EDITOR's NOTE: The Meeple Guild is providing additional reviews over this holiday week, so check back daily for new game reviews.
YORKTON - One of the most interesting and frustrating at the same time things as reviewers are getting pre-production prototype copies of games.
On the interesting side is the early sneak peak at a game, knowing you are among a limited few being tasked with giving a game an early review.
The frustration is that you often get a copy with some warts still needing to be removed – meaning pieces are often not production quality, or rules need to be clarified.
By now you have probably guessed we are reviewing a prototype this week.
The game is Traiders of the Star, a game being created by Darrell Marshall out of Calgary.
“I always wanted to create a game,” he told The Meeple Guild via email.
“The game idea came to me about 17 years ago, when I was driving back from Banff National Park. It was clear skies and a bright sunny Sunday, when the initial idea came on me, like a pattern with some numbers. It was an instantaneous thought, that I held onto for the rest of the drive, without mulling it over on the way home. This way the idea got collected cleanly on paper as the original thought, and was not lost in a busy mind. There were months and years I didn’t work on the game, there have been very many ideas and changes, its just part of the improvement and design process.”
So what do we see in this prototype effort?
Well if you were going to seek general comparisons, when four are playing the game it feels quite a bit like Chinese Checkers, and there is just a bit of backgammon to it as well, which Marshall himself noted.
The designer says he wanted a game with some simplicity to it.
“I think players can expect to see something initially intriguing, a small set of rules, beautiful pieces, and a game with a rather quick learning curve during an evening of excitement, creative learning, and some exhilarating creative moves even on their first playing of the game,” he said.
“There is dice rolling, there is luck, there will be high and low moments, but in the long run players can expect a game that keeps everyone engaged, feels very balanced and has very high replayability.
“It is designed to provide a new tactical puzzle each turn while ensuring players participate in the race to collect the STAR. There are other lessons to be learned through the collection and trading of pieces, as well as the development of rapid spatial recognition and a small side benefit of the math component, that can assist to sharpen math skills for younger players.”
While one might appreciate the lofty sentiment, rare will be those who buy a game to play to aid in the ‘development of rapid spatial recognition’.
That is not to underestimate what playing games can teach, but you really do want to keep things game-related simple.
With Traiders there is a general trend to try a bit to hard to ‘sound’ a bit unique or more than it is.
For example ‘Tier 1’ is referenced. It is simply the play area on the board.
Tier 2 is where captured pieces go, and so on.
We found ourselves honestly looking over the rules searching for greater significance to the ‘tiers’ that of course wasn’t there.
It’s the same with the box – yes it is likely to change in production – but as it is it shows old sailing ships seemingly in space.
It’s a theme but has little to do with the game. This is a pretty abstract strategy game even with the roll of a die for movement and doesn’t add a lot here. (It should be noted assigning the three different pieces set movement and boxing the dice away would be a workable variant.)
In Traiders you roll dice and move pieces using the results. If you land on an opponent piece you capture it. The taken piece goes into your Tier 2 spaces, where they can be freed by an opponent getting a piece adjacent to it.
If you have captured four, the fifth piece taken allows one to go off board where it cannot be freed.
As a two-player game it allows some planning, but dice rolls are fickle so it’s a more reactive experience than foresight.
Four player increases the randomness. Under certain circumstances a player may move three pieces, so nine can be shifted between a player’s turns, so there is little chance of formulating a plan.
Now many games are like that, just dice rolling and reacting, but this game ‘feels’ like it wants to offer you greater control – but of course doesn’t.
“I always have wanted to design a game that plays quickly, provides room for a lot of social interaction and conversation, is unique, innovative and balanced for all levels of players, but also a game that would have no player elimination, and have a greater appeal to abstract type gamers, without the full-on requirement of the deepest strategy being the predominant factor,” said Marshall.
In this Marshall has succeeded. Traiders is at its best a family-style game which – when the dice are friendly – allows for some pretty dramatic turns.
But in general, players can expect a balanced evening of socializing and the feeling of playing something abstract through this game, without enduring thought required. The game becomes reflexive, to make the moves, and intuitive to improve. At the end of the day Traiders is a game of luck and skill.
So in the mind of the designer what is the best element of the game?
Piece advancement, Piece recovery and the constant trading of pieces are “the most thrilling part of the game,” said Marshall. “This feature continues to run throughout the whole of the game to the last play. Because those actions, bring different fortunes to the players that can also be lost, and gained over and over, I feel it provides the catalyst and opportunity for the most exciting plays possible, and certainly can become a game changer rather quickly when the luck is running and the stars line up.”
You can follow the game on Facebook under TRAIDERS of the STAR.
