VISAL PERERA

A TALENTED VIDEO GAME ANALYSIS

The game that I conceived (both game objective wise and narrative wise) was heavily influenced by a game I enjoy greatly and played religiously a few years back, Sid Meier’s Civilization V. I will talk firstly about the similarities between the two games first and then move on to how they differ, and then touch on how a board game changes the flow and natural rhythm of the games.

Civ V is a turn based strategy game the revolves around a single player governing a state (country) and overlooking its progress in terms of finance, power, world influence and technology. This is done all the while trying to fend off rivaling countries and trying to expand the empire by claiming more territory and gathering resources and such. My game takes these ideas of holding on to personal territory, and using multiple pieces to claim real estate on a game board, each player (of two players max) controls a King piece and 3 pawns that guard the king. These pieces advance forward trying to reach the opponents base trying to claim as much land as possible (simply by occupying it). The pawns are able to attack enemy pawns (which relate to the battles in Civ V.

There are however a lot more differences to the two games mostly because the game had to be adapted to better suit a board game. The only objectives the player has to deal with in my game is getting to the enemy base with the most land captured. Every other game feature from Civ V was brushed off, like building industries and advancing the civilizations technologically. I wanted the game to be playable with movable pieces and a die. The games are both still turn based and involves no time constraint. While Civ V has a fleshed out story (campaign) that realistically can be played indefinitely, my game can be started and finished relatively quicker and linearly.

While Civ V feels like more of an adventure and a story that you can write for yourself, it is built to be played virtually and therefore its interactions are based on keyboard and mouse. The GUI allows a plethora of user interaction that just cannot be feasibly achieved on a board game, unless I utilize different decks of cards, all with different rules, a number of different types of game pieces that symbolize different establishments, and not to mention trying to create AI. So ultimately, the game becomes simpler and more of a butting of heads between your opponent than a game that promotes a building of an empire.