This month’s case study, on Abandon Planet, covers a team game with some interesting twists. Abandon Planet by Don Eskridge Publisher: Orange Machine Games (2017) Cooperative Style: Survival-Focused Partial Partnership Play Style: Resource Management, Simultaneous Selection Overview It’s the meteor apocalypse! Players must try to escape the Earth before it’s destroyed by collecting the resources…
Category: Team Case Studies
Team Study: Codenames
It’s been a while since we looked a team game, so here’s a short overview of Codenames, definitely one of the most successful team games of recent years. Codenames by Vlaada Chvátil Publisher: Czech Games Edition (2015) Cooperative Style: Teamwork Play Style: Word Guessing Game Overview Codenames is a simple word guessing team game with…
Team Study: The Resistance
The Resistance by Don Eskridge Publisher: Indie Boards & Games (2010) Cooperative Style: Hidden Teams Play Style: Voting Overview In The Resistance players are secretly divided into one team of rebels and one team of spies. Though the spies know which team everyone is on, the rebels do not. Gameplay centers on missions that are…
Team Study: Saboteur
In October we discussed a few hidden-teams game. We’re back this month with two of the best known ones, starting with Saboteur, which followed in the footsteps of Bang! (2003) and is another of the foundational games of the hidden-teams genre. Saboteur actually gets some attention in Meeples Together, where we talk about its relations…
Team Study: Blood Bound
We’re coming up on the night of masks and false faces, so it seems appropriate that we’re talking about another hidden teams game (and one that feels like a natural successor to Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space, which we discussed two weeks ago). As it happens, we’ve played a number of hidden team…
Team Study: Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space
The hidden team games are an interesting adjacent space for co-op design, both for the cooperative mechanics of their team-based play and for the introduction of deduction, something that any traitors game could learn from. So over the rest of October we’ll be looking at a pair of hidden teams games. Escape from the Aliens…
Team Study: Bang! The Dice Game
Two weeks ago, we discussed Bang!, one of the foundational teamplay games of the ’00s. Today we’re following up with a look at Bang! The Dice Game, which followed in its footsteps by offering a variant of Bang!’s teamplay with dramatically simplified game mechanics. Bang! The Dice Game by Michael Palm & Lukas Zach Publisher:…
Team Study: Bang!
The 21st century has seen a number of pivotal cooperative games, such as Lord of the Rings (2000), Shadows over Camelot (2005), and Pandemic (2008). However, the adjacent teamplay space has seen several games that were just as foundational. One of the earliest was Bang! (2003), which brought the idea of hidden teams into the…
Team Study: Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig
Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is another co-op related game that released just as we were Kickstarting Meeples Together. It’s a sequel to Between Two Cities with many of the same mechanics, but it’s still worth a little investigation on its own. Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig by Rosset & O’Malley…
Team Study: Between Two Cities
Meeples Together (which is nearing the end of its funding on Kickstarter) covers a whole spectrum of cooperative games. “True co-ops” are the heart of the book, but it also discusses traitor games, overlord games, and even the more classic style of team games — because they can all offer interesting design lessons. Between Two…