Tobold's Blog
Friday, November 29, 2024
 
PvP as easy mode for board games

I was playing Endeavor: Deep Sea this week at my board game night, one of the "hot" games at the Essen Spiel. When starting this game, you are given the option of whether you want to play it competitively or cooperatively. We played in cooperative mode, and that turned out to be a lot harder. You see, in the typical Euro board game in which you win by collecting the most victory points, there is no fail condition. Somebody always has the most points, even if he played badly, he just has to play relatively less badly than the others.

In cooperative mode in Endeavor you have 7 goals, and need to fulfill at least 4 of them for the most minor of victories. We barely just managed that. That made the game a lot more interesting. In cooperative mode there are goal cards and crisis cards that aren't even used in competitive play. The cooperative mode also leads to more player interaction, trying to coordinate to reach goals, which is absent in the competitive mode.

I think the addition of the cooperative mode to this board game was a really good idea. There are now far too many games in which every player collects points for himself in silence. Sometimes there is little interaction on the board, which turns the experience into a fully "multiplayer solo" game. But being with other people, in real life and around a table, in my opinion is one of attractions of playing a board game rather than a video game. It is good if the game somehow forces players to talk to each other.

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- posted by Tobold @ 9:13 AM Permanent Link
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