Pinball Feedback – Pandemic & Escape the Curse of the Temple
Last week we dismantled one of my favorite pinball games of all time—Star Trek: the Next Generation—tearing loose every non-essential doodad that didn’t add to the core game. We left behind a mindless robot in our wake.
Now, We can’t abandon our friend in this precarious condition. So we’re rebuilding it, re-installing all the various parts of the machine that feed feedback. In Part One, we got a head start by reattaching the back box, the playfield and the lights. That gave us a theme, and the intent of the game. Now it’s time to wire the speakers in, and give the game its voice.
The Soundtrack – Escape: the Curse of the Temple
I know you’ve heard the soundtrack to Star Trek: the Next Generation plenty of times in your life, to the point where it becomes a thing of tedium. There’s a reason why, though. The composition for the show’s intro is close to perfect. Jerry Goldsmith and Alexander Courage’s opening credits, alone, encapsulates the emotional range of the show, moving from awe, through curiosity, into a flash of understanding, followed by adventure, intrigue and accomplishment. The opening credits fly in a direct line, kept aloft by powerful trumpets and an undercurrent of strings.
When the song begins, though, what catches your attention is the uneartly sound of a combined glass harp and chimes duo. Unearthly, yet still organic. Think about it: The Next Generation premiered in 1987. Many producers in the late 80s chose to forgo multiple instrument sets for one or two musicians, and backed their work up with a digital soundscape, winding the soundtrack around a mathematical formula. Instead of a cheesy four chord loop, though, Roddenberry opted for the power of an orchestra. And not just for the opening and closing credits. The orchestra follows us throughout the course of each episode, with many individual songs dedicated to individual episodes.
Soundtracks for board games are rare, however. After all, board games don’t come with a pentium chip inside them (yet). That said, a number of vhs board games came out of the 90s and featured a soundtrack by default. And every now and then, a game publisher slips a compact disc inside the box to give the game extra punch. To be honest, I don’t know why we don’t see this happen more. There’s an incredible number of musicians who are looking to catch a break, and would be happy to change the name of their album and package it inside 5,000 units of anything. Compact discs and paper sleeves have a cost, but that extra layer provides an incredible value to the game. It’s not for every company, but you’d think adding a cd would rate automatic inclusion in any game with a cinematic theme. Do you want your players to be pumped to play? Why wouldn’t you use a sound track?
The golden age of compact discs is passed. But we’re now living in an age where most players can scan a QR code with their smart phones to get added value. So why aren’t we taking advantage of this? With a little extra organization and a little more web hosting, the value of every game could get a noticeable bump, for a marginal cost.
It’s unfortunate how rare soundtracks are employed in board games. So when a board game comes along that both features a sound track and integrates that soundtrack into the design of the game, well…
2012 Meeples’ Choice Nominee
2012 Origin Awards Best Family, Party or Children’s Game Nominee
2013 Spiel des Jahres Game of the Year Recommendation
2013 UK Games Expo Best Boardgame Nominee
…that game will garner the attention it deserves.
Escape: the Curse of the Temple is a cooperative, real time, dice rolling board game. When the players are ready to begin, one of them presses play on a cd player, or on their smartphone. The chatter of birds in a jungle canopy fills the air, interrupted when a deep voice drones “Escape!” From that point on, players are trapped in a continual state of dice rolling and dice sharing until they achieve matches of symbols to overcome the traps of an ever sprawling Temple of Doom. Twice in the game, a gong on the soundtrack signals a scramble back to the main room before a giant stone door slams shut, and all players stuck outside the room lose a die (a major handicap). If even one player can’t make it out of the temple by the soundtrack’s end, then they are trapped in the temple forever, and everyone loses.
The result is a frantic mess of noise and confusion. Players scramble to match symbols while they yell strategies at each other over the swelling background. Each games lasts ten minutes. It don’t feel like ten minutes, though. It feels like you ran a forty-five minute marathon. It’s exhausting, but in an exciting amusement park ride sort of way. And, like a good amusement park ride, the soundtrack adds to the atmosphere. It can be clever, too. When you play track three on the website, the words “Escape” are uttered, then followed by dead silence. Three minutes later, a gong sounds, shocking everyone into countdown mode. When the door slams, the track falls to silence again, and players brace for three minutes against the coming of a second gong.
Voice Acting – Pandemic
The speakers we’re re-installing do more than provide musical color. Star Trek: the Next Generation Pinball features numerous audio clips from most of the crew (sorry, no Wil Wheaton), the ship computer, a Federation Admiral, a Ferengi, a Romulan, a Cardassian, the Borg and Q. The amount and diversity of voice acting in this game lends to the game’s theme, and builds on story elements. But the voice acting also provides a direct line of communication between us and the game. It allows the game to tell us, out loud, what it wants us to do.
Sometimes, it’s an indirect hint about how the game is played, like how Worf warns you that “Sensors are picking up a Ferengi freighter, in the Neutral Zone”, or how Captain Picard congratulates you on becoming a Lieutenant Commander. Sometimes, it a clear direction, like when you begin the “Search the Galaxy” mission, and Riker tells you to “Set a course for the Alpha Quadrant”. On occasion the game is very direct. If the ball fires at a time you may not expect it, Worf shouts out “Don’t Move!”. When it’s clear that you don’t understand how the probe launchers work, the game tells you to “Pull the trigger to launch ball.” There are even little touches of emotional guidance. If you’ve drained two balls without racking any real points, Captain Picard whispers “Good luck” to you as the third ball loads.
