Week 2: Core Concept Design

After agreeing on the idea of having a game based on Drug Lords, this week we started working on our core concepts. Last week, we agreed the only thing we wanted to keep was the idea of selling drugs and becoming a drug lord. With that in mind, we took a week to incubate our thoughts on what we actually wanted to do with the game. During our in-class core concept brainstorm session, we changed a bit of the theme of the game. Rather than just trying to collect more and more drugs, the game takes place in a neutral city where the players are different drug dealers competing to own the city. The drug lords must acquire different territories expanding their control of the city.
We changed the mechanics/rules of the game as well, and added an uncommon twist to the game. Each round, there is an event that happens which effect all the players in the game. The events range from positive events such as “Corrupt Official Elected to City Board” where players would be able to sell a certain drug for extra money. Other events could be similar to “Cops Crack Down” where everyone must discard a specific drug card. Adding onto the events, a player may buy action cards during their turn which may give them a bonus or be used against other players. On a turn, a player starts off by picking up either a drug or a weapon card, and then sells their drugs into their districts (if they choose too – they may not want to because certain events may make selling a certain drug more or less valuable). After that, a player has a choice of buying a territory out of the neutral remains in the city, attacking another player, or playing an action card. After doing one of these, the players turn ends.
Our game is going to require a lot of play testing to check how the events and action cards are going to work, and whether or not they add too much luck or negative player experience into the game. Also, we need to figure out how the combat system in the game is going to work. There is a lot of work that we still need to do, but we feel our game is headed down the right path.