Archive: Spooky Investigation Game
[This post was originally posted in google document in October 2023]
Let's try this again
This will be a kind of designer diary for this game. I’m not sure how far the project will go, or if it will turn out any good but here we go. This is also the second time writing this first entry, so hopefully it will turn out better than the one that got lost…
The idea for this game has been brewing for a long while: I remember having ideas for an X-Files card game ten or so years ago (as probably a lot of other people have throughout the years) and more recently I was trying to figure out a good base for a dry eurogame where players play as aliens doing abductions on earth as a kind of resource gathering, but I couldn’t figure it out (I’ll probably circle around to it at some point!). But a few weeks ago I started pondering again, and came up with a “paying for things” mechanic that to me fit well with an investigation theme, and so the ball started rolling again.
On the theme: I’d like to clarify that while sure, the main inspiration is of course the X-Files TV show, and one of the main design goals is for the players to go on a similar journey as our beloved Mulder & Scully, I want this game to have a broader theme that is anchored on “real” references: UFO-sightings, paranormal phenomena, american paranoia, conspiracy theorists and such. I don’t want the game to feel like playing a tv-show with easily recognisable story beats or any such thing, but rather let players feel like they are following leads and putting together cases. It also helps that we live in a time where headlines about UAPs and EBEs are popular again, like it was in the 90s, and that we collectively feel that we are somewhat at the verge of major breakthroughs in these fields.
Anyway, let’s go on to the actual game. The game is a 2-4 player card based game, with elements of tableau building, bluffing and cooperation (although it is not a co-op game). The main inspirations are other “big deck” games that have been hits lately such as Terraforming Mars, Wingspan and Ark Nova. Some other games worth mentioning, that it should feel somewhat like playing, are Netrunner, Pax Pamir, Earthborne Rangers and Arkham Horror TCG.
Each player takes the role of an investigator, that could be a journalist or bureau agent, that solves paranormal cases. From solving the cases, the players are awarded points and at the end of the game the player with the most points wins.
Some components:
- A deck of 100+ of mostly unique cards. The card “types” in this deck consists of:
- Assets - cards that stay in player’s tableaus to help them, many of which have additional actions on them.
- Events - one-off effects.
- Cases - the cards that need to be solved to score points
- Leads - cards that help solve cases
- A board with tracks for “credibility” and “paranormal”. “Investigator” boards with some common and unique abilities that you start the game with.
- Special “connection” tiles and a little “connection board”, one set for each player.
- A pawn per player.
- Various tokens to help keep track of things.
A lot of the mechanics are still early days, but I’ll put down what I have so far (in fear of losing it again!).
Connections
First off we have the “connection” mechanism: it is a resource mechanic meant to replace mana or credits in other games, as to me it doesn’t make sense for the investigators to gather money or power to do what they do, their main resource is their brain and putting A and B together. I’ll go in detail some other time of the whys of this system mover others, instead here is how it works:
Each player has five “connection” tiles with five different symbols on them, arranged on a 2x3 grid. Each turn the player will move one tile (think of a sliding puzzle!) one step, and depending on what the player moved, and the current pattern that is made, they can use abilities and play cards that match!
The “cost” of a card could care about the tile you just moved, what neighbours it has, a specific pattern, whether it’s in the top or bottom row, and so on. I’m not sure yet what they could be. I know though, that there will be some actions that are always available to players that will just care about the one you moved. I’m also not sure about the exact makeup of the board and the symbols, they could be less, or on a larger board. And the sliding mechanism could work more like The aMAZEing Labyrinth, pushing them out and inserting them in certain combinations.
The mechanism could also be upgraded throughout the game, with new tiles with multiple symbols on them, and I have been pondering being able to “disable” tiles by temporarily flipping them down as a kind of health system.
Drafting and playing cards
Below is a diagram of the game, showing the player areas, their hands and a “common area”.
At the end of each player’s turn, they draft a card from the deck, and it works like this: first, they look at a card from the top of the deck, then they choose to put that card into their hand, or they put it in the “common area” where any player can use them later. Then, they look at the next card of the deck, and have to put that card where they didn’t put the first card. So each turn one card will be added to both the player’s hand and the common area. If this mechanic feels familiar, it is because I picked it straight from Herbaceous! It is important in a game with one big deck to be able to search through it a little to find the cards you want, and I like that you are also feeding the common area with various cards that could help others.
During your turn, you can generally play one card from the common area or your hand (paying the “connection cost” mentioned above). If you can’t or don’t want to, you can play a card face down from your hand for free. These cards can later be flipped face up and used in addition to the one card per turn.
The pawn
In most games it feels good to have a game piece that represents you, the player, moving and doing actions. I also like the spy pawns in Pax Pamir that can move to other player’s cards, so I added a similar mechanic in this game: the player pawn.
As an action, you can move your pawn to any card played in a tableau, the common area or a case (more on cases later). Face up cards with your pawn on it are treated as if it was played in your own tableau, even cards in the common area that haven’t been played yet! Additionally, you can look at face down cards with your pawn on it, hopefully revealing something juicy. Some cards may care about where you have placed your pawn as well, maybe causing an effect to be stronger, or using it as a target for strong effects such as murdering discarding other cards!
Cases & Leads
Now I will go through the main way you get points in this game! In the deck, there are Case cards, special cards that when drawn are put immediately into the “case area” face up. There is also an action that lets you place Lead cards from your hand (generally) face down in front of a case card. Each lead has a “lead value” number, and each case has a “lead threshold” number, representing how much work the investigators need to put in to solve the case. Each case also has a “paranormal threshold” number…
Note that all players add leads to the same cases, and work somewhat together on solving them!
As an action, a player can “attempt to solve case”, flipping face down leads up, one by one until the sum of all face up lead values reach or go over the lead threshold (case is solved!), or until all leads have turned face up (not solved yet!). There is a twist here though: while a lot of these cases can seem paranormal in nature, the solution might not! Each lead will be marked (or not) with a paranormal icon (🛸), and if enough face up leads have the icon to reach the threshold, that means the case was solved stating that it was paranormal!
Here is an example:
The case has a lead threshold of 6 and paranormal threshold of 3. After an “attempt to solve” the face up leads sum a value of 7, so the case is solved, but only one card had a paranormal icon (out of 3 needed) so the case turned out to not be paranormal.
Cases and leads also usually affect the “credibility track”, if things get too weird, or a case was sloppily built, the investigations may lose credibility. Also, the “paranormal” track goes up when a case turns out to be paranormal.
Solved cases and their leads go into a scoring pile of that player, giving them bonus points at the end of the game.
Only three cases can be “open” at once. If a fourth case is drawn, the oldest one (and leads) is discarded and “goes cold”. This is a potential end game trigger.
Among the lead cards, there are also “false leads”, cards with no or negative lead value, or that do bad things when turned face up. So solving cases is also a race to play out leads that help your specific agenda…
Factions
Finally, players will have different agendas due to being of different factions. At the beginning of the game they are given one of several, and at the end of the game they will score depending on the number of cases solved, the credibility and the paranormal track:
- Truthers care about high credibility. (Think Scully)
- Believers care about high paranormal track and high credibility. (Think Mulder)
- Fanatics only care about a high paranormal track. (Think lone gunmen)
- Conspirators want low credibility or low paranormal. (Think Cigarette smoking man)
Hopefully, this mix of agendas will make the games a push and pull for solving cases in different ways.
That’s all I had for today! Until next time, hopefully I’ll solidify some of these mechanics and make some example cards for next time!