None of this is done in a demeaning tone. Many to most people who play this game will either be new to pinball or new to this machine, and Midway wants to provide guidance. But nobody wants their hand to be held, or for the game to play itself. Players should experience fun, even when they’re learning how to play. The voice acting gives direction to the experience of playing ST:tNG, but never overshadows the action.
If sound tracks are uncommon in board games, then voice acting is a mythic rarity. Occasionally, a mass market game might feature a computer chip which spouts random quotes (for example, the ABC Sports Monday Night Talking Football game from 1977, which came with a miniature record player, and thirteen miniature records.) But voice acting in board games is often used as a gimmick, not a guide. The same is true of the wave of VHS games that filled the shelves of Service Merchandise in the 90s. There’s a particularly fun Star Trek: the Next Generation VHS board game, of all things, that features a Klingon making fun of you while you try to regain control of the Enterprise. But those board games rarely knew at what stage of the game you were in, so they could never supply players the proper support to feel confident about their choices.
Pandemic doesn’t provide audio clips from voice actors. It does, however, continuously support the player while they learn the game, providing a range of useful devices to keep new players engaged and confident in what they are learning. Hey, you know what? I just bought a new copy of Pandemic. Let’s unbox this sucker, and see what I’m talking about.
On opening the box, the rule book greets us. Pandemic itself is a straightforward game. But the game goes one step further by announcing the flavor and mission statement on the cover page of the rule book, before we pull anything out of the box:
Do you have what it takes to save humanity? As skilled members of a disease-fighting team, you must keep four deadly diseases at bay while discovering their cures.
You and your teammates will travel across the globe, treating infections while finding resources for cures. You must work together, using your individual strengths, to succeed. The clock is ticking as outbreaks and epidemics fuel the spread of plagues.
Can you find all four cures in time? The fate of humanity is in your hands!
The introduction alone provides you with confidence that you have the necessary tools to play the game. In six sentences, you learned how the game operates and what’s needed to win. How many games have you played where you stopped halfway through and were forced to ask, “What’s the goal of this game? When is it supposed to end? What’s the point of all this running around?”
Under the rules is an even portioned, beautiful board, with plenty of room for the game mechanics to breath. When we remove the board, we reveal the parts tray. Let’s set aside the pieces and pawns for right now, and take the seal off the player cards. Sitting on top of one deck are four quick tip cards. On both sides of the quick tip, the card explains the eight different actions you can take on your turn, with titles, quick explanations, and a small iconic graphic for each one. Beneath the quick tip cards are the seven potential role cards in the game, each one color coded, with a picture of the expert you’re taking the role of, and that expert’s abilities spelled out in bullet points.
The other sealed deck features the Epidemic card as its top card. Epidemic breakouts cause the exciting peaks of Pandemic, but that excitement comes with a lot of rules baggage. That baggage, however, is broken down on the card in three simple steps to follow, and since that card sits on top, the person who unseals that deck is likely to take time to read the card, often through the cellophane, before they unwrap it.
Pandemic is full of little visual nudges that pay emotional rewards for players who learn the game. Even the game design provides feedback. As we play Pandemic, wooden cubes stack in various cities, infected with disease. When the fourth disease cube is added to a city, however, an outbreak occurs, spilling the disease into each neighboring city. If the neighboring cities have three disease cubes already, then the outbreak causes a chain reaction, spilling disease cubes across the continent. If all the disease cubes are used up, the players lose the game.
There’s a positive visceral reaction whenever an outbreak occurs. Cubes pile up and spread across what was originally a pastoral board. Outbreaks do an excellent job showing players what they did wrong and what they need to fix, in a way that doesn’t preach about the player mistakes. After all, adding the fourth cube could have resulted in gaining a negative victory point. Players could tally their score at the end of the game, find they didn’t have enough points to win, then argue among themselves why the team failed. If the game design gave little feedback to players, winning could remain a mysterious enigma throughout multiple playthroughs, keeping the players at a distance, always feeling like an outsider.
It’s very easy to take Matt Leacock’s great design for granted because it seems so natural. But it seems that way because months of playtesting and right choices taught Mr. Leacock what gameplay elements feel natural. His interactive and intuitive design inspired Z-Man Games, which backed him up with interactive and intuitive game parts. It’s an important point to remember. Good feedback isn’t something you add when you’re done making your game, in an attempt to make the game more attractive to a specific audience. Good feedback is created by good feedback. It’s built from layers of attention to detail, and a continual desire to impress and support the people who play your games.
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Good. The speakers are working again, and they sound great. Man, this endeavor is taking a lot longer than I first thought it would. But I love this pinball machine too much to not fix it the right way. It’s about time for me to write another According to Gather article, so I’ll be taking a break from repairing this machine for a couple of weeks, but we’ll be busting out the screwdrivers and installing more parts soon enough. In the meantime, play some pinball. See you soon.
