Digitize This! #1 – Munchkin
"Beware the Duck of Doom!"
In this series, I will be taking a look at some analog games (board, card and miniature games) that I believe would make excellent XBLA or PSN games, along the same lines as “Settlers of Catan”, “Uno”, or “Carcassonne”.
“Munchkin” is a card game, created by Steve Jackson Games, for two or more players (you can technically play it with as many people as you’d like, though it does make it go a bit slower), in which you try to reach level 10 before any of the other players. Sounds simple enough, right?
The simplicity is the real beauty of this game. The idea was to distill down everything from a traditional role-playing game into simple terms and to put the focus squarely on leveling and treasure collecting. “Kill the monsters. Steal the treasure. Stab your buddy.” That’s the catch phrase, as well as the philosophy you have to live by to win.
Unlike the traditional RPG, you don’t have a character you are playing as. Each player IS their character. You equip weapons, armor, accessories, etc. to yourself by laying them out on the table in front of you from your hand of cards. In the base game, there are no dungeons in the traditional sense. There is a stack of door cards and a stack of loot cards. On each player’s turn, they kick down a door by flipping the top card from that deck. Sometimes, you end up with a race, class, or some other such beneficial card to add to your hand. Most the time, however, you get a monster. This is where the battles begin.
The monster will have a level and, in it’s description, any special modifiers that go along with it. Here is where it gets interesting. If you can’t defeat the monster through your level plus bonuses from your gear, you can try to get any or all of the other players to help you. What’s in it for them?
They can be bribed by promises of “I’ll help you next time”. Yeah, that might work, sometimes. Usually, you end up having to negotiate what, out of your equipped gear, you will give them after the battle, or more commonly, how much of the treasure cards acquired by defeating the monster the person or people helping will get. There is also the matter of who gets to pick first out of the treasure cards.
So, at this point you and your friend think you’ve just finished off that nasty “Net Troll” or “Insurance Salesman”, but then other players across the table start throwing down modifiers, or use special cards to add additional monsters to the battle. Things get a little crazy at this point. You also have one-time use items that can turn the tide of battle. You can even try to convince more of the other players to help you, even when they are the one that just made the battle unbeatable without their help.
As we have seen with Uno, card games can work really well on Xbox Live Arcade. The fast paced nature of Munchkin would make it an ideal candidate to be made as a video game. It would definitely be enhanced by communicating with other players, making it a better fit for XBLA than PSN (unless more people start getting headsets). As for DLC, that is a no brainer. Not only are there several varied themes of the Munchkin base game (Sci-Fi, Vampires, Pirates, Cowboys, Super-heroes, Cthulhu, Secret Agents, etc.), they all have several expansion packs that go with them, and all of which add unique items, abilities, classes, monsters and powers to the mix. To top it all off, all versions of the game are compatible with each other.
So get on this, game developers! I’m off to to find a copy of the new Munchkin Board Game.
Tags: Card Games, Digitize This!, Editorials, Munchkin, Steve Jackson Games
This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 6:00 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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February 6th, 2009 at 10:30 am
Jesse "Main Finger" Gregory says:I’ve never actually played munchkin, but I wish the Mechwarrior Miniatures game would be digitized cuz it was really fun but waaaaay too complicated =P I’m kind of envisioning it would turn into a multiplayer Front Mission.
February 6th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:That would be a good one. They have similar games along the lines of Front Mission, but the play style in Mechwarrior miniatures seems even more in depth in a lot of ways.
Also, I think I will be picking up that Munchkin board game this weekend.
February 7th, 2009 at 3:04 pm
Dave "shaolinjesus" Corvin says:This is the kind of game that should be released for free, and then expansions (new themes, monsters, decks) could be a couple of bucks. I think it would get a lot more people to try it out, and I could see people dropping a couple bucks at a time to get new stuff. I think this would really add up quick to even more $ than the standard $10 XBLA price point.
February 8th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
MrColinP says:I’ve always liked the sound of this game! I heard you can get bonuses for drinking actual Munchkin brand soda and stuff like that. Ridiculous. I saw some digital paperwork lying around the digital office of the company I worked for with the idea of doing a game for this. If I’m ever in town, we should play!
shaolinjesus- I love that business model. I use it for my comics, and the game I designed will be using it when it comes out as well. I think the internet is built for that business model. Who can say no to free?
February 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm
wesley says:This game sounds fantastic. Sadly I have no friends in the area that would be interested in playing, though. If it hit XBLA I’d totally snag it!
February 11th, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:With so many expansions, they could easily give out the base game, or just make it dirt cheap. Sadly, most game companies are not yet ready to embrace this type of business model (I blame the dot com bubble burst).
The game does have some crazy extra rules if you have any of the peripheral merchandise. I even have a few bookmarks that allow you to re-roll once per day, or some such bonus. There is even a T-shirt that if you are wearing when you play it gives you a bonus.
February 12th, 2009 at 9:51 am
Randall Smith says:I would love this too, but I don’t think it’s nearly as workable as something like Chez Geek or even Illuminati.
The reason is that XBLA games need to have fairly fixed rules, and fairly simple means of arbitrating. Probably 40% of Munchkin is spent (when I play it) arguing over rule applicability and interpretation. To make it work on XBLA you’d have to strip a large portion of the ambiguity out to make it work in a simple interface. The rule permutations are governed first and foremost by what’s on the cards, and second by common agreement. That’s a lot of complicated coding, I’d bet. But to do any less would be losing a lot of the appeal, and would result in an experience that wasn’t very munchkinly.
Chez Geek has a tighter ruleset, though, and could be streamlined without much loss of its core playing mechanic.
We should tweetbomb sjgames and harass them to make their stuff. I’ve messaged them before, but got no response. Fnord.
February 12th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Scott Reeser says:Of Steve Jackson games, I think Ninja Burger would be even better than those mentioned by Randall (though I have yet to play Illuminati).
Nice segment, btw. I would suggest looking at a board game titled Puerto Rico that would be great for a port to XBLA, but it was hinted at a long while ago when I still listened to Major Nelson’s podcast that it’s in development. Greatest board game I’ve played.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:20 am
Jonah "spambot" Gregory says:Thanks for the input!
I have to agree that Ninja Burger would be another great fit for XBLA. I’ll have to track down a copy of Puerto Rico.
As for the Munchkin rule thing, that would be one of the hardest things to nail down. I’m trying to think if there are any other games with a floating rule set, and none come to mind.
Maybe they could invent some way for the people playing to vote on rules that are ambiguous.