trying to resolve turns/queue actions as fast as possible to make the game not super slow is probably the biggest issueKhaos wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2019 12:53 am i was thinking how to turn worms (basically multiplayer snake) into a board game and i was thinking the best way thing to replace the dexterity aspect of it would be to have some sort of delayed movement. so if someone cut you off, you couldn't just immediately turn away unharmed. and you could be rewarded for predicting enemy movement
so i was thinking, a big board of hexagons, and your worm head would have a direction pointer on it. you have an infinite amount of the following move cards available: move forward, turn 60deg right and move forward, and turn 60degrees left and move forward
you would start the game by queuing 3 cards (place them face down on a track in front of you, but then on following turns, everyone would simultaneously resolve the first movement in their queue (turn it face up, do the thing, then discard the card), place a worm body token in the space they just left, and then add a new movement to their queue
then for actions, i was thinking you could have both, queued actions and instant actions. queued actions would be played face down with your move action, and slide along and resolve the same way. maybe they would be things like "hairpin turn, rotate an additional 60 degrees in the direction this card moves" or " speed boost, move an additional space after resolving your move card"
offensive actions would be, like in your game, "dig, deal 1 damage to things in range 1 of you (worm heads, worm bodies, rocket spikes, etc.)
the questions then become
how do you get action cards
how do you incentivise players to use them and not hoard the good ones
how do you score points and encourage players to engage each other, without having people suiciding into each other or just hiding as the optimal strategy
so to simplify things, i think you should just have 3 different hexagon tokens, and then you place those face-down in your track. that way when you resolve the move and action, you don't have to think or search for tokens. you just place the token on your track onto the board. and resolving actions should never involve making another decision. the decision making should be limited to queuing actions/move tokens and that's it.
to prevent hoarding of good cards, i'm thinking, every turn you must play exactly 1 card, and then you draw a card, with a small maximum hand size. maybe 3 cards max? then instead of "basic/common" actions we could just have two different decks to draw from (your choice): a deck of offensive actions (that deal damage or kill things) and a deck of defensive cards (mostly movement actions)
potential win cons:
- straight last man standing player elimination. maybe being close to the center would give you some sort of card advantage, and also provide healing? we could also consider making it hard to get rid of worm bodies so people HAVE to go to the middle eventually, but i feel like the start of every game will play the same that way. could also consider board compression ala gridlord.
- ouroborus mode: everyone has a different "target" they have to kill to win. when one player is eliminated, the game ends. could be 2-6 players
- point system: dealing damage gets you points somehow. the damage you deal goes into a baggie so no-one knows your score unless they're point-counting. this works for games like evolution; where technically you can just track all the points and it's in your best interest to attack the leader, but no-one really does because who can be fucking bothered