Turn based strategy games

phoe6 on 2008/09/22 04:38

It is interesting that many teams have come up with Turn based strategy games in week. Kudoes to you all. It takes a patient game play to evaluate those games. If I am not a particularly a fan of types ( Well, I have not been able to teach myself freeciv yet), then how do I evaluate them? I would not have the capacity to judge them on merits and my evaluation would be highly subjective. What to do? How do others enjoy turn based strategy games?

(log in to comment)

Comments

richard on 2008/09/22 05:43:

Yeah, it's a risky move. I really wanted to write a tactical RPG this PyWeek (I've wanted to write one for ages now). I realised that there'd be some reviewers who would not enjoy it, or be able to spend time to play it more deeply, and I'm OK with that.

Personally I find that I'll spend at least 10-20 minutes with a game that has any depth, often restarting once I get to grips with them. This balances out with the other games that only take a minute to play before you've experienced the whole thing.

Spending 20 minutes with my game should be enough to form an opinion of it (ie it should be enough to complete the first dungeon and go shopping / manage the characters a bit.)

joey101 on 2008/09/22 14:48:

This does bring up an interesting topic. I've noticed that many games it does only take a minute or two before you've seen the extent of it's design (and 90%+ of it's content). I'm not surprised really though, as after the game design and coding you don't have much time left in just one week to create lots of content.

Which is one big advantage I see in working as a team apposed to solo. It really worked out well for Matthew and I. He coded most of the game internals while I did all the artwork, level design and UI coding.

Woodwolf on 2008/09/22 16:16:

Well, I guess there's not much time for adding content. However, some of the best classic games have a minimum content: Tetris, Pacman, Asteroids, Arkanoid and many more.

I guess that this kind of competitions aim for original game mechanics. At least for me, it doesn't make any sense preparing a 200-pages-rpg-script for an epic story with dramatic dialogs. If you want to do that, do it properly and take your time...

Something similar happens to platformers: only something as original as Knytt would attract my attention, there are already tons of Mario-like or Metroidvania clones. There's not time for fluid animations, clever level design or unpredictable monsters. Only something truly original makes sense...

RB[0] on 2008/09/22 19:14:

Well - our team has done tbs games 3 times so far. Two of them ended up being our best ever - and our entry this time - even though the game is un-winnable and the ai is a bit odd - is our best idea/execution ever, this theme really made us think outside the box.

On the other hand though - it turned out the simplest of the three games got the highest rating - and the most finished got one of our lowest ratings ever - so it is really a hard balance - and generally there are about 10-20 voters who loved it, and most others did not think it was any good at all...

Frankly - you should rate it as you saw it - if they don't provide enough tutorials for you to play - then it should be rated down.

In the end - tbs games are generally not going to work at all - they simply require too much instruction for anyone to understand them inside two weeks with 50+ other games to play, especially if you go for a unique approach - it just won't get a high score - even if it is done well.

So my suggestion - just evaluate them based on how much you liked them - if it didn't work, or you couldn't get into it, or you didn't understand it or you just plain did not like it - rate it down. There is no other way to rate - that is how I interpret the rule (at least I think it is still there) that you should rate games on their own merits, and don't compare them - if you like a game rate it better, if not, rate it worse, it does not matter if you are or are not a fan of the type :)
Subjectiveness is not against the rules :P

saluk on 2008/09/22 20:52:

In the first pyweek I got 4th place in fun with a tbs, so it can work. However, we innovated not a lot and there was a lot of humor etc that was apparent from the start of the game which helped our score a lot I think. The actual gameplay was poorly balanced and slow, but from a quick 10-20 minute evaluation it "seemed" fun. I think making an effort to really front load the experience really helps a lot, no matter what genre or anti-genre your game is. If you have time for content further along, that's OK, but the first bit should be fun as is.

But I think if you just really don't like turn based strategy at all, and can't put yourself in the shoes of "I think this would be fun if I liked tbs" or "even if I liked tbs, this obviously wouldn't cut it" it might be better off skipping the game. I know when I read pro reviews and they start with "I don't normally like X sort of game, so I was leery when I was handed this game to review" I basically will write off any bad thing they say about the game. And probably look for reviews from someone who actually can tell me, as a fan of X, whether the game is worth buying o not.

joey101 on 2008/09/22 23:34:

Turn Based Strategy games seem to take more work to create and balance apposed to, for example, an arcade or puzzle game.