7 Wonders is very very close to beating it out though.
7 Wonders is, like, the perfect game.
Simultaneous play so that there's no downtime.
Player interaction each turn without it being a fight. This is because you can buy your neighbor's resources to use. Plus, the purple cards give you points based on neighbors, and of course the red military. And some yellow cards too even! If I could make a simultaneous play game that had player interaction, I'd be in heaven.
Multiple paths to victory. Do you go green cards? Red? Blue? How many brown and grey cards do you get? How many yellow?
Engine building-ish. See above. Plus, the free construction chains.
Variable player powers-kind of. Each board is different, and each side is different. Each gives you a different starting resource and different stages you can build.
And the game is epic in scope. You start with nearly nothing and at the end you've built an entire grand civilization. To me, it's one of those vast epic sprawling civilization games, but can be played in under a half hour.
It scales well up to 7 players, 8 with the expansion.
The only flaw is it is terrible for 2 players. So much so that the brand new reprinting of the game is now labeled 3-7 players instead of 2-7. That and it might be a bit fiddly to set up and put away with the different cards depending on the number of players you're playing with.
Let's now talk about Go.
I've been playing Go with Ryan online. Just on a 9x9 board, not the full 19x19.
It's crazy that with such simply rules it can be so deep and have so much strategy to it. And every game somehow turns out completely different, even though the board itself is just a 9x9 grid and your pieces are all identical. Somehow your placements make every game have a unique feel all its own.
Ryan's still better than I am. But I'm getting better.
I often fins myself thinking, "okay, I'll do that, then he'll do that, then I'll do that, then he'll do that..." Which I can do a lot better at Go than I can in Chess.
But there are still surprises and your opponent can make a move that you did not see coming. If you've never played Go before and want a hint, here's mine: Get an area with 2 eyes and you'll be golden. At least, that's my basic strategy.
I wasn't able to post last eek or the one before for some reason becasue my computer was wigging out somehow. Anyway, so I'm posting this week. Yay!
Okay, so I'm almost done with this new game I made. I don't know what to call it yet, but it's similar to the style of Sushi Go!, Treasure Hunter, and 7 Wonders, that is, it's a card drafting game. In it you're building up a tiny kingdom. Craftsmen and workers allow you to take stone, while princesses let you build small castles and princes let you build large castles. The King and the Queen will let you build either a small or a big castle. Knights allow you to go on quests. Soldiers add to your army. Peasants do nothing, but certain cards can only be played if you have a certain number of peasants. Priests "covert" one of your neighbor's cards, stealing it from him that turn. Those are the basics.
The Life, the Universe, and Everything conference is coming up this weekend. I already got my ticket and it should be really good. I'm going to meet Alan Bahr again of course, but some of the workshops there look really good as well. And the week after that my mom is coming to visit for a week.
This week is Valentine's Day. Yesterday (Saturday) our ward had a Valentine's Day party. They had Mexican food and cobbler and we played Bunco (my parents met at a ward activity playing Bunco) and there was a dance afterward. We got a babysitter to watch Henry and Joy.
Speaking of Joy, she is so cute! Speaking of Joy being so cute, this computer has about zero free memory and so I can't download any pictures to show you and the screen on the other computer is broken and ahhh all I want to do is oput a picture up here, that shouldn't be too hard, should it?
I was hired on to be a math teacher/tutor! It's only four hours a week though, two or three on Monday and two or one on Wednesday. I'll either start this week or next. Hopefully next because this Wednesday is Valentine's Day.
My wife has been playing a lot of games with me recently and I love her so much for it. The games we've played the most of are Century: Golem Edition, and Alhambra. She's way good at Alhambra. We have yet to try out my new kingdom building game, but I'm still working out some bugs on that one.
Yesterday at the ward activity we sat next to Richard Leo. I looked familiar to him and he asked me what my last name was. When I told him Perazzo he asked if Eric was my brother. I said yes, and he told me that him and Ryan and Eric were roommates at BYU-I and that he was Ryan's home teaching companion. And now he's in my ward here. Crazy.
I got a Summer job working at Provo Parks and Recreation again, just like I did last year. I'm even under the same guys. This last Tuesday was my first day of work, and so far we've dug up some old roots from some cut down trees, fixed sprinkler systems, planted five new trees where the old ones used to stand (my favorite project thus far), pulled some weeds, trimmed some bushes near a jogging path, and unclogged a path near a river whose pump had gone out, flooding the walkway under the bridge up with about two feet of water. That was fun too, actually, we got to get this massive pump and siphon everything out back into the river, then scrape up the muck, then siphon some more, then actually got access to the malfunctioning pump, all while getting splashed occasionally by nasty stale water.
