Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Bezier Games

With GenCon 2014 behind us, I decided to write about my experiences volunteering with Bezier Games.  This year they were showing off three games: One Night Ultimate WerewolfSubdivision, and Castles of Mad King Ludwig.  Without further ado, here are my impressions of each game:

One Night Ultimate Werewolf

Werewolf(/Mafia) is a group game in which every person assumes the role of someone in a village.  Among the villagers are two or three people who have become werewolves.  The game is broken into night/day actions.  The game starts at night; every night people close their eyes and the werewolves choose someone in the village to eat.  Often there is one villager who is also a seer/detective who can check the identity of one other villager per night.

After those actions are taken everyone in the village wakes up and a moderator narrates who died during the night.  Everyone in the village then must decide who they feel is responsible for these senseless killings, and they then lynch that person.  The werewolves win the game if they manage to kill off all the villagers before the villagers manage to lynch the last werewolf.

In Bezier Games' version, they limit all of the interaction to a single night and a single day of voting.  Also, there is no moderator, so everyone can participate (a free app is available to narrate the night/day actions). The villagers win if they manage to lynch even a single werewolf.  Conversely, the werewolves are just trying to survive without being lynched.  To facilitate the flow of information, almost everyone playing will have a special role, which gives them a night action or alternative win condition.  The result is a chaotic scramble to piece together everyone's' roles and determine who the werewolves are.

Ted Alspach & Akihisa Okui retain the bluffing and social interaction, but condense it to only 15 minutes.  Because each person has a role, nobody feels left out, and "I'm just a villager!" is almost unheard of.  Due to the short timespan, and highly interactive play, it's very common to play two, three, even five times in a row.  If you're a fan of quick social party games, this is a must have.

Subdivision

This is marketed as a the next game in the Suburbia line. The art style is consistent with that, and it uses those same hex shapes. That's about where the similarities end, in my opinion.

To play, each person draws a hand of 5 hex tiles. On their turn, they place one down, and then pass the remaining ones to the person sitting next to them. You can place a tile for free where on the symbol which is rolled on a die, or you can pay $2 to place a hex anywhere you want. If you can't do either, you can ditch a tile for $$$.

The tiles you are drafting all have white borders. If you place your white tile next to another white tile, then that previously placed white zoning tile provides you with an adjacency bonus (either new black-border hexes to place down, or wooden sidewalk bricks). These black border tiles are how you earn VP at the end of the game. Placing next to a black tile does not trigger any additional adjacency bonuses, but will often earn you VP or cash.

The game consists of 16 tile placements, and then you count the scores at the end. It plays quickly, typically between half an hour to forty five minutes. The problem I have here is that every way to obtain VP encourages you to commingle your districts. In Suburbia, you would lay out your industrial parks, and then section those off from your residential communities. In subdivision, you're actively trying to make sure two tiles of the same color do not touch. It's difficult to plan your city in a meaningful way, so it's just not interesting to play.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

Castles is not marketed as a Suburbia game. However, it is the mechanical successor to it.  There is a market present, and each person starts with the same $15 that you do in Suburbia. There are public goals to vie for, and each person also has a few private goals of their own.

The basic gameplay of Castles is that every round there is a Master Builder (which passes clockwise every round). The master builder then sets the price for each room (he arranges them by price: $1, $2, $4, $6, $8, $10, and $15). On your turn you can: build a new tile, build a staircase/hallway, or take $5 (5,000 marks) from the bank. If you build a tile, you pay the master builder, not the bank (unless you are the master builder, who builds last, and pays the bank). This is where the game is brilliant and interactive. If you know someone wants a room you can either price it out of range for them, or make them pay what you want for it. Also, you can't set the room you want too low or someone else will take it. Any room not taken during a round has $1 placed as incentive for someone to build it later.

For the rooms themselves, some of them give bonus VP for being connected or adjacent (connected is through a door, adjacent means share a wall) to other rooms. Some rooms cost VP if you place them next to others (activity rooms next to sleep quarters, for example). Also, if you complete a room (close off all the doors) then you gain a bonus. These bonuses range from money to victory points to additional hidden bonus cards.

I did not expect to like this game. I assumed the shapes would be gimmicky. While I do think the components could be about 50% bigger, the game is fantastic. The master builder is a significant improvement on Suburbia's market, and positioning and completing rooms is much more compelling here than in games like Princes of Florence. This may 'kill' Suburbia for me.  Bezier Games is hoping to release Castles of Mad King Ludwig at Essen (in October), and  I expect it to be an instant success.

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