Ice, ice baby!

As most of you will know at this point, for the past year I have been working on a pulp prohibition era skirmish game called Liberal Crime. The playtest pack is ready to go out, however it is currently on hold while I work out how that process is going to work. What I have not gone public about until now is that there has been a second game in the works, one that I am very excited about.

As anyone that follows me on any kind of social media will know, I'm an ice hockey guy. For a while it has bothered me that the only visible sports games out there are based on American football (primarily Blood Bowl and Dreadball). I wanted to bring the speed and excitement of ice hockey to the tabletop with the feel of hockey but without some of the complexity. I'm almost ready to do that in the former of Puck Buddies (working title!).

PB is a board based game, utilising octagonal spaces for the players and diamond shaped spaces in between for the puck (yes, they don't occupy the same space). The will be an early draft of the board somewhere in this post (christ knows where my phone will put it).

One of the unique systems that the game uses is a momentum based movement system. Anyone that has ever skated will know that you can't just do a U-turn on the spot. Each player in the game has two speeds, skate and hustle (the equivalent of walk and run). If a player hustles, the have to move at least half that distance the following turn. Players are also limited as to how much they can turn for each space of movement, that's currently rotating by one side (i.e. an eighth of a turn) per space.of movement if hustling or two sides per square if skating. With the combination or limited turning and a commitment to moving in subsequent turns, you have to suitably plan ahead or end up hitting a wall.

Other elements of the game include fatigue (yep, players get tired), goalkeeping, crowd interaction and of course, fighting. There are also characterful teams and a full player progression/injury system for campaign play.

I'm hoping to get this out for playtesting to my initial group tomorrow and to alpha testers within a couple of weeks. If you would like to be a playtester, feel free to get in touch.