A few weeks ago (which I was going to post about but haven't posted in a while, sorry) was my wife's side of the family's family reunion. It took place up in Idaho, about a three hour drive. We got there around midnight because we left late because we were packing, and set up our awesome tent in the dark. The next day we had breakfast with everyone and I handed out name tags for people to fill out, and there were games for the kiddos. I was one of the stopwatch people for an obstacle course race that Heather participated in with her team and around six other teams. Her team didn't come in first, mainly because of this ridiculous station where you had to stand a few feet from a watermelon half and chuck CDs at it and you had to get them to stick. Super hard.
I played games with some of the cousin guys. We played two games that Heather got me for Father's Day. She got me Cover your A$$ets as well as Splendor. Cover your A$$ets is a really great party game, and was introduced to us by Ryan when he visited us with his girlfriend. Splendor though is now one of my all time favorite games. Heather and I alone have played so much Splendor these last few weeks due to the fact that it is simple, super quick to set up, and engaging and fun. I'll be bringing both games to the family reunion in August. So we played a lot of those during the reunion.
Three days before the Fourth of July was the Stadium of Fire. Heather and I have never been together, and I have never been. Heather's only gone once when she was working as security (they hire a whole bunch of students every year to do that). I didn't know any of the singers and only one song because it was all country and I'm not a big fan of country music, but what made up for the price of the ticket was we got to see Brian Reagan live! He did some jokes I knew and some I had never heard before, and some about talking jokes with fireworks exploding overhead that he made up on the spot. "I didn't expect to be doing jokes in between firework noises. Timing is hard enough in comedy; trying to do the set up, then hear a blast, and then hit a punch line. Was not expecting that. 'Why did the chicken cross the road? Pow! Pow! Pow! Ka-pow! Pow! To get--Pow! Pow! Pow! Ka-pow! Pow!--to the other side.' That's what I'm dealing with up here."
The fourth of July happened one week before I started work. Heather and I went to the parade and then went to the colonial fair to see a little musical they we putting on about how people throughout history protected liberties and freedom. It talked about not only our country of the United States of America, but also people like Joan of Arc. After the play we went home and napped and then we went to the fair they always have down town in Provo. Every year around the fourth of July they set up a few blocks on Center Street to set up booths and food vendors and there's even a little carnival that's set up, although we never go on the carnival rides because we're not sure we trust the safety of how well they're set up. We got a few things there and headed home to sleep. The day after the fourth (or before, or on it, I can't remember) we went to see hot air balloons go up, and it was so cool! We also went to the downtown place again, and went to the colonial fair.
Parade float
The musical
Gail Halvorsen, better known as the candy bomber, was a the play the same time we were, so we snagged a picture of him to prove it.
A Thousand Faces: About a year and a half ago my brother Eric sent me this email:
"So in my dream I'm looking at the MTG card Manalith, like a monolith of mana, right, only I misread the card as "Monomyth." And I'm like, monomyth, what kind of card would that be? Is basically how this started out.
So I've got an idea for, probably a deckbuilder?, where cards represent individual characters or settings or whatever, and you arrange them as part of the Hero's Journey, and you get points for having sets, cards in a row and plots that make sense, and maybe for completeness?
It's not my only idea or even my favorite, but it's still an intriguing possibility, and wanted to know what you could make of it?"
I had an idea and then starting working on it, then dropped it, then starting working on it, then dropped it since then and now. I've recently picked it back up again and am getting pretty far into it; it's not quite what Eric envisioned (he had envisioned what I consider to be Elysium, so congrats Eric! Your game is already out there!) but my game is part Elysium, part 7 Wonders, part my own thing. I'm still tweaking it and trying to make it work the best that it can. If all goes according to my plan, this game should also be ready to bring to the reunion in August. fyi the Title "A Thousand Faces" comes from the title of Joseph Campbell's book "Hero with a Thousand Faces," which is where the Hero's Journey and Monomyth comes from.
And some pictures of Henry just because he's cute:
And tomorrow will mark one year since my first blog post! It's been a good year!
