So it took me a little while to make it over to the site to check out the theme, but I took a quick peek at twitter and saw that it was Two Button Controls and so I mulled over what to do with that.  I’ve been wanting to do a cold-war “spy network vs. spy network” kind of strategy game for a while, and I think I’ve decided on a way to fit it into the two button theme.

I’m going to model out the game of searching out other spies while trying to defend your own with boardgame-like mechanics (which are naturally more restrictive in the number of actions you have at any one time anyways).  A set of cities is each represented by a deck of cards, and each player has a set of spies to shuffle into these decks.  Players take turns drawing cards from any city to search it or adding cards from their hand into a city’s deck representing the spread of misinformation.  Cards can have actions and effects when they’re drawn or when they’re placed, so that will add some variety and flavor to the overall gameplay loop.  In the end, though, it’s all about those two actions and the interesting possibilities that come out of them:

• You know a city’s deck is getting thin and your spy is in there somewhere, so you can pad the deck with some sabotage cards.
• You’ve drawn your own spy card from a city’s deck, gaining a nice extraction action but also giving you the chance to place it in another city deck while the other player thinks it’s still in the original location.
• You have a feeling an enemy agent is in a city deck, but you have an agent in there too.  Do you risk searching for them when every card you draw increases the likelihood they might draw your agent as well?

My goal is to create a game that is fairly quick to play with a little logic and deduction, sort of like minesweeper or Love Letter – simple mechanics with just a few but interesting actions.  My primary challenge is that I can see some interesting bluffing and other social mechanics in the physical space but you wouldn’t be able to hide some information easily.  In the electronic space, I’m not confident I can make a computer use any sort of bluffing mechanic so the game has to be fun without it.  On the flip side, though, for a game about espionage, a computer game can keep some information secret from other players much more easily.  Now it’s time to prototype to see if any of this actually hangs together.