of the game. Each player gets to choose one character card from a hand of character cards. After making her decision, the player passes on the remaining cards to another player and this process continues until each player has their characters. When card drafting, players typically look for strong combinations or to prevent other players from owning a strong combination of cards.
In-game money is bet on different commodities in hope that that particular commodity will become the most valuable as the game progresses.
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The game M.U.L.E is an exercise in supply and demand economics in which 4 players are in competition with each other. The game features an auction system and one of the best strategies to win is to buy resources at a low rate when they are abundant, and then sell at a high rate when they become scarce.
Players work together to beat the game with little or no competition between themselves.
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In Pandemic, all players are on the same team trying to cure four diseases. If they team is successful at doing so, all players win. If the team is not successful at doing so, all players lose.
Deduction games are those that require players to form conclusions based on available premises.
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While Dead of Winter is a collaborative game in which all players are on the same team, there is always the possibility of one player being a traitor. To figure out which player might be the traitor, other players have to carefully monitor everyone's action and try to notice when someone does something that might go against the group's best interests.
Action/Dexterity games often compete players' physical reflexes and coordination as a determinant of overall success.
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Winning the game of Jungle Speed comes down to quickly grabbing the totem in the middle of the table. Hence, reflexes and coordination are an important part of the game.
Dice are typically used to generate randomness, but sometimes they are also used as counters or characters.
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In Dead of Winter, dice are used in a number of ways as each player has access to a certain amount of standard six-sided dice. Every turn, each one of those dice represents one action that the player can take. However, before dice can be spent to take actions, the player has to roll them and the resulting number will determine which actions are available to a player.
Furthermore, the game also has a 12-sided die with special icons, which is used to determine the outcome of events that happen in the game. For example, whenever a player is bitten by a zombie, this die will determine if the bite spreads throughout the colony or not.
Dead of Winter's use of dice is less common than most games with dice to illustrate how dice can be used in more creative ways than more common die mechanics such as moving on a grid (i.e., move the amount of square rolled on the die) or fighting enemies (i.e., roll for all characters and whoever rolls the highest wins the battle).
Pawns move on a grid.
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Many games use a grid to move game pieces across a board, including Chess.
Games that reward players for playing cards in the most optimal sequences, situations or groups.
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In Pandemic, there is a limit to the amount of cards that a player can hold in their hand. As a result, players have to be careful not to pick up too many cards and risk losing an important one. Furthermore, the game has a number of special event cards that need to be played at the most opportune time.
Players are required to recall previous game events or information in order to reach an objective.
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In Codenames, players might misinterpreted the clue provided by the spymaster. However, on their next turn, the clue does not disappear. If players still remember it, then are still allowed to look for its solution.
Play occurs on a board consisting of multiple pieces, often tiles or cards.
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Kingdom Builder has a number of large terrain tiles that are randomly put together to generate a random map. Of course, other games with modular boards do not necessarily use similarly sized terrain tiles. Some games even just use simple square tiles that are put together to create a map. (Cough, cough; looking at you, Betrayal at House on the Hill.)
Negotiation games explicitly involve and encourage making deals and alliances with other players and backstabbing when appropriate.
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In the original M.U.L.E game, negotiation and scheming between players is encouraged but allowing collusion, which initiates a mode allowing a private transaction between players. Hence, players can give each other deals that are unfair to others.
Players are offered a set of rules for partnerships or alliances.
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Many games allow for players to (temporarily) form a partnership. In Codenames, the spymaster alternates in partnering up with either player or team. The rules for this partnership are described in detail, as a spymaster has strict limitations to the information she can expose.
A system where players place game components in specific patterns in order to gain specific or variable game results.
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In Connect Four, players insert discs into the game board and attempt to form a pattern of 4 connecting discs.
Players have to recognize a known pattern created by game components to succeed at the game.
