And the game is…

The reason I started this blog (and everything along with it) is because of a game. 3 Districts (name subject to change). I’m going to explain it in broad terms here, and use future updates for reasoning, changes, influences and everything else. There won’t be a full rules explanation here, or finished art, just the ideas I think are important, enough to give you a flavour of the game.

3 Districts is a city-building worker-placement game for 2-4 players. Each player builds buildings and visits buildings, either their own or other’s, until one player has built a set number. At that point, the player with the highest quality city wins. The game takes around 45 minutes to play, and is designed to be straightforward, but with interesting choices and plenty of player interactivity.

Key ideas:

Build your own actions– at the start everybody has the same basic action available to them. All other actions need to be built first. But something you build is available to all other players (at a cost). This means the other players aren’t just blockers, like in traditional worker placement games, but facilitators as well.

But the actions keep changing– it would quickly get overwhelming to have every action space built be usable. Therefore each player only has two spaces to build buildings. When a third is built, one of the previous two are replaced. They still count for victory points, but they’re not longer an action space. This prevents there being too many options, but also takes all players on a journey, and guarantees no two games will be alike.

Pace from an engine– each building pays tax at the start of a player’s turn. As more buildings are built they get more money. This results in a natural progression from the level 1 buildings through to the more expensive level 3 buildings.

The option to jump ahead– The buildings at level 3 are worth more VPs than level 1. Do you build up your tax base by cheaply building a host of level 1 buildings, or use certain building’s to make sure you can afford a level 2 or 3 building, changing the dynamic of the game. Different paths to victory.

All of this done with minimum randomness, genuine options, high interactivity and elegant gameplay. Hopefully you’ll eventually be able to tell me if I’ve succeeded!

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