General Conference was great; I put up a whole bunch of notes here onto the blog but when I checked again they had all become deleted somehow, and I'm too lazy to write them all up again, so just know I took notes. Speaking of taking notes during General Conference, somebody else did as well! You all know him: it was Henry! (Pictures below)
Two Sundays ago was my 27th birthday! Yay getting older! (Verbal irony.) But my parents did get me Dominion: Hinterlands for my birthday, and $30. Then I went onto Amazon and what did I see? Dominion: Empires for about $29. So I got it with my birthday money (after tithing, of course, who do you think I am, some less active?). Then Hannah got my Dominion: Alchemy, and so now I have every single Dominion card ever made! (Including Dark Ages which my parents got me for Christmas and the update packs for the base set and Intrigue, which my parents also got me for Christmas.) I spent quite a bit of time updating my box(es) for Dominion, and here they are:
Henry's birthday was the 12th! He turned 2! Yay getting older! (No verbal irony, although we will miss his cuteness.) His grandparents Perazzo got him some books and colored pencils, because he loves books and more especially colored pencils. His parents got him some Fisher Price toys. Look at how big he is!
Heather, meanwhile, went down to Lytle Ranch in southern Arizona for a biology trip. She's working in a lab right now at BYU (although it's not for money. Yet.) and there were several different trips she could go on but she decided on last week's trip because I had Spring Break that week and thus was home all day to watch Henry so that we didn't have to freak out about finding a babysitter. Here are some pictures from her trip (including one where she played Dominion with her co-biologists).
Because Heather had the camera, I didn't, but if I did I would have taken pictures of Ryan's visit. Ryan and his girlfriend Emilyn came down to visit Provo after they went to a wedding in Colorado. They arrived right when I was dropping of Heather on campus to meet up with her biologist friends to go down to southern Utah.
Thursday and Friday Becky also came over for a bit and all four of us played games. We played Somerset twice, and Becky won both times. We played lots of Dominion (you know, due to having every card and having them superbly organized). We also played People Zoo, which was one of the games that my Game Design class designed. Also: Bang!, Guillotine, Cover Your A$$ets, Sushi Go!, Hey, that's my Fish!, Yinsh, Feast and Famine, 7 Wonders, and Mystic Vale. And Labyrinth and Dragonwood. And we probably played some more that I can't remember right now. We didn't play Alhambra, but Heather loves playing that game and we've played many times already just the two of us.
On Saturday was our ward Easter Egg hunt and breakfast. Henry got to run around and find eggs, but he wouldn't put the ones he found in his basket, insisting on holding them himself, so he only got about four eggs. Ha, once he went up to another kid and went over to their basket--only to put one of his eggs in their basket. What a sweetie. Once again, no pictures, but Heather did get back Saturday afternoon.
This upcoming Wednesday the 19th I am meeting with Alan Bahr, a professional game designer, and pitching him the game Somerset to hopefully become published. Pray for me! It's super exciting. I think I've worked all the bugs out. I got some good feedback from Eric, Ryan, and Emilyn. And Becky too, she played twice and won both times. So I think it's about ready to be shown off.
I think that's all the exciting news that has happened these last couple of weeks.
Okay, so Christmas is in a little less than three weeks. This Christmas Heather, Henry and I are headed down to Fallon to visit my parents this year. Eric, Ryan, and Hannah will also be there. With Alex too, of course, but he lives there so that's a given. My hope is that we'll end up playing a lot of games. Therefore, I have made up a list of games that I plan on playing this Christmas break. Note: In this list if I include a game, I assume all expansions as well, but I'm not going to list them because that would take too much time. So if I say "Dominion" just assume that it includes all of the expansions as well.
I have attached a video to each game from youtube. This video either explains that game, gives a brief overview, gives a run-through or part of a run-through, or reviews it. Or more than one of the above. If you notice a lot of videos come from The Dice Tower, and that's because I like their videos: in their videos they both give a brief overview of how to play and give a review in the same video. Also, I almost never listen to youtube videos on normal speed anymore. There's an option in the bottom right that allows you to adjust the speed, and I almost always watch videos at double speed, or a little less if I can't understand the speaking in them at double speed. Just a hint if you want to watch a video but don't have 15 minutes (or whatever the length is) to spare.
Okay, here we go:
7 Wonders: My second favorite game of all time, right after Dominion. I love this game because there's no downtime, and yet what your neighbors do still affects what you do.
7 Wonders Duel: I have not yet played this game, but I am looking forward to it. The two-player rules of the original 7 Wonders weren't that great, so this game will fill that gap.
