At game night this Monday, a team member and I played the board game “Pandemic” by Z-Man games. I had only ever played the mobile video game version of this game before, and I must say I was mildly surprised at how similar it and our game development, “Summit Rush” were to one another. These games have a similar “decay” structure of the map (infection / freezing), however, “Summit Rush” is not cooperative and Pandemic includes diverse roles for different players.
A great many of the basic game mechanics are consistent across the games such as the resource draw pile (cities / tools). These piles contain the necessary cards to win the game, but not are not needed for movement. In all three of these games movement is determined as a set amount of spaces/actions each turn, as opposed to following the movement directions on a card, removing much of the randomness as a core game mechanic. However, this does not mean there is no randomness in these games. The “decay” cards within the deck spread infection or freeze tiles. Since these cards are randomly spaced throughout the deck, randomness plays a large role in determining how easy it is to win or if the players can win at all. This pushes the challenge aesthetics of these games as you never know what the next card you draw so you must be prepared for the worst possible scenario.
The most obvious difference between Pandemic and Forbidden Island from “Summit Rush” is the fact that “Summit Rush” is not cooperative. The fact that Summit Rush is a race game creates the largest and most fundamental difference between the two – changing it from a PVP to a co-op, and shifting the primary aesthetic from fellowship to challenge. Despite these major differences, the feeling I got from playing Pandemic was very similar to the feeling we are aiming for in Summit Rush- Race against the board’s decay (infection/freezing) but with the additional race against other players.
However, the defining game type is not the only difference between the two, Pandemic included specialized roles that players could chose as part of setup, granting special abilities to their character throughout the game that if used correctly could mean the difference between success and failure. This fairly simple concept was made incredibly convoluted by all of the small rules that the roles were designed to differentiate characters from. For example, one role allowed the player to transfer city cards (5 needed to cure a disease) to send cards that were not matching the city the two players were in. My team mate and I elected not to play with this rule not only because we forgot about it until halfway through the game, but we also agreed playing with this rule would have made the game significantly less fun by increasing the challenge level closer to frustrating. These player specialization cards added a significant amount of variation and replay-ability to the game. The the possibility to experience the same scenario with different ability upon your next play is a an exciting concept and one I like in a game and so I will likely attempt to include within “Summit Rush”.
-Noah Leibert
