›

Elegant game design: Eminent Domain: Microcosm (a microcardgame)

TuismTuism
edited in General
This game is on Kickstarter now, and by gosh, it's so smart and elegant.

The components:
8 Domain cards for building your empire
11 Planets to colonize or capture
5 Technologies to master

That's 24 cards!! And it's an empire builder! Colonising planets! Research! War!

Watch the video review it's awesome :D

Comments

  • konmankonman
    edited
    @Tuism This looks very cool and I like the simplicity, 2 player. (Are those plastic sleeves in the video that cover the cards?)

    Maybe a bit off topic here, but just reminiscing a bit so please excuse me ... :) I LOOOVED MTG, in the 90s! I wasted way to much of my first salary on buying cards, boxes full, not just those little booster packs. The Friday night candle lit competitions at random houses, It was social and intense - winning one of those brought an adrenaline rush similar to jumping out of an aeroplane - my mighty small creature swarm deck, okay... not mine but I had Altavista (like Google) back then... I loved how the cards smelled (ahhhh) and those little symbols on the side (the dark/ice age etc) that proudly displays a rich lore of past generations and hints at many future ones to come (how many I would never have guessed). Not to even mention the art... ah the beautiful art. High fantasy creatures, places and devices.

    A game of ante was brutal and I remember a girl crying when her dragon whelp fell. It wasn't by my hand, the "offender" offered it back out of compassion. There was real emotion and an absolute sense of loss. I still have a box somewhere in a dusty closet with some of those cards (the ones not sharked away by more savvy players with a cupboard full of "The Duelist" and cards ranked common to rare - No I did not have any royal assassins or black lotus cards...).

    I *do* wish someone could find a way to make those cards even MORE valuable. As in each one chipped like a credit card that has real bit coinage value or a limited number of artistic images or something else? A diamond or some rare stone embedded (Maybe there is something like that out there already?)

    Back to topic: What I like about this game here, is it is seemingly easy to get into and has a short playtime, great for today's busy schedules. Awesome to see this is a genre that is still very much alive and not taking a back seat to the mainstream entertainment mediums these days.
  • TuismTuism
    Magic card values in the secondary market are already ridiculous without being inflated by actual (diamond?) values embedded in them :P (click the button next to the blue "Standard" to the right, click "Legacy/vintage" and see what single pieces of cardboards are going for :P

    Boardgames are definitely in the backseat if you compare it to video games. The issue I think is largely a logistical one - you need other players, you need to teach the game, you need shipping, etc etc etc.

    But it's DEFINITELY growing in a big way. Venues and stores are popping up even in joburg.

    The microgames genre is a recent breakout thing - really economic designs that pack a whole lot of play into very little components. I LOOOOOVE microgames. Love Letter, Coup, Resistance are among the best of the genre :)
Sign In or Register to comment.