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In Mysterium, one player acts as a ghost who uses cards with a cryptic illustration to give clues to the other players about their killer. The players then have to compare the image of the illustration to images they have of the suspects and look for some pattern that can help them to make a decision about which subject might be the killer.
Players pick up an item or good at one location on the playing board and bring it to another location on the playing board.
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Eco Quest is a traditional point-and-click adventure. To make progress in the game, players have to find items and use them to overcome obstacles.
A game in which certain connected spots can be occupied, with movement determined by the lines between them.
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In Pandemic, the board is a world map with a number of major cities that are connected to each other through lines. When a player puts their pawn on a city's dot, they are visiting the city. The lines between the cities' dots indicate travel routes that players can take.
Players start the game with a pre-determined set of cards, player pieces or other components and add and change those pieces over the course of the game
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Legendary is a deck-building game in which players accumulate cards from a community set of cards to build a deck of cards that is strong enough to beat the game.
Players repeat an action until they decide to stop due to an increased risk of losing or other negative outcomes.
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In Codenames, players can make as many guesses as they like but if they guess wrong, the turn moves to the other player or team. Aside from ending the turn, this strategy has another risk as one of the cards in the game is an assassin. When players guess the card that is the assassin, they immediately lose the game. In other words, the more guesses a player makes, the bigger the risk that they will eventually pick the assassin and lose the game.
There is a circular, non-transitive hierarchy for which pieces win against or capture others.
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Rock beats scissors, paper beats rock, scissors beat paper. Many games have adopted this strategy. For example, in many war games, cavalry typically beats archers, archers beat spearmen and spearmen beats cavalry. However, not every game that uses a rock, paper, scissors mechanic has three sets of pieces. Plenty of games will use larger and more complex hierarchies that might even include subhierarchies. And some people just play Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.
Players control a character whose skills and/or story changes over time.
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In pen and paper role playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons, players create a character that has a backstory and a number of skills and attributes. During the game, players pretend to be that character.
Players roll dice or spin spinners and move playing pieces in accordance with the roll or spin.
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The Game of the Goose or Goose game is a board game where two or more players move pieces around a track by rolling a die. The aim of the game is to reach square number sixty-three before any of the other players, avoid obstacles such as the Inn, the Bridge and Death.
Games that feature interconnected lines with nodes and an emphasis on building the longest chain or connecting to new areas.
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In Kingdom Builder, one way to score points is to build an interconnected line of nods. For example, "discoverers" score points for building settlements on many horizontal lines, and "knights" score points for building settlements on one horizontal line.
Only the player controlling certain playing pieces has perfect information about the nature (or even the whereabouts) of those pieces
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In Mysterium, only the player who plays as a ghost has perfect information about which character is the murderer, where the murder took place, and which weapon was the murder weapon.
Players have to collect a set of items.
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To cure a disease in Pandemic, players have to collect a number of cards that belong to a specific set.
Players secretly choose actions which are then revealed and resolved.
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In Blood Rage, players secretly choose their battle cards which are they revealed at the same time. Some battle cards will make a player stronger and help them to win a battle. Others will actually give a player benefits if they end up losing the battle. As a result, players have to try to predict what kind of cards their opponents are likely to play, and cards are revealed simultaneously.
Players are provided with conceptual, written, or pictorial stimuli which must be incorporated into a story of the players' creation.
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Each player in dead of winter is given a character that will try to survive the zombie apocalypse. These characters are quite colorful, including a drunken mall santa and a stunt dog. Every scenario in the game has also a setup story and a conclusion that needs to be read. As players progress through the stories, the game system has numerious built-in events, including the crossroads cards that include story text that has to be read out loud.
Players directly attack an opposing player's strength, level, life points or something else to impede their progress.
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In Lords of Waterdeep, players can play intrigue cards that directly attack another player. For example, an "Arcane Mishap" card will force each opponent to remove a wizard from their tavern.
Players play pieces to score VPs, with the amount often based on adjacent pieces or pieces in the same cluster and keying off non-spatial properties like color, "feature completion", cluster size etc.
