Earlier this week, I proclaimed that I’d take my own advice for adding story to board games and apply it to Ape City Escape. To that end, I did a quick review of my past thoughts on the subject. Now, armed with the wisdom of past-me, I present the ape city story plan:
- Scope: I dreamed up Ape City Escape as an example of a small-scale game with a narrow scope. The story, then, should be equally small: a handful of explorers trying to escape with their stolen treasures while dodging cannibal apes and rival treasure-hunters. There’s no jungle-spanning metaplot here. Just greedy explorers running for their lives.
- Characters: The scope of the game (and therefore the story) suggests we focus on a handful of characters. Common sense suggests we focus on the explorers. Let’s give them each a distinct personality and motivation. No, it doesn’t matter to game play at all, but if we’ve got room for a few dozen words of flavor text, we might as well use it elevate the explorers beyond “green pawn” and “yellow pawn.”
- Imagery: The look of the game could do a lot to sell the story and setting. But since I’m not an artist, the best I can do is jot some notes for when I can afford to hire someone to do the job right. (Actually, I’m not sure what the look of the game should be. Caricatured and cartoony? Colorful and semi-realistic like the cover of a pulp magazine? Somewhere in between? Sounds like blog-fodder for another day.)
- Mechanical Terminology: Hmmm…. Hadn’t really thought about this. But looking at the rules, I use a lot of technical terms to describe moving onto or through various spaces. I could get some mileage out of replacing these terms with punchier, more thematic ones. Instead of “resolving an ape encounter” maybe you could “face the ape!”
Well, it’s looking might be time to write up version 3 of the rules, along with explorer flavor text. No, I still don’t know the shape of the game’s storyworld, but at least now I have a place to start working on it.
