Great New Game Ideas

A friend and I were reminiscing the other day about the sorry state of games with an explicit Christian target audience. And, since I consider game designing to be one of my bigger hobbies, I figured..."Hey, why not?" That could definitely bring in some extra income! After thinking about it for a bit, I realized it's not very fun to make any truly edifying games, and it certainly wouldn't be very profitable. I had way more fun making up some games that...well, I won't spoil the fun.

Now, I know what you're thinking. I'm going to put these on here, and you're going to come along and snatch up my game ideas! Well, it happened before (see here), and I'm ready for it this time. Chances are, by the time you read this, I'll be halfway back from the permit office, cackling all the way!

Now, without further ado, here are the most awesome 'Christian' games to never hit the market! Read them and bask in their awesomeness!

Cryptic Praise
Remember those days when the WWJD and FROG trinkets were cool? It was way sweet to walk around with an acronym that nobody knew tagged to your wrist/ankle/neck, and when they asked you, you got to boast your faith to the unsuspecting stranger! What fun! It's a shame that everybody knows what those mean nowadays...but with this game, you get the chance to wear fashionable phylacteries all over again! There are several dice with letters that are rolled into a grid (not unlike Boggle), and the players come up with some sly sayings with the letters in the grid! All the phrases are written down and voted on, and the winner gets to make a bracelet (with the companion "Cryptic Praise Craft Kit," of course)! First to make ten bracelets wins! Come out with such zingers as WYGMBSR (When You Get More Better; Sanctification Rocks!) or PLMSP (Please Let Me Say Prayers)! The possibilities are endless, as well as the fun of being smug about your covert holiness!

Prosperopoly (Tagline: "Get ahead without being left behind!")
Remember the parable about the servants and the talents? Well, that was really about how Jesus wants us to be rich and happy on Earth before we meet him in Heaven. What better way to be happy than to be richer than everyone you know? In this Monopoly-esque board game, each player is trying to amass a bigger fortune than his brotherly rivals. Sometimes it's a tough world out there, and 'liberties' need to be taken to make sure you can maximize your returns. Just draw a Sin Token and bend the rules to your liking--you can always earn back your salvation with good works (or a 10% donation between Park Place Ministries and the Boardwalk Church Campus)! But be careful to look for the end-times (Such as 'Rumor of Wars,'  'Euro Increases in Value,' and the dead giveaway, 'Popular National Leader Elected'). If the "Rapture" Card is drawn, and if you have even one Sin Token left, you're left behind, and lose immediately! The winner is the raptured player with the most capital!

Sinspotting - The DVD Game
This great family game now harnesses the latest technology to teach us how different we are from those who don't know Jesus! Players split into two teams and a randomly selected vignette is played on the DVD player. Teams have thirty seconds to identify as many sins as they can before time runs out--your team gets a point for every sin noticed that the other team failed to (Note: "Bad Acting," while prevalent, is not a sin). Points are amassed quickly, so the first to 153 (a very important Biblical number) wins the game! *UPDATE* Sinspotting now comes in a brand new "Travel Edition" you can take along with you next time you venture into the pagan populous! It includes sinpads, pencils, and a timer. Just point at a person or group of people near you, observe, and start condemning!

Battleground: Denomi-Nation
The Great Commission can be pretty difficult to accomplish at times, especially with so many other denominations out there trying to beat us to the punch, so why not play this game to feel as if you're converting the world?! Although it may seem somewhat similar to Risk, the stakes are ever so much higher! The board is a map of a generic city (you can name it whatever you like--name it the town you live in for your first game, but it can be somewhere more exotic, like "Seattle" or "London" if you're feeling more dangerous!) Each player takes a set of wooden colored cubes and a denomination card. Then the dark, sinner-colored cubes are placed randomly around the map. The players then take turns placing their faithful, converting sinner-cubes into their specific saint-color cubes. The game really takes off when each player utilizes their denomination's super-powers!  Is your revenue dwindling with your church membership? Hold pageants and programs to lure in the other player's cubes to make them your own! Are the remaining sin-cubes in your area making your faithful feel unsafe? Play a "Cultural Suppression" card and push those difficult cubes into the other player's back yard! Worried about losing your denomination's tax-exempt status? Just succeed at a Get-Out-The-Vote dice roll and install local government leaders that agree with you, and watch the other denominations scurry! Who needs to be part of a body, when you can be the biggest, baddest ear around?! Of course, Battleground:Denomi-Nation will have future expansion packs, granting in-depth abilities to the denominations, and allowing you to create your own! Who can stand against an army of faithful saints when they have "Contemporary Worship," "Political Connections," and "Works-Based Theology" on their side!?

Coming soon to a Christian Book store near you!

Imperial Review

Imperial is a game I've more recently aquainted myself to, but it's loads of fun. Set during World War I, the board and peices look not unlike a game called Diplomacy. It's a map of Europe, color coded for the six different countries that take place in the game (UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and Austria-Hungary). Each country has five zones, and there are multiple other land provinces and sea zones. The only pieces you get are naval and land factories, armies and fleets, and "tax chips" for showing which zones are ruled by which countries. Armies move across the land, and the fleets, yes you guess right, move on water. They even let armies cross them like a bridge across the water. Combat is simple, with a one for one attrition in battle. No dice or cards are used for any sort of randomizing features.

You'd expect with a game like this for the turns to drag on and on, but a neat turn control concept comes into play here and keeps the turns down to a minute or less (unless the player is struck by "analysis paralysis"). At the top of the board is a Wheel of Fortune-type circle with different actions (Factory, Production, Maneuver, Taxation, etc), and each country can only take one of the next three actions depending where it's turn marker is at. For example, you would have to decide whether or not that country would produce more units, or move and attack, or collect income (but not a combination thereof).

