basic ideas:
you can post things here if u want. im probably gonna be using this for laying out various ideas. that way i dont have to swamp through my pms trying to find what my design pm was when i have an idea. also other people can just randomly give feedback too.
So we should start by creating an entire financial market…
GIVE ME A SPADE AND ILL GIVE YOU A HOLEEEEEE
In all seriousness, I’m imagining this in terms of Zelda Mafia.
The two possible problems I can see are that layers are hard to communicate on a map, and the briefcase needs to be easily trackable while leaving an opportunity to pull chicanery on the guards.
The onus is also placed upon the thieves - the guards are just playing defense until the time limit runs out - so motivating the guards to get greedy and aggressive might make for more fun gameplay.
ok so obviously map design would be a large factor in a game like this.
i think that for a map to work properly it needs to have multiple layers. 3-4 of them. this way you can have more than 4 doors in a small-ish room through hatches and other things. this is of particular importance in the main vault room / area guards can’t get in (which would be in the bottom layer), since if you only have 4 entrances to the vault then guards can just camp the entrances and the game becomes a stalemate. there would also be a few rooms next to the main vault room that the guards can’t access to introduce more entrances and more ways to get in
bottom layer would definitely be the vault. or top if we’re feeling like a pyramid instead of the cone but i’ll just say cone for now
middle layers would be various rooms that have various utilities and bonuses and ways to get through them and such. what you would normally expect from a “map”
top layer is the largest. it’s mostly the same as the middle layers, but there is many entrances at the borders (like up to 18 i think) that the thieves start at n shit. (teams would probably be grouped together)
it might be cool to have a mechanic that changes based upon how you broke into your entrance but that’s a bit too in-depth for this basic overview
guards would probably start in locations closer to the center of the layer below the top layer, or maybe just the center of the top layer if we’re feeling frisky today
also i think the thieves would periodically get the locations of their team broadcast to the whole game. otherwise you can say that they are using an invisibility device with limited functionality. there would be ways to catch thieves without, like, being in the same room as them when their location gets broadcast, but they would be harder than strategically moving the guards to surround the thieves or smth like that
it might be better to have them not always be invisible when they’re not broadcast. like, before they get broadcast they get a turn of invisbility or smth idk. and otherwise they’re able to be seen and need to manuever themselves around people properly
i think that “combat” wouldn’t really work in a game like this, at least thieves vs guards. the thieves should be actively avoiding engaging with the guards. i would think that if you get “caught” by guard(s) then you would instantly die unless you can quickly get away somehow; but there would be no odds of “death” in a given moment inbetween 0% and 100%.
thieves vs thieves is Plausible but it needs to be simple.
in endgame incapacitated thieves would return as backup near their initial entrance. if guards can get incapacitated in any way (not certain if this is possible in the first place but) they return after like 3 turns in the vault as SWAT teams or something idk. i just think that “dead” people should return in endgame to help their team
yea
i think layers would just be different images of the map and places where you can go between them are marked with up arrows or down arrows
actually the more i think about this the morei think its a bad idea and guards should just have other ways to find the thieves
A lot of this is overlapping with my attempt at making a Danganronpa board game, so I will try and sketch this out alongside that and see where that leads me.
in endgame the team carrying the briefcase would probably have this but
i think that image-wise im going to layer this into a larger image of the middle floor but idk
graphic design is my passion
I think to do this we can have a system that is basically “cards in your hand”
Not sure what I would call it but guards would be able to interact with it too n shit
a good number of cards can be “invisibility” which allow you to evade detection if you’re in a room with a guard for the next round i think
Flavor text can tip off the guards if they’re detail oriented enough. Idk the specifics here I’ll come up with it as I flesh out the base mechanics
Alternatively if we really wanna lean into spy aesthetics (probably not) the invisibility turns you into an NPC, and NPCs that aren’t players would regularly interact with guards and NPCs that are are slightly different in unknown ways
That’s a lot of work for me though so
Anyways
Basic systems that need to be established are:
I’m imagining something like Neon White.
