Game Mechanics : Management

Management mechanics pose the player with managing a series of actions. This is described as 'spinning plates' as the mechanic means the player's attention is called upon to look after many different tasks at the same time. Often the amount of actions will ramp up and increase to create 'tension and release' loops.

On one my Friday sessions I was given the task to try implementing this mechanic. I had a small amount of time and I was quite happy with the result.

The basic idea here is to keep the light houses lit. I used dice as timers which would count down one every turn. Two players would cooperate to reach the lighthouse before it reaches zero. My board represents an island with various movement costs associated with the terrain. Players would roll two dice to determine how far they can more and when they land on a lighthouse it resets to it's maximum.

The black dice where added as an iteration as my game needed more locations to stress the player. These dice where ten sided and I placed them near each other to act as another task that would need to be dealt with on a different timescale to achieve varying tension and release.