Friday, January 26, 2018

Humor in Infamous

Humor in board games is a tricky business. First, the experience of humor is a highly subjective one; more so, I think, than preference for particular board games. As such, some people might find the humor within a game to be a real boon to the experience, while others might find it to be a complete turn-off. Designers walk a delicate rope when they decide to inject humor into a design. I look at something like Galaxy Trucker (and its subtly clever & humorous rulebook) as an example of successful use of humor in a board game.  I see the recent KS campaign of HATE as a poor use of dark humor that is potentially turning away potential backers.

Perhaps most importantly, the theme and mechanics have to match the level and type of humor involved. A heavy, thinky Euro is probably not going to be a great place to inject slapstick humor (but it might very well be an appropriate venue for a more subtle, "sophisticated" humor?). Similarly, a casual family game that presents itself too seriously - imagine a grimdark adventure game for kids! - is a poor fit.

When it came to Infamous, I tried to let the humor come naturally. After I made a critical decision (between v1 and v2) to enhance the narrative element of the game, writing became a more central design component. There was going to be a LOT of flavor text in this game, and the purpose of it was to bring the characters to life and give the players a sense of living inside of a comic book. Each henchman and villain needed a description, so that it was easier for the players to develop feelings of attachment for their team. And perhaps most importantly, the contracts needed significant flavor text for Success and Fail states so that your actions in the game contributed to an overall narrative. Consider how important the flavor text is in games like Eldritch Horror. If you just conduct the skill rolls without immersing yourself in the story of what's happening, you miss out on so much of what the game is offering.

So the question became:  would the contracts be humorous, or would they take themselves fairly seriously?  My natural inclination led me towards humorous. These were supervillains, after all - and they were engaging in periodically horrific acts within the game (kidnapping, domestic terrorism, subjugation of the entire planet, etc.). If these acts were taken too seriously, the game could fall flat or potentially be offensive. I ended up leaning more towards Despicable Me vs. Dark Knight.

Instead, contracts provided an opportunity for these villains and henchmen to fail spectacularly - in often hilarious ways. This had the added benefit of taking the edge off of contract failure. You almost want to see what happens if you fail a contract; the story is amusing, and the effects are often persistent (e.g., Injuries, Powers).  Now you have a story to remember about that time your henchman was bit by genetically-modified sewer rats, or overdosed on super-fertility hormones.



With the decision to embrace humor in the game, the presentation had to follow appropriately. The theme matched, the relatively light mechanics matched, and now the art needed to match. This is probably the biggest reason why I really wanted to get Rob Guillory on board to do the art for Infamous. His artistic style is very dark-humor; stylized and clever and immediately funny.


Infamous is a game centered around the central tenant of FUN. The mechanics provide lots of opportunities to make fun, small decisions that influence the game-state and your likelihood of victory. The story that you and your opponents will create together is all about fun. Perhaps you'll laugh out loud, chuckle softly, or just groan at some of the humor in the game. Regardless, it's there to remind you - to remind all of us! - that games are meant to be fun, and sometimes nothing is more satisfying than sitting around the table with a group of friends sharing a laugh.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

2-player Infamous? Enter the D.O.P.E. squad!


Infamous has several interlocking mechanics, but perhaps the most central is the opening draft for Secret Base Room cards.  At the start of each round, players draft up to 3 new rooms to build into their base.  These rooms are central to your strategy.  Each one will provide a certain number of "attraction points" for different henchmen types (Beasts, Criminals, Scientists, and Mystics), and many rooms also possess unique activated abilities.

Drafting is a great mechanic for so many reasons.  I love how it speeds up play through simultaneous activity.  Every player is reviewing and choosing at the same time - not sitting around and watching someone else deliberate.  I also love how the cards you're choosing from are in your hand, and thus, easily readable.  Games which force players to choose from a communal line-up of cards lead to frustrating usability issues; for example, players not being able to read small card text from across the table.  Finally, drafting is a form of light player interaction.  The decisions you make influence the ones subsequent players can make.

However,  early on in playtesting, it became clear that drafting for room cards - and the subsequent attraction of henchmen to your base - didn't quite work with 2 players.  There wasn't enough interaction during the draft itself, and there was too little competition for the available henchmen.  Players could easily accrue a large retinue of henchmen each round and fulfill a bevy of contracts without feeling substantial pressure.

As such, I started to develop a dummy player (or automata) for 2-player games who could spice things up a bit.  Rather than make the dummy another, potentially faceless, supervillain, I thought it might be interesting to thematically dress up the dummy as a squad of superheroes.  These heroes interfere with the players by stealing away (arresting) henchmen during the Henchmen Phase, and patrolling the world during the Contract Phase.  

Perhaps most importantly, the automata rules were simple to instantiate and involved only a single deck of Hero cards.  As such, 2-player Infamous is:  1) only slightly different from the regular 3-5 player game, and 2) thematically fun - as you find yourself getting easily annoyed by the D.O.P.E. squad.



























This post also gives me the chance to show off another piece of Rob's fantastic artwork, and also the superlative graphic design work by Kody Chamberlain.  This one piece of art (for the heroes) took some time, as I wanted to work through a set of specific characters with Rob:  one "defender" for each continent.  We wanted the cultural ties to be somewhat obvious without being offensive.  Personally, my favorite is Baby Penguin - defender of Antarctica!

While the D.O.P.E. squad is limited to the role of automata in Infamous for now, I have big plans for a future expansion which makes their presence much more... intrusive.