Agricola: This was the #1 game on board game geek for a long time. A classic worker placement game that my cousins own. Caverna is even better, but I don't think anyone owns that in my family.
Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn: Alex's favorite game, and one which I look forward to playing for the first time on Christmas break. I'll probably start with a pre-set deck.
Avalon: The Resistance: When we first played this years ago, it was me telling everyone the rules, and we used normal playing cards as the cards. Last year my family got the actual game.
The Castles of Burgundy: Another game I have not yet played but am really looking forward to. It is currently #10 on boardgamegeek.com, and I can't wait to try it.
Christmas Present #1: Hey, That's my Fish!?: Okay, so I don't know if I'll get this for Christmas, but I mentioned to my wife in Toys R Us that I wanted it. Brandon has a copy we played, and while it might seem simple on the surface, you can also put some deep strategy into it if you wanted to.
Christmas Present #2: Mystic Vale?: Another game which I'm not sure I'll get but I asked Ryan for it for Christmas so there's a good probability that I'll be unwrapping it Christmas morning.
Christmas Presents other than those, as well as any other games I forgot to put on this list: Any other games we get for Christmas, or that the Jamiesons get for Christmas, or that I forgot to put on this list that I want to play. In other words, this is my misc. category.
Dead of Winter: A semi-cooperative game which I have never got around to playing yet, even though the option has been available to me. Hopefully knowing how to play from this video will help.
Dominion: My favorite game of all time. Plus, for Christmas I asked for some new cards, some of which not even Alex has played with. I hope he still knows where The Card is.
Eldritch Horror: Another game that has been available to play but I've never gotten around to it, but am planning on this trip. Assuming that my family hasn't finished all the modules for it yet.
Elysium: A great game I bought about six months ago. This game and Istanbul I let Eric and Ryan borrow so that they could play at Thanksgiving. If they're reading this: bring it for Christmas, too!
Five Tribes: I haven't yet played with the expansion "that introduces a sixth color of meeple and they're purple" so I'll definitely give that a go this Christmas season.
Istanbul: I really love this game. It's simple and quick and fun. My mom also really loves this game, so much so that I'm making a prediction right now that she'll get it for herself for Christmas.
King of Tokyo: Thus game is really fun. This is a lighter game, a good filler when your brain is tired from all the deep strategy games you've been playing all day. Plus, it's fun to beat up other monsters.
Kingsburg: A worker placement game using dice. I first played this years ago back in Campus Plaza at BYU. So when my family got it for Christmas a few years back I already knew how to play.
Love Letter: So much fun for having so few cards. And it is also very thematic. A quick little card game that is a nice little filler game to pass the time between larger games.
Magic: The Gathering: I haven't played this yet. This is the game that introduced (I think) manna as a resource, as well as tapping cards, which I need to be more familiar with as a game designer.
Monopoly (with Hannah): I have to play at least one game of Monopoly with Hannah this Christmas break. It doesn't even have to be regular Monopoly, it can be dad's Fallonopoly or something.
Oltre Mare: The more goods you can store the smaller your hand limit, but the larger your hand limit the less goods you can store. This is an awesome little mechanic that I quite enjoy.
Pandemic: The first major cooperative game. Pandemic went on to get a Legacy version, which is now #1 on board game geek, but which was already played by my family.
SeaFall: Speaking of Legacy games, I get to play this one! And I'll actually matter in the game; unlike Pandemic Legacy where people can come and go in between games in the campaign and it doesn't really matter, this one suggests having the same people play the same characters the whole time.
Small World: With all the factions, powers, and additional stuff you can add, you can never play the same game twice. But the base game itself is still really fun.
Somerset: I'll be bringing my game so that Alex can play it (he likes games where you collect resources) and so that we can playtest it a little bit as well. No video here, but here's a picture:
Steampunk Rally: I bought the print and play from Kickstarter for $5, then printed everything out and cut it all out and after a lot of time finally got the finished project ready to play.
Summoner Wars: Another one of Alex's favorites. Plus I think since the last time I've played he's gotten even more races/armies that he's told me about.
Terra Mystica: I've only gotten to play this a few times, and I am still majorly working on my strategy (in other words, I'm not very good). But this Christmas break will be a great time to improve.
Ticket to Ride: Any version of this, really. I even got Sarah an LDS version for her birthday a few years ago which they still have in their games closet. In my opinion Europe is better than the original.
Timeline: Another quick, fast game to play if your brain is worn out by heavy strategy games. Even if you remember the dates on the cards to give you edge in future games, you're still learning: win-win.
