Michael Schacht's Gold! Is Out

[Shannon Appelcline]

Folks,

Our newest RPGnet card game is out. It's a departure in a few ways, starting with the fact that it's a game by German designer Michael Schacht (of Coloretto and Zooloretto fame). It's also our first-ever (and probably the first-ever) simultaneous release of a mass-market game. We're putting it out on the iPhone the same day that Michael is releasing it at the Nurnberg Toy Fair in Germany.

Here's a direct link to the iTunes store:
http://tinyurl.com/msgold

I've also included a pair of screen shots and our press release on the game.

Shannon
--
Michael Schacht's Gold! Simultaneously Released for iPhone and Tabletop Play

BERKELEY, CA, February 3, 2010 -- Skotos Tech today released its newest iPhone game, Michael Schacht's Gold!, simultaneous to the publication of the tabletop game by Abacus Spiele. This first-ever co-release of a mass-market game for both the iPhone and traditional media marks a real milestone in the growth of mobile gaming.

The designer, Michael Schacht, is a major German game designer who has been creating tabletop games for almost two decades. His set-collection game, Coloretto, is one of the best-known "euro" card games, while its sequel, Zooloretto, won the prestigious Game of the Year Award in Germany. Both games are available in the United States through Rio Grande Games.

Schacht's newest game, Gold!, promises to follow in the footsteps of those past successes. Much like Coloretto, it's a very clever game of set-collection where cards are taken from a common pool. However, the entirely-original Gold! offers more opportunity for tactical finesse; cards can be both taken from the pool and exchanged, giving players numerous opportunities to collect together trios of high-valued, matching cards.

Skotos has adapted Gold! to the iPhone using its well-tested MobileEuroCard platform for the iPhone and the iPad. Standardized gestures, animations, and audio are all built into the platform, making it easy for players of one of Skotos' card games to pick up and play another. To date, three other games have been programmed on the platform: Reiner Knizia's Money, Reiner Knizia's High Society, and Reiner Knizia's Kingdoms.

Each new game has offered expansions and improvements to the MobileEuroCard library, and as a result Gold! is built atop a year-and-a-half worth of development, making it Skotos' most attractive and mature game to date. Like all of Skotos' MobileEuroCard games, Gold! has been released as a universal app, so that players can purchase it once and play it on any of their iPad, iPod, or iPhone devices.

ABOUT SKOTOS TECH

Skotos Tech (www.skotos.net) is an electronic game producer. Its iPhone games have all been produced through subsidiary RPGnet (www.rpg.net), which ties together tabletop games with electronic media.

ABOUT MICHAEL SCHACHT

Michael Schacht (www.michaelschacht.net) is a full-time game designer and the winner of the 2007 Spiele des Jahres award. He has published over 100 games, including Coloretto, Hansa, Mondo, Richelieu, Valdora, Web of Power, Zooloretto, and of course Gold!

[Stephen Jonke]

I'm enjoying this game and thing it's a very clever and fun game,
however the AI in the iPhone app is abysmal. Obviously I'm completely
new to the game, but I started with a game on easy and won easily.
Then played medium and again won easily. Then hard and again won
easily, and I have yet to lose, always winning easily.

I hope you'll be able to improve the AI, because this definitely hurts
the game. It's still fun, but I'm not sure how long I'll get a kick
out of crushing the computer. Also I was a bit disappointed to find
out that you can't play a 3 player game on the iPhone, only on the
iPad, for screen space reasons. I can't help but wonder if there
wasn't a way to fit in 3 players anyway - I suspect a 3 player game
would give more of a challenge, as well as probably being even more
fun.

On the other hand the game plays well (aside from weak AI) and I'm
really happy to see that this is the first app from this dev that has
sound effects, and the ones in the game are good.

On Feb 3, 12:29 pm, Shannon Appelcline <shann...@skotos.net> wrote:
> Folks,
>
> Our newest RPGnet card game is out. It's a departure in a few ways,
> starting with the fact that it's a game by German designer Michael
> Schacht (of Coloretto and Zooloretto fame). It's also our first-ever
> (and probably the first-ever) simultaneous release of a mass-market
> game. We're putting it out on the iPhone the same day that Michael is
> releasing it at the Nurnberg Toy Fair in Germany.
>
> Here's a direct link to the iTunes store:

> *http://tinyurl.com/msgold
> *

> Web of Power, Zooloretto, and of course Gold!*
> *
>
>  ipad-screen-2.jpg
> 359KViewDownload
>
>  iphone-screen-1.jpg
> 119KViewDownload

[Shannon Appelcline]

On 2/3/11 11:39 AM, Stephen Jonke wrote:
> I'm enjoying this game and thing it's a very clever and fun game,
> however the AI in the iPhone app is abysmal. Obviously I'm completely
> new to the game, but I started with a game on easy and won easily.
> Then played medium and again won easily. Then hard and again won
> easily, and I have yet to lose, always winning easily.

