Talk:Zombie Coasters

All Done (I think)!

Okay, I think that this is all done. The only thing left now is to Playtest it. Please, will someone with Martian Coasters please test this thing out for me? I don't have a set of my own to try it out with yet, so I'm not sure if the game will work well or not... Someone let me know! I'd like to submit this to the game design competition, but I sure would be embarrassed if I sent it and it had major problems. Thanks everyone! --GameBrain42 15:10, 13 May 2008 (EDT)

Uh... is there a reason you don't just make a few little drawings of the Martian Coasters boards for playtesting purposes, until you can get your hands on a set? - misuba 14:23, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

Yes... I didn't think of it. Actually, now that I do think about it, I think I remember seeing a pdf of a six-player variant of a martian coasters layout somewhere online.. Maybe I'll just print out some of those.. Thanks MiSuBa! --GameBrain42 15:11, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

David Artman 11:14, 16 May 2008 (EDT)

Well it's your lucky day, then. Though I came down on Jorge for making these available (thus possibly undercutting Looney Labs sales), it looks like they'll do some good after all: Mundialito Spanish Components.

--GameBrain42 14:58, 16 May 2008 (EDT)

Poor Jorge! LOL. Naw, I do intend to buy a set anyway. I mean really, how easy do you think it will be to change the paper coasters around being as flimsy as they will be? Not very I'm guessing. And I guess I could just tape them to hard coasters that I DO have, but that's tacky and they are still all in battleship gray. Not very visually appealing. So, it's a definate must to get real ones. I just need to convince the wife that I NEED Them.. ha!

Some constructive Critisicm from David Artman

In fact, having scanned Zombie Coasters, if you think it's coop, then (Ikko)Zendo surely is (i.e. ZC seems very competitive, to me, as--on a Dead-Turn, I'm inclined to move zombies away from me and towards other players. And vice versa. In fact, you might want to intersperse the Live- and Dead-Turns (as in Zombies!) because otherwise zombies could end up paralyzed, as players move them away from themselves on their turn, and then other players reverse that movement. (Continue on ZC Talk, if you like.) David Artman 09:12, 14 May 2008 (EDT) Retrieved from "http://www.icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category_talk:Cooperative"

I did actually take the potential for "Paralyzed"(or "confused" as I thought of them, lol) zombies into consideration.. That's why I split the Turns into the LIFE and DEATH turns respectively. Just like in the life-turn where each player may move only once, each Zombie may only be moved once during the Death-turn. This limits the "confused" Zombie movements since once THAT zombie has been moved, it can't be moved again for the rest of the death-turn. Maybe I need to clarify this in the Rules! Thanks David!! --GameBrain42 20:33, 14 May 2008 (EDT)

David Artman 09:33, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

My bad--upon re-reading, I see that you clarified the "only once per turn" on May 13th. Maybe emphasize the "go around, taking turns moving a zombie, until all have moved, no matter how many individual player turns that takes"?

Which makes me wonder if you're going to have a memory problem, keeping track of which zombies have been moved on a given Dead Turn? (Could be a use for Volcano Caps?)

Also, I think the double-up turns (last Dead Turn player goes first on Life Turn) is unbalanced, but maybe it doesn't work out to be so in actual play? I just hear alarms go off when I see what amounts to 'take two turns in a row,' in particular given that the right number of players and zombies (I think might) cause the same player to get that double-up turn more than once... or is that a feature (a strategic element) not a flaw?

Come to think of THAT, you have the first player in Life also starting Dead; and the last player in Dead starting Life (which, in turn, makes him or her also start Dead, per first rule). Why not do a strict rotation: determine first player; do all Life Turns in turn rotation order; then the player after the last to have a Life Turn starts the Dead Turns; then do all Dead Turns in turn rotation, being sure to move all zombies once and only once; then the player after the last player to do a Dead Turn starts the Life Turns; repeat until there's a winner.

--GameBrain42 13:08, 15 May 2008 (EDT)

Actually, I'm really glad that you brought those concerns up. I'm wondering the same things honestly. Unfortunately, I don't have martian coasters myself to test it out yet. I think, however, that you might be right about making turns Static. I'm hoping that somebody will try it out and let us know how it works.

Now, this was my thinking on the Turns thing: Assume that we have 2 players, Jonathan and David. let's say that David goes first during the life-turn and moves his guy. Then, Jonathan moves his guy and starts the death-turn. There is already a couple Zombies in play (one for each player), but the vat is empty. Since this is the case, the first player to start the Death-turn must Spawn a new zombie. Then it's David's turn to move a zombie. Then Jonathan moves the last Zombie and starts the new life-turn moving his guy again. Now it's David's turn to move his guy, and now He Starts the Death-turn.

I know what you mean about the alarm bells, trust me, Lol. This just seemed logical to me, but I'll be more than happy to change stuff if neccessary.

About the remembering thing: I don't know if that would become a problem or not. Honestly, the options the Zombies have are pretty limited so I'm guessing that the Death-turn will go fairly quickly giving players little room to forget which zombies have been moved so far. But then again, if there are all fifteen on the board that might get a little hairy. Not sure though cause I don't have the coasters to try it out! Darnit...

So, let this be a lesson to game designers everywhere. Never try designing a game that you can't even playtest. You would think that this is common sense, but, we are talking about me here...

Cooperative Competition?

Cleverpun 11:53, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to repeat Mr. Artman, but he already mentioned my biggest concern- the way the game is setup, not only can the players actively discourage the zombies from attacking them, but there's no incentive to have them do to begin with... if the players actually sic zombies on each other, then doesn't that undermine the "cooperative" part? The way I see the game going is players cooperate until the vat is destroyed, then once it is they turn on each other by using their Death-turns to attack the other players.

Now the idea of purposefully making the zombies ineffectual might actually be interesting, since the forced spawn of zombies means that this'll make zombies multiply until they're a more severe threat. Sorta punishing the player for taking it easy on themselves. But the idea of the players only motivation when commanding zombies is to undermine their teammates seems so... unintuitive to me. The point of co-op is to succeed as a team. Having played a lot of co-op games lately (Pandemic and Left 4 Dead in particular come to mind), I can't help but think that automating the zombies behavior more would be better, but then it would be an entirely different game.

Perhaps a better solution would be to reward players for injuring/killing the zombies! Rather than survival being the sole victory requirement, players could keep the zombies they kill/damage, and the highest kill count is the winner. Now, in Castle Panic this points victory is a lame ending to the game, but that's because the gameplay didn't necessarily enforce it. This game, by giving the players equal control of the monsters sets up a more strategic play for points.

Now, I haven't had a chance to play the game yet, so I may be offbase, but I do think the way you've mixed cooperative gameplay and competitive mechanics seems a little unintuitive. I'll play the game before I make more critique, but I wanted to write down my initial thoughts on the off chance it was helpful.