Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
known as
designer
board games because of their practice of including
the game designer's name on the front of the box. This category includes
many subgenres, only some of which I will address. In
Chapter 5
I'll go
into much more detail about these genres.
War games
.
This is one of the oldest genres of games, as I men-
tioned in
Chapter 1
. War games tend to be extremely complex,
long, and gritty. They usually straddle the line between wanting
to be a game and wanting to simulate a conflict, and commonly
are set in a real place or even simulate a historical battle. The
nature of war games tends to keep them from being among the
most elegant of games, but there's certainly a lot you can learn
from them. The war game genre also includes the subgenre of
tabletop war games, such as
Warhammer 40K
.
- Check out:
Advanced Squad Leader
,
2 De Mayo
, and
A Few
Acres of Snow
.
Abstracts
. Abstract games are games that have minimal or no
theme. They're entirely representational, and usually use a grid
and basic shapes in basic colors to visually represent territory or
other mechanisms of a game. They're often two-player games and
their play frequently has low levels of randomness. Abstracts are
especially useful for game designers because of their complete
and total focus on mechanisms. If an abstract game's gameplay
isn't at least slightly new or interesting, it sticks out like a sore
thumb. That said, abstracts can be a bit more difficult to get into
than some other kinds of games due to their lack of themes.
- Check out: Go,
chess,
Arimaa
,
Blokus
, and
Hive
.
Eurogames
. This is my favorite category of board games because
they are heavily mechanical like abstracts, but with usually just
enough of a theme to draw players in. Most of the notable Euros
tend to come out of Germany, which is generally considered to
be the board-game capital of the world. These games often have
themes relating to farming, trading in the Mediterranean, or the
medieval period, but what's notable is that Eurogames tend to
specifically avoid direct player conflict, putting them in stark
contrast to the category of war games. Another thing I person-
ally love about Eurogames is that they are very elegant and often
minimize the element of luck (few Euros have dice). In terms of
elegance they perhaps are one step down from the abstracts, but
they also tend to do a lot more than most abstracts.
-
Check out:
Puerto Rico
,
hrough the Desert
,
Agricola
, and
Caylus
.
