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Silent, But Deadly's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Overall | #1 | 4.278 | 4.278 |
| Adherence to the Theme | #1 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Mechanics & Clarity | #2 | 4.111 | 4.111 |
| Concept & Originality | #4 | 4.222 | 4.222 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
Congrats on winning! I concur with one of the comments, the name doesn't make justice to the game. You would have had me at ninjas.
Great execution and substraction!
A ninja needs to kill instantly, and cannot allow himself to be seen.
This asymmetrical game of ninjas versus guards has stripped everything out other than positioning and line-of-sight. No stats, no rolls, not even any damage or attacks.
Fascinating game idea, very abstract strategy. This game screams for a portable pocket edition, with tiles for terrain, chits with facing marked for guards and target and maybe a grid-marked mat/cloth to play on. (Think I'll have to try and craft this.)
Some questions to make sure I understand the rules correctly:
- My reading is that a ninja that's in a terrain piece can't be spotted since LOS ends at terrain, is that right? Related, I'm guessing the Terrain->Terrain ninja move nonetheless crosses the intersecting lane and any guard LOS that might go there?
- Guards first move to the next intersection in the direction they are facing (ie they were left looking in last activation) and only after moving change facing, right?
- There can be any number of guards/targets at any given intersection, right? So, like, no blocking or anything.
- What assumptions did you make regarding the shape/number of terrain pieces, besides those mentioned in the text? Like, assuming one terrain piece in a 6'' square, a 2' square has 16 possible terrain pieces and 9 intersections (not counting board edges), spreading 23 meeples around that seems like it would lock things down completely. With different sized/shaped terrain pieces, things could look pretty different.
- Correct Ninjas can't be seen when in terrain. The intention is they don't cross line of sight while moving from terrain to terrain (think jumping from rooftop to rooftop or tree to tree), because they can only kill a guard by being in a lane they still have to expose themselves to danger in order to kill. That may be an interaction to look at for a revised edition.
- Guards can move in whatever direction the Opposition player wants. Picking a facing at the end of the move is meant to let the Opposition block off safe ninja movement paths.
- There can be any number of guards at an intersection, so for ease and clarity, it is best to make the intersections large enough to have guards back to back so they have clear sightlines.
- With terrain, I based it on the assumption of Infinity levels of terrain. Different sized squares works good, and adding some more organic shapes can create more dynamic lanes. I think a good rule of thumb is to fill as much as possible, with three way intersections leaving some blindspots. On my playtest board, there were 22 rectangular terrain pieces, with about ~32 intersections.
Honestly, the board should probably be a bit bigger. Or using smaller scale models, like 15mm or something.
Name is bad and you should feel bad. Other than that though, this is a really tight game. Reducing everything to sightlines is a lot of subtraction, but you have an eminently playable game at the end of it.
Really love the chess/checkers style simplicity of combat in this game, as it makes both sides feel like professionals who don't miss.
Feel like I need better tall terrain bits and something to better suit the atmosphere of the game too, and there's ideas for expansion on it in my mind already.
RE: expansions, I have some notes for AI directed guards, and/or multiple Ninja players.
I was very iffy on adding special powers to the ninjas because it would bloat the simplicity, IMO. But chrome for the sake of chrome is always fun.
Love to see it.
Really love the chess/checkers style simplicity of combat in this game. Feel like I need better tall terrain bits, and there's ideas for expansion on it in my mind already.
Might have to make some tiles for a travel edition, along with counters for each of the Guards etc.
Oh yeah, tiles and counters would be super useable in this.
I was very inspired by Tenchu when designing this, so like one story village buildings are perfect. Predator is also a goo model, so you could make do with thick jungle as well.
--a diagram would have been helpful to understand placement. Y
--Interesting game! Just movement is cool. Very minimal.
--20+3 guard models is a lot of models! But it does make sense.
--Overall, this is pretty interesting! Might have to play it.
20 may have been a bit much, lol.
You could easily reduce it to 10, just reduce the AI Deck to just the cards from 1-5.