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In Carcassone, players put tiles on a surface to build a map. To win the game, players try to create combinations of tiles that maximize their points according to a scoring system.
A game in which the player who is last on the time track goes next.
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In Tokaido, players move their characters down a track. It is always the last person who gets to go first. There are no movement rules aside from that the characters move to any spot that is unoccupied. As it is beneficial to experience as many of the spots on the track as possible, players typically try to make as little progress as possible.
Players can exchange game items between each other.
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In Dead of Winter, supplies and weapons are essential to your survival. Players can trade them between each other to maximize their chances of succesfully finishing a scenario.
Players play cards and one player wins all of the played cards (called a "trick") following the rules of the game.
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Many card games use trick taking. Typically, players each play a card and whichever card is highest wins. This is called winning a trick.
Trivia games often test players on their knowledge of general interests and popular culture.
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Wits and Wagers is a game in which players answer general interest and popular culture questions. In IMS/EDP225, we do NOT use this mechanic.
In the context of this definition, a "phase" refers to a time in the game during which a specific set of actions are available to the player. Games with this mechanic are therefore games in which "the actions that are available to players during their turn are not necessarily the same actions that were available during the previous turn or during the next turn", as the order of the game phases is variable.
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In Twilight Imperium's Strategy Phase, players take turns selecting one of eight strategy cards. Each strategy card corresponds to a specific "phase" in the game, during which players around the table will be allowed to take actions that are unique to that phase. For example, the "Trade" strategy card allows all players to generate income, the "Construction" strategy card allows all players to build structures, etc.
On their turns, players are given the choice to either activate a strategy card (and the corresponding phase and actions) or do something else. (Their other options are not relevant to this example.) As a result, the order in which the phases of the game (and the actions that correspond to them) will become available to the players is variable. For example, in one round the leadership phase might go before the construction phase, in the next round it may be the other way around, and in another round there might be other phases in between them. It is all up to specific players to decide when these phases and actions become available to all the players at the table.
On their turns, players are given the choice to either activate a strategy card (and the corresponding phase and actions) or do something else. As a result, the order in which the phases of the game (and the actions that correspond to them) will become available to the players is variable. For example, in one round the trade phase might go before the construction phase, in the next round it may be the other way around, and in another round there might be other phases in between them. It is all up to specific players to decide when these phases and actions become available to all the players at the table, and it can be a lot of fun to time these phases in a way that they lead to a strategic advantage.
Please note that many games (including in Twilight Imperium) have nested game phases, some of which might be referred to as phases while others might be referred to as something else. For example, in Twilight Imperium, players choose their strategy cards during the "Strategy Phase" (sic) and they activate them during the "Action Phase" (sic). These phases correspond to a set of actions that players can take so it makes sense to call them that. However, the actual activation of the set of rules (aka the "phase") that comes with each strategy card is referred to as a "Strategic Action" (sic) in Twilight Imperium, even though such a strategic action does trigger what would be referred to as a "phase" in most games. As it is much to learn how to play games that do not reuse terminology for nested phases, this is a reasonable decision for the game designer to make, even if it can be confusing when analyzing game mechanics.
Each player has different abilities and paths to victory.
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Pandemic has a number of different characters with their own skills. For example, an engineer can build research stations more easily than other characters.
Players vote to influence the outcome of certain events within the game.
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In Dead of Winter, players have to make a lot of decisions as a group. They might have to decide what to do with certain supplies, how to respond to an emergency or even to exile one of them that has been identified as a traitor. To make these decisions, the game relies on a voting mechanic.
Players select individual actions from a set of actions available to all players, typically with a limit on how often each action can be performed in a round.
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In Lords of Waterdeep, players have a number of pawns named "agents". During their turn, a player moves an agent to a location on the game board and then performs the corresponding action. As there is a limted amount of locations and each location has a limited amount of agent spots, players should choose wisely where they want to move their agents first.