And then the sky turned dark - Synopsis

And then the sky turned dark It was prosperous times in the country. From the bustling capital to the smallest hamlet there was peace, good trade, and bountiful harvest.

But good times rarely last and rumours started spreading that the huge mountain in the center of the realm had started rumbling and raging.

And then the sky turned dark...

Type: Team play, Worker placement or Hand management Number of players: 4,6 Time: 90 minutes (goal), 120 minutes (max)

Motivation

Sometimes you meet for a boardgaming session but you feel like playing different types of games. My idea is to make a game consisting of two games that, while being completely different types, are connected thematically and affect each other mechanically. My hope is that it will thus be possible to play together while playing entirely different games.

Explanation

The setting for the game is a little hamlet. Everything was going great until suddenly the sky went dark and the world turned cold. Now the people in the hamlet scramble for supplies and try to prevent the decay of their hard gained assets while being beset by all kinds of beasts and miscreants. The players are arranged in teams of two.

Each team controls a family and the winner of the game is the family that best kept up Hope (victory points).

Game one - the struggling hamlet One player on each teams plays this game, which is about the struggle of the main part of each family to keep their ressources. This is a classic worker placement game with a few twists. In most worker placement games you start with little and try to build up a ressource machine. In this game you’ve already done that and now things start falling apart. You must use your workers to prioritize between keeping your assets, producing enough food for your workers to survive, and in addition you have a new task where you must produce weapons to keep away unwanted invaders. You will slowly loose your ressources, your aim is to prioritize what to keep the longest to optimize the survival of your family.

Game two - the heroic defence The other player on each team plays this game, which is about the last member of each family who heroically ventures into the outskirts of the hamlet to defend it. This is is a more fast paced game. The objective here is to keep away bandits, wild bears, army deserters and whatnot who all try to pillage the hamlet. The foes are arranged in columns, each player being responsible for two columns. Players play weapon cards to eliminate or rearrange foes who slowly advance (imagine some kind of expanded Guillotine/Space Invaders). Any unhandled foes enter the hamlet and wreak havoc on the players team-mate in Game one. The heroes start with good personality traits which they can sacrifice at a cost to their familty to gain an advantage in the combat.

Interaction between the games The two games play most of each round without interaction. But at the end of each game round there is a shared phase where the two games interact. During the round the players in Game one produce the weapon cards that their team-mate in Game two uses to fight the foes - these are collected in the shared phase. Meanwhile all foes that slipped past the defences in Game two now have an effect on Game one. Thus the games are connected and interdependent while playing completely different.

Status First prototype is nearly ready.

Examples of components 1

2

3

Example from Game one: Collapsing mine.

1) This is one of the available worker spaces from the start of the game. Up to two workers can be placed and they each collect 3 metal ressources (used for e.g. making weapons for Game 2). The box with the arrow shows the order in which workers were placed. 2) This is one of a series of available actions that appear throughout the game. If this action is not taken within a given number of rounds it affects the Rich mine. It takes 1 worker to fix and that worker scores 1 Hope (victory point) for her family. If it is not dealt with then the Rich mine is changed from 1) to 3). 3) This shows the Rich mine if 2) is not completed in time. Now it is not possible for workers to collect the metal ressource here any more and they will have to use other, less effective, actions.

Example from Game 2: Foes and weapons.

Each player is responsible for two columns of foes - one such column is shown to the left. Each foe has some characteristics. The Wolf, at the top of the column, gives 1 Hero point (number in the circle) if it is killed. The players in Game two compete for Hero points each round with the winner bringing a small bonus of Hope (victory points) home to the hamlet. If the wolf is not killed it costs 1 Hope, whereas the Bandit closes the Market action space for a round. Some foes give a Reward if they are defeated. Finally the foes have 2 numbers - Ranged and Melee. This shows how hard they are to kill with those types of weapons.

To stop the foes the players in Game 2 plays weapons, like shown below. They can be melee weapons (axe symbol), ranged (bow symbol), or traps (trap symbol).

Ranged weapons can only be played on the back rows, while melee weapons can be played on the front row. The numbers on the weapons must match or exceed the numbers on the foes - e.g. the bandit is harder to kill in melee than at range. Finally the traps are used to rearrange the foes - e.g. you can move a bad one into another players column. Each player plays 3 weapons and then all foes advance one space.

Foes in the front row that advance are put aside and in the shared phase they affect the hamlet.

Contact: Martin B. Enghoff enghoff@miljokemi.dk 26 42 78 48