The Game Risk - ideas for originality / uniqueness

Hello,

Im in the process of creating the game risk (I started this just to see if I could do it), Im at the point now where its actually going to happen and I need to start thinking of how to change things up to make it original.

So Im hoping some members can chime in and give some advice on what you would do to make the game original (this goes for any part of the game) to spark some ideas. For example:

I thought of having different types of armies like mercenaries, warriors, bandits, rebels, orc's, or could be tech soldiers, humanoid squads but this is just cosmetic and doesn't really change the game (though cosmetic change ideas are welcome as well).

It would be cool to change the way battles are won (instead of dice or random number to decide the outcome) but I can't think of anything and may not be practical.

Maybe when a battle is complete there is illness and injuries which need updating to get your troops back to full fighting health otherwise battles don't do as much damage (whoa! I like this one )

Please share any ideas, even if its an idle clicker mechanic lol

 

Have you taken a look at the official Risk game from Hasbro and SMG on mobile? One of the only mobile games I actually play. Some interesting twists they have as options are:

* Various maps in addition to the classic map
* Blizzards which randomly block off 3 tiles, which make for interesting changes to strategy if a choke point is blocked
* Blitz dice rolls, where instead of rolling over and over it does a fight to the death between two armies calculating all dice rolls until the attacker wins or goes to 1 size, makes for much faster gameplay
* Auto placement, which replaces the placement phase with just randomly placing armies, making for a faster game start
* Character avatar choices for paying customers
* Simple ranking system from novice to master
* Fog of war, where you cannot see who owns any tiles other than tiles which border you


As far as ideas from me, I'd suggest giving the host of the game the option of adjusting how many armies you get for controlling each continent, allowing multiple fortification moves per turn, adding additional cards to the 3 + wild card system, allowing team battles where multiple players could control the same color, and adding a handicap feature where a weaker player may get more armies per turn.

 

Hi @Joe-Censored ,

Thank you so much for replying. I have started playing the mobile version but only the classic map and the free portion, I'll have to play some of the other parts as well.

- I really like the idea of blizzards randomly blocking off 3 tiles that's sounds cool (I could give the territory army the ability to build defensive items like walls)
- I'm definitely a fan of the blitz dice roll for faster gameplay
- I'll also have auto placement and manual placement

- The fog of war sounds awesome as well! Is this throughout the session or randomly during the session? (I could make a day night mechanic for this)

I seriously appreciate your ideas they are great!

- I agree with the multiple fortifications per turn you should be able to freely move your troops anywhere you want when its your turn but I think there needs to be a cost for doing so (I'll try it and see what the difference is)
- the handicap feature sounds awesome
- team battles that is interesting and could change the game quite a bit

I think multiplayer is a must for this type of game, to start I've done players vs computer (max 5 opponents for a total of 6 players (1 human the rest computer), easy to add more computer players), once I get a solid foundation for how the game will work (with originality) I'll start looking into how multiplayer works, I get the feeling it'll be way over my head lol but its a major part of this style of game...

If you think of any ideas later please come back and share.

I'll try to post some updates of where I'm going with this game (if anyone is interested)? I've got the core mechanics almost done, I need to go back and change how some of the logic is done, so that the game will be easier to expand on.

This is one of my favorite games and I sure hope I can make it better.

 

Lux DLX is my favourite digital version of Risk, it plays it fairly standard, but plays much better for me that the official version.

I cannot remember the name of the best spin on Risk that I used to play. It was web based with abstract graphics, and played in real time. Each country generated new units at a rate depending on how many units defended it. Units travelled down the lines between positions (the equivalent of countries, but only represented by a circle). I cannot remember exactly how battles were resolved, but it wasn't dice. It was a single-player level based game with a new map for each level. It was very different from Risk in many ways, but tactical approaches shared a lot.

 

On fog of war, the way they have it implemented is through the entire game. The only intel you get is what you can see bordering you, and how many armies each opponent is getting and from what continents. Until they get the whole continent, if you aren't there you don't know how close they are.

On multiplayer, just remember that adding multiplayer will make your development significantly more time consuming. If this was a hobby game, might not be worth the time. I would expect that Risk is covered by various IP, so you might run into trouble if trying to release your game commercially (I Am Not A Lawyer).

One weakness the official game has is the AI, even set to max difficulty, is absolutely terrible and very easy to manipulate. It is so bad that when a human player drops out, the other players basically just manipulate the AI into attacking other players for them, and otherwise ignore the AI to take out other players first.

I'd love to follow your progress if you're going to post it anywhere. Good luck

 

@Moonjump I downloaded it and gave it a try it wasn't to bad there must have been a glitch in the game because I was killing it then next thing you know my armies where destroyed and depleted in one move whoa! but it was fun up to that point.

@Joe-Censored The fog of war sounds really cool, thank you for explaining it.
On multiplayer, maybe its best to release the game 'player vs computer' then if there is enough interest continue and integrate multiplayer, if not move onto the next game. I'm not too worried about IP as the game will have some similar mechanics for sure as many games do but I am going to try and create something original

Ai, this will be a very interesting part of the game. Ahh yes now that you mention it I also noticed letting the ai go to war with someone else helps you win as they deplete each other, (maybe if they sit back and skip there turn they get attacked?), I also noticed that beefing up your army on one or two territories helps to just blast through and take over other areas. For the Ai there are a few things I can go by which I'll cover later, past events and what's happening with numbers on the board instead of just randomly picking territories to place troops I'll have to monitor placement and that should open up more possibilities this could be a deep section for sure.

I appreciate all of the feedback and its awesome that you'll follow the progress
I'll post most here but I'm also thinking about creating some youtube videos later on to show how I implemented and created the logic for others who aspire to make a similar game can follow along (Im just winging it to figure it out lol, which is a great learning experience).

Hey I also found this which was quite funny:

 

Board game design has come a really long way since risk was released in 1957. There are literally thousands of implementations of the area control mechanic that is at the heart of Risk. Check out the BGG list for some examples for inspiration.

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/board...keditems/boardgamemechanic?pageid=1&sort=rank

Some popular directions to explore:

• Combat.
• Variable or modular boards.
• Multiple players sharing the same space.
• Multiple unit types.
• Formal alliance mechanics.
• Faction asymmetry.

 

Awesome!!! Thank you for the link and directions to explore.

I’ll be spending a lot of time researching these it’s so cool