Martin-Pierre Frenette

• Open Hand Games

  15.06.2011,My Board Games,Martin-Pierre Frenette,

  

  If you count properly, Zombie Hex, the game I am currently building, is my fourth game board project.

  The first one, Alien Salvation is a failure, but that still leaves 3 games I might decide to publish in the future, plus a potential fourth one, based on my science-fiction universe.

  To regroup all of these projects together, I decided to create the company "Open Hand Games" in the same way that I decided to create the company "Productions La Source" for my writing projects.

  Now that frenette.info has been relaunched, my next 2 personal projects are to create the websites for these 2 companies and today marks the unveiling of the first draft of the open hand games logo, seen above.

  A better version is already being made, but until then, this is what is available.

  Origin of the name

  The name Open Hand Games came from the fact that in none of the 3 games currently announced, there is a need to hide elements in your hands.

  Both Zombie Hex and Alien Salvation were cooperative games, hence the lack of secrecy, but Barbarian prince, by design, doesn't have any cards or secret elements.

  Everything is in the open, hence, open hand games.

  My 3rd Top Secret game will have cards in your hands, but they will be (hopefully), easy to understand so that reading isn't required to play.

  My 5th game, based on my sci-fi Universe, will also feature an open game play but in a competitive environment. A special mechanic of the game play will make it difficult for players to react to other player actions, but not impossible, allowing to make long term plans.

• My 4th Board Game: Zombie Hex

  15.06.2011,My Board Games,Martin-Pierre Frenette,

  In a previous article, I mentioned that my fourth board game in production was based on my sci-fi Universe, the same one which is the basis for my sci-fi movie trilogy (www.statique-mentale.com)

  That Fourth game wasn't officially begun before the draft of the rules for Zombie Hex were completed, making my sci-fi game my fifth project.

  Zombie Hex introduction

  This new project is a hex based tile game similar to Barbarian Prince, my second board game.

  Unlike Barbarian Prince, Zombie Hex is a collaborative board game in the sense that everybody wins or everybody loses and players need to collaborate to win.

  In this game, each of the player is a leader of a family who managed, during a Zombie Apocalypse to barricade himself or herself in an abandoned police station with his or her spouse and their kid.

  Turn by turn, each of the players will try to scout the surrounding area to find survivors and increase the size of their safe zone.

  Tiles will be added bit by bit to build a controlled area as game advances, with each tile having special abilities, such a training new soldiers or providing food and water to feed everyone.

  The population markers

  In Barbarian prince, population markers are simply clear stones. In Zombie Hex, the population markers are small wooden cubes with 6 different sides:

   

  • Children (yellow)
  • Untrained adult (brown)
  • Specialist (white)
  • Soldier (blue)
  • Infected adult (red)
  • Zombie (black)

  When an adult is hit by a zombie, they become infected and unless they are treated in an hospital by a Doctor (a specialist marker on an hospital), he will eventually become a zombie.

  Children never become infected: they turn Zombie on their first hit.

  Random survivors

  When new survivors are found, their population cubes are rolled like dices, but it is the only moment that the cubes are used as dices.

  Winning

  At this moment in game play development, winning is achieved by gaining control of all of the city areas, in other words, by placing in play all of the tiles.

  Game play testing will determine how many tiles are needed per player to make the game challenging.

  Status

  At this moment (June 2011), the population cubes are all done and the rules are written.

  All that remains for play testing to begin is production of the hex tiles.

• My third top-secret board game

  13.12.2010,My Board Games,Martin-Pierre Frenette,

  I had announced a game test session for the Fall of 2010, right after completion of the board for my game.

  After all, 80% of the rules were written and all I needed was to spend a few hours designing the board, something I did in a few hours for Alien Salvation.

  All my attempts to build a board I liked failed.

  It's no accident: I saw the movements from one area to another as being fluid. Furthermore, I needed various sections to deposit cards as game play progressed, leaving most of the board filled with special discard piles.

  In November, I went on a cruise and played several games with my family, when it hit me: It's not a board game I want at all, it's a special deck of cards!

  The board would have listed a fixed number of locations and would have severely limited the flexibility of the game.

  Instead of having 5 to 10 locations, I will build a deck of perhaps 50 to 60 different locations with room to grow and add "expansion packs".

  This allowed for more complex rules specific to each of the locations and a more diverse game play.

  Players will draw locations from a single draw pile and use them as they wish in the progression of the game play, including trading them with other players.

  Now, all I need is to make the deck in question.

• My Board Games

  18.05.2010,My Board Games,Martin-Pierre Frenette,

  On January 24th 2009, my wife and our 6 year old daughter played with several other friends a game of Cosmic Encounter. After the game, I asked my wife and my daughter about what they liked most about Cosmic Encounter, and they seemed to have really appreciated the alliance part of the game.

  The hypothesis I formed was that women were mostly collaborating in nature while men were mostly competitive, which could explain the vast difference in the games girls and boys play.

  However, hardly any board games encourage cooperation making them highly interesting for men, but not necessarly as interesting for women.

  In the following days, I started thinking about how a game could be more collaborative in nature.

  Also, my then 6 year old daughter only understood French and the cards for Cosmic Encounter were in English. The only way for her to play the game was to pair her with another player (her mom this time)  to enable her to know what the various cards meant.

  Toughts

  During the evening, I realized that most of the advanced board games were played with elements hidden from the other players.

  For most games, this is not a problem but sadly, this also means that younger players or beginners cannot ask help from other players without revealing their hand.

  In the following weeks, in addition to working hard in designing 3 board games which offered various strategies and options for players without requiring them to conceal complex elements from the other players.

  The first game: Alien Salvation

  The first completed was Alien Salvation. It slowly began to take form, reusing some of the ideas of Geo-Folie, a previous board game prototype also created by me over 10 years ago. This time, my inspiration was aliens, most likely because the spark of interest was a game of Cosmic Encounter. It was a failure. You can read about it here : Why Alien Salvation was a failure

  The second game: Barbarian Prince

  Barbarian Prince is the second one and my best hope at this moment.

  This second game is set in the dark ages. Each of the players is the son or daughter of an aristrocrat sent in a valley still controlled by barbarians. The King has promised that the one of you who has done the most to pacify the valley will be elected prince. You have already built your castle and have developed some farms.

  It is now time to expand it while fighting off the hordes of barbarians. 

  In the next few months, I plan to play test Barbarian Prince with some selected friends before possibly opening the play tests further.

  Don't worry, you'll get plenty of updates here and on www.barbarianprince.com !

  The third game

  Did you read that I had thought of 3 games ? Well, the 3rd one is still top secret. I have the rules 80% developed in my head and this should be the easiest game to produce :

  • Alien Salvation had hundreds of specially printed cards.
  • Barbarian Prince had 108 tiles I had to assemble during long hours

  But this 3rd game should normally only require a custom board game, yet to be designed. I plan to write down the rules and create the board game during the summer of 2010 with possibly play testing sessions occurring in fall of 2010.

  The fourth game

  Since then, I have announced on aliensalvation.com that a 4rd game was planned using my Sci-Fi Universe as a back-drop.

  Recently (in April 2010), a major breakthrough occurred which lead me to believe that I could start producing it in early 2011 with play-tests later that year.