TZolk'in: The Mayan Calendar: This game is super deep and strategic. The expansion makes it even more fun. You can win in a variety of ways, even if you just go the Corn Strategy the entire time.
Village: A worker placement game where your workers can die. I've only played with the Inn expansion once but won with it, and haven't tried the Port expansion yet.
Zooloretto: A game my family got a little bit ago. I haven't played it yet. One time Hannah woke everybody up in the middle of the night to play it, and they did, so it must be a pretty good game.
Here are some of the equipment cards and also some pages from the rule book. I still need to tweak a few things, but otherwise things are looking good.
I had a free download of Photoshop for a month trial, but that trial ended at the end of last week. Now, in order to make edits, I need to go up onto campus and use a campus computer. This makes finishing these files a lot more slow. Normally I'd be able to edit on the bus or after school on my personal computer, but without the program I'm stuck to infrequent trips to campus to use those. I've been able to do so only a couple of times the last few days, and got a little bit more done, but thankfully I finished the whole rulebook before that, and also the equipment cards. Like I said, I just need to make a few modifications.
After that though, it looks like I'll be able to start printing off these files later on this week. Using some sticky paper I got a few months back, and the white card stock Heather got me for my birthday, I'll be able to print off the cards and board. The cards will go on the card stock, and the board will go on the sticky label paper to put onto an actual game board. A Blurt! board to be exact.
I'm deciding on what to print the rules off on. I'm thinking card stock simply because it will be nicer and more durable and it cost the exact same either way: 15 cents per color sheet. I can't decide as to whether or not do also make a covering for the box all fancy. If I had photoshop on my personal computer still I'd say hey why not that's awesome, but now having to go up onto campus is a bit of a detriment.
So here are some sample pages from the rules and some sample equipment cards. Like I said, I'm going to change a few minor things, but other than that they're all pretty much final.
Notice how on the bottom of each of the equipment cards (or Attribute cards as they're called because they're called that in the book) is a little number. These numbers act the same way they do in 7 Wonders: the number of players in the game determines which cards you use.
This weekend my brothers Eric and Ryan came to visit my family here in Provo! And what else would we do except play games of course! The plan was for them to arrive Friday afternoon, but that ride never got back to them, so they were stuck with a ride that came in on Saturday instead: at 2:30 in the afternoon. In Draper. Heather and I went to pick them up from the Loveland Aquarium, and went back to our place.
The first game we played was Interstellar Pig, which I neglected to get pictures of. Heather almost won, she had the Piggy until one of the last turns of the game, and then Eric stole it from her and ran away from everyone until time ran out. Ryan, meanwhile, died on Earth. Sad day.
We played a game of Elysium next. We started with just the beginner's suggested set: Zeus, Poseidon, Hephaestus, Hades, and Athena. I ended up winning.
Saturday night playing Elysium. Eric is reading White Sand between turns.
After that, we played a game of Istanbul, and then another game of Elysium, with different god cards. Heather won both. That last game ended up taking us way past midnight, but everyone had a good time. Too bad we had 8 am church.
The next day after church we played a quick game of Temple Escape. This is one of the games that my Game Design class did last Winterim, which ended up being one of the three best, so we sent in the files to a print and play website to get the pieces professionally made. Check them out at printplaygames.com. The tiles and pieces are totally legit.
Not sure what Ryan is doing with his face.
The whole crew!
After playing Temple Escape, which Ryan won, we played another game of Istanbul with a different board layout.
Notice how the game is on the other side of the table from Henry?
Ryan's face is like: Whhaaa--!?
Then there was only a half hour before my brothers had to go, so we played a quick game of Blokus. When Eric and Ryan took off, I gave them Elysium and Istanbul to borrow, so that they could take them down to Fallon so that they could play at Thanksgiving. So if you're in Fallon for Thanksgiving, be sure to give them both a try; they're both super awesome games. Istanbul won the German Game of the Year award, and Elysium was nominated but didn't quite win.
I totally won this game, fyi.
It's too bad their visit was so short, but we had a blast.
P.S. We also discussed how to play Seafall without bingeing it, and we decided that we should play over Christmas break, one game a day. I wasn't sure if one game a day was bingeing it too much, but Eric said that the number of other games we would be playing would dilute it, so that that was fine. We might have to play two games a day for a couple of days just to be sure that we finish it during the vacation. I also hope to play Elysium, Istanbul, Castles of Burgundy, Five Tribes with expansion, Ashes, 7 Wonders: Duel, Terra Mystica, and a ton of other games as well.