Okay, nothing too new aside from the Wheel of Turn Options, that's true. But believe it or not, it's not a war game. Sure, it's themed like war, but here's the kicker. The players don't assume roles of a head of state, but rather, an investor who buys bonds in the countries they think will succeed, and the leading bond holder for each country controls that country on it's turn. So if you think Italy is going to send its amassed naval strength into Mother Russia's profitable sea zones, you could, if you had enough cash, buy out Italy, and send the fleets storming in the other direction instead! Needless to say, it's a very heated game. The countries that do well and capture zones (by occupying them with troops and marking them with tax chips), increase their Power (think Victory Points) every time the country decides to do a tax phase. Once a country gets 25 Power, the game ends. The further along the Power Track the country is at the end of the game, the more their bonds are worth for final scoring.

This is a game with a lot of depth, and it's surprisingly simple rules help it run along smooth. After the first several turns, everyone gets a good general idea of the technical bits and gets down to playing the game. Nobody gets eliminated (even if you control no countries, you lurk in the shadows until you get enough dough through bond payout to buyout a country again). Those who play like it's a war game are the ones who lose--as it's real easy to commit yourself to a country, only to find out nobody else has invested in it, and nobody wants it to survive, and you get crushed by five other countries. There's a lot of underhanded country stealing, and if you like heated games, this is definitely for you!

The downsides are few but substantial: Don't expect this to be a light-hearted game. At all. My wife hasn't played this one since she first played (and won), and another player had to get banned from the game because she would get too frustrated at everyone ganging up on her superpowered country. The game also takes several hours to play out, even though the downtime is hardly noticible due to the short turns and trying to guess what the other player's plans are. Also, it's real easy for several players to soundly trounce the expected lead player with little hope of recovery. Luckily, the games are normally really close, with the winner squeaking past the fray by just one bond purchase or a couple million bucks (considering the lowest denomination is one million, that's not a lot).

Take a look at the Board Game Geek entry for Imperial if you're interested. As of today, it's ranked 26 out of all the board games currently listed, which is definitely commendable, considering there's over 4,700 of them (Risk is listed at rank 3,815 by comparison). It's definitely a ton of fun, as long as you have the right crowd. Make sure you have a comfortable playing area, and keep all sharp objects away from the players!

NSTP #1 (Nothing Substantial To Post)

I'm having a creative crisis, it seems, so here's something to hold the masses over. Be careful, you may want to read this post and have a nerdular affinity before clicking play.

Eurogames and Settlers of Catan Review

Okay, I'm taking a break from important things today to talk about something awesome. Boardgames. That's right, you heard me. Except they're not lame. Think Monopoly or Risk, but fun. I know, sounds like an oxymoron, right? Well these puppies come from overseas, like Europe and Germany. I'm not sure how they make them, but they seem to be brilliant at it. Here are some of the keys to success that most of them have in common:

• Keep the turns short, or let everyone do something every turn.
• Play with three or more players, and focus on interactions between the players.
• Keep the players as close as possible in terms of victory, to prevent one player completely obliterating everybody else, and thus preventing the rest from having any fun.
• Player elimination is absolutely verboten.
• Use of dice should be minimized or eliminated entirely.
• Any sort of bookkeeping should be kept to an absolute minimum. No charts, no numbers above 100, or even better, nothing above 10.
• Make the game components of high quality products that will last more than a couple of plays through the game.

If any of this sounds even moderately interesting, or you're completely bored, check out Settlers of Catan by Klaus Teuber, here. It's a good introduction to the pleasantly surprising world of eurogames. It focuses on the players settling a resource-rich island (perhaps one called "Catan?"), and how they get resources, trade amongst themselves, expand, and try to claim the most prominent status on the island in the form of victory points. Although it uses dice, it's extremely unique on how they are used, and although luck does play a factor in the game, the meat and potatoes of the game focuses on the players trading amongst themselves. The resources, like brick, wood, sheep, wheat, and ore, are used to build things like roads (a brick and wood resource) and cities (two wheat and three ore). Things get interesting when only one person produces a little of a much needed resource, and everybody wants that resource and will throw all they have in a trade, because everyone knows you can't build a road out of sheep (unless, of course, you have some wood and four sheep, and squeeze the sheep hard enough together that they form bricks, but that's another story). There's only four things that the players can build, all with different combinations of resources, and if it's a close game (it almost always is, due to the losing players ganging up on the leader), it gets real heated when trade embargoes start popping up, and alliances start forming, which happens naturally and is the whole point of the game.

The last time I played the game, I came in next to last, but had an absolute ball. I played with my wife, a doctor friend of ours, his two sons, and one of their friends (which is an unusual gaming group under normal circumstances). Everyone had it in for me, because I knew the most about the game, and the one I love made it absolutely clear to everyone that I would take all their victory points, crush their settlements, and kick their puppies, so I was out of the running at the very start. But later she made one critical error in her trading and scheming, and almost conned someone out of the prestigious "Longest Road" achievement (which was promptly foiled by the once mild-mannered doctor), and sweet blissful chaos ensued around the entire board. The winner was the one we all least expected, the silent and innocent-seeming friend of the boys, who quietly secured a virtual monopoly of all the wheat and ore of the island, and in one fell swoop, claimed the ten victory points to win. Some of the best entertainment I've ever had in a long time. Check it out, and I promise you won't be disappointed--even worse, you'll be hooked.