Week 12

Soren Johnson speaks of four notions of transparency when it comes to board games: it creates player engagement, helps with focus, increases player focus, and things like pre-luck make help players make interesting decisions. With the last there is a thing called pre-luck and post-luck. Pre-luck happens when players must make a decision before they can do an action like roll or draw a card, thus causing them to think further ahead in the game. Post-luck happens when the player can make decisions after they have done an action, this lets them not think as far ahead and has them plan less far and really what happens in this round. While both types of play can be enjoyable, I typically prefer the pre-luck options as I enjoy thinking and planning ahead. This week we were tasked with watching how a board game we were unfamiliar board game is played and I chose Mysterium Kids: Captain Echo's Treasure. As it says in the title of the game, this a kid's game, specifically a version of the Mysterium games that are easier for kids to play. The game board has a board, a moon token, sound cards, treasure cards, room tokens, and a tambourine. Five sound cards are placed face up on the room cards, one on each room, with the room tokens face down. The moon token is laced at the top and will keep track of how many tokens are flipped and how much longer the game has. The room is chosen by flipping a tile over to see the number of the room they must play a sound for on the tambourine. If the correct room is chosen, the team gets treasure, if they don't get it, no treasure for them. This game works on the mechanic of post-luck as the player who is the ghost must create a sound with a tambourine to try to get the other players to choose the room that matches the sound. While some players can play with a "pre-luck" mindset by thinking how they may play each sound before they flip the tokens, I don't believe a lot will, and you are not fully rewarded for thinking ahead like that. With how many tokens and visuals being used along with players having to yell "Boo!" when they need players to open and close their eyes, this game has a lot of transparency, causing engagement and little to no player confusion. The rules are easy to understand and it is easy to keep track of what is going on, these factors can all help and boost player focus. This game needs to be transparent as it is a children's game and for the most part I believe it hits all of Johnson's points on transparency.