Alright, so the thing about really great tabletop games is the fact there there are often multiple ways to win, or different paths to victory. That's why I love the games Dominion and 7 Wonders so much. For example, in 7 Wonders, am I going to try and win by getting a lot of green cards? I could, but I could also win by going for blue cards. Or red cards. Or stock up on brown and gray cards. Actually, going for just one of these won't work, so I'll have to figure out which combination I'll have to go for (going for green AND red cards, for example). The point is, in 7 Wonders there's not just one pathway, not just one strategy that will cause you to win if you take it every time. The fun of the game is figuring out which of the many strategy to take, and which combinations work best together.
Dominion is the same way: which cards should I buy, and which combinations should I go for? And it's different every game, because every game will have different cards that can do different things. The major idea and fun factor behind the game isn't even really playing the cards, it's deciding which strategy and combination you want to go for.
Let me give you a bad example of this, or, in other words, a game where there is no multiple pathways to win. There's just the one path, and if you don't follow it, you'll lose. Monopoly. My sister loves Monopoly, and this Christmas break when I'm back home I fully intend on playing with her. But Monopoly is a game where in order to win you have to rely on just one strategy. When you land on an unowned property, you can do one of two things. You can either: (a) buy the property, or (b) not buy it and put the property up for auction. If you choose (b), you are going to lose. That's not even a choice--you buy the property no matter what when you land on it. So Monopoly is an example in which one strategy is always better to take than the other.
Now, I've tried making games about the gospel, and about church topics and so forth. But here's the major dilemma I get when I try this: if I want to make the game spiritually accurate, one path always has to be better than the other.
I had an idea for a game of Life where you have to make choices involving doing what's right or what's wrong, whether you should pay tithing or whether you should keep that 10%. Here's where the problem comes in: if I want to model the game after real life, then paying tithing will always, always trump not paying it. You paid your tithing? Sweet! Here's two blessing tiles, which will improve your score 10 times more than keeping that extra 10% of your income would have. I get into the Monopoly problem: one strategy is always better than another. So why would I ever go for the crappy strategy? Why would I ever not pay the 10% in tithing, getting two blessing tiles, whenever I cross a Payday space? I wouldn't. That would be stupid. (A side note here: maybe I should make this game anyway, just so that children could be taught the principle of always paying tithing.)
Another problem I have run into with making games using gospel topics is the idea of rank, that one thing is better than another. For example: I created a game called The Golden Plates. I spent months inventing, play testing, and designing it. Covenant Communications wanted a prototype to see if it was something they'd want to publish. (Which is totally awesome by the way!) The game made it through the first couple rounds of play testing with them, and I thought for sure that they would end up publishing it. Unfortunately, however, it hit a snag, as was later reported to me by one of their playtesters. The main concept of the game, you see, revolved around giving suggestions to which plates/records to include in the final version of the Book of Mormon. Each cards was thus ranked, and the highest ranking one would make it in. The problem was this: the testers were concerned about the idea of one scripture being more important than another, and that it would teach that some scriptures are just better or more important than others. Okay, yes, I saw this as well and I agree that it isn't the best thing to teach kids. Unfortunately, that mechanic was central to the game. So now what?
Here is the idea that one gospel principle isn't really technically better than another. (I went to the Temple 5 times, which beats your home teaching 8 times!) In the gospel context, they're all the same amount of importance. -ish, I mean, in my Plan of Salvation game I have Christ being the most powerful card, because of well, yeah. Let's be real, Christ is better than repentance because without Christ there would be no repentance. Christ is better than resurrection because without Christ there would be no resurrection. He's the center of the entire plan and the most important part. And so I reach another dilemma, because in many if not most games, certain cards ARE going to be more powerful than others. That's just the way it is. In Monopoly even, sure Park Place is more expensive than Tennessee Avenue, to kind of balance out how awesome it is, but if I were to try to trade you my Tennessee Avenue for your Park Place you would say, "Heck no."
A shout out to my brother Eric for doing the artwork on these cards!
There you have it: two main dilemmas that I have come across while trying to make games centered on the gospel and church-related material. Either I have unbalanced and thus not fun strategies (obey the gospel or not? Hmm, I wonder), or else I have one gospel principle being unrealistically better than another (because no matter what my game might say, the Book of Alma is not really better or superior than the Book of Enos). As I continue to make games, maybe I'll figure it out.
