Friday, November 14, 2008

Kill It With Fire

As discussed in Identity Crisis I have been working on a little game design project.

"Kill It With Fire" is the name for my solo pen-and-paper game about maintaining a web presence while trolls try to bring it crashing down around your ears. Although it was mostly an exercise in design, it is actually playable.

The main design theory I was following was "system matters". The mechanics of the game had to be suited to the task at hand, practically as well as thematically. As play-testers have pointed out that the game seems repetitive and, at times, futile, I think I have captured the essence of holding back the mindless tide that is trolldom.

Kill It With Fire puts you in the role of a site-admin. Every day trolls assault your blog, forum, photo site, and even your personal life, but you have limited resources to undo their damage. You win by removing the last troll token on the board (representing . If at any point there are more than ten troll tokens on any one of your responsibilities you lose. Theoretically you could count the turns you survived before losing to compare your progress with others, but playing to a win or lose is usually enough.

You will need two regular six-sided dice and some counters (coins or tiddlywinks or fine) to play. The rules explain everything you need to know

Take a look and see what you think:

Kill it with Fire (File size 131K)

EDIT: File now located at Scribd.com

3 comments:

Shinigami Liz said...

Looks neat, I'm gonna try it at work next time I have a good job up and running. I'll try to play around with it all next week when I have the chances and let ya know how it goes. Thanks for sharing it with us.

Unknown said...

I ind of like the non-computer bit of game play. It's adds a certain irony to the whole thing! :-)

Congratulations, it's a neat game!

Carolyn Ann

Lynn Jones said...

Sounds fun! Thanks for sharing that. Is there a Flash version coming soon? :-)