During testing, I found that the 'bots had a pretty good win ratio
against me, but I'm certain it varies from person to person (and I have
a suspicion that they ended up better for the 3-player iPad play than
the 2-player iPhone play, as you suggested).

I've got some notes somewhere on potential further 'bot improvements. I
guess I'll have to try and put some of those in when I do a first upgrade.

Thanks for the feedback,

Shannon

PS: 3-player play was really a challenge on the iPhone. The one model I
came up with wasn't very aesthetic, but it's a future possibility.

--

[Drew Dockery]

Shannon, I haven't tried Gold yet, but is there any chance we'll see
multiplayer for this or the other titles. Even pass n plan on he same
device would be nice.

This message was sent from my mobile. Please forgive all the typos.

On Feb 3, 2011, at 3:47 PM, Shannon Appelcline
<shannon.a...@gmail.com> wrote:

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Mobile Euro Game" group.
> To post to this group, send email to mobile-e...@googlegroups.com.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to mobile-euro-ga...@googlegroups.com.
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/mobile-euro-game?hl=en.
>

[Shannon Appelcline]

On 2/3/11 2:06 PM, Drew Dockery wrote:
> Shannon, I haven't tried Gold yet, but is there any chance we'll see
> multiplayer for this or the other titles. Even pass n plan on he same
> device would be nice.

Pass-and-play is the next item on our list of major expansions for our
game library. I'm not quite sure on the timing, as I've got two more
games under contract for the next six months, and they may eat up all my
time in the interim. At worst, it should appear this summer. Gold will
probably be the first game to get pass-and-play, as all info is open.

(And you'll probably be encouraged to hear that the *last* major
expansion on our list was sound, which appears in Gold! and will be
backported to our other games starting with Money, which should get a
major re-release in a few weeks.)

Shannon

[crunc.is]

Shannon - could you explain the end game scoring in Gold! better? I think I understand it that, at game end, whoever has the highest total for a given color gets to add their highest card in that color to their score. Is that correct? What happens, though, if one player has a -2 and nobody else has any cards in that color? Do they get -2, or do the other players have a higher score (0) in that color even though they don't have any of that color?

[crunc.is]

Oh, I forgot also to ask, what happens if there's a tie? Do all tied players get their highest card or does no one get any points for that color?

[Eric Burgess]

I would also note that many games with AI that didn't challenge the, ahem, 'expert gamers' like us improved considerably with updates. That's one of the beauties of iOS and the like - the delivery model is so good that we can get the updates over time. With a game like Gold that actually came out in app and physical form at the same time, there aren't developed strategies to draw on like implementations of Tichu, Money, Mu and other apps had. Sure, you have the play testers but you know the community as a whole will build that out much more.

Asynchronous multi-player is even more attractive than pass-and-play, IMNSHO. 

...ERB

www.boardgamebabylon.com
www.strategicon.net

--

[Tim Harrison]

I agree. Pass and play is all but useless. Online play is what everyone wants.

-Tim

[Mark Johnson]

Agreed once more. I downloaded Gold yesterday largely for the novelty of a simultaneous release in physical and digital formats (is that the word for it?). However, the only iPhone games I play regularly are the ones with online play against human opponents & friends.

[Tim Harrison]

> However, the only iPhone games I play regularly are the ones with
> online play against human opponents & friends.

Afterall, some of Marks friends are not humans. =P

-Tim

[Mark Johnson]

Oops, that didn't come out right. :-)

[Shannon Appelcline]

Pass and play is probably what I see the most requests for, but that
might be because it's increasingly expected and thus surprising for its
absence, rather than it being useful for a large percentage of users.

In any case, Game Center is a longer-term plan, some of which will
follow naturally from the pass-and-play code (e.g., ability to create a
game in a more sophisticated manner, cleaning of code to remove any
gotchas when there's more than one human player). However, it's a
sufficiently big endeavor that I don't have any expected date yet.

Shannon
--

[Shannon Appelcline]

On 2/4/11 7:14 AM, Eric Burgess wrote:
> With a game like Gold that actually came out in app and physical form
> at the same time, there aren't developed strategies to draw on like
> implementations of Tichu, Money, Mu and other apps had. Sure, you have
> the play testers but you know the community as a whole will build that
> out much more.

In fact, if you find that you defeat the AIs by doing specific things,
or if you think the AIs do specifically dumb things (at the hard level
only please), let me know what you're doing or what you think the AI
should be doing.

All of the AIs are different, but I'm aware of two general lacks in them
right now:

1. They'll only trade a higher card for a lower card in a situation
where it gets them a triplet. They probably should also do so to prevent
an opponent from getting a triplet and maybe even to get a double, if
other circumstances look correct.

2. They sometimes take a triplet with too low a value (though I find
this one hard to quantify: should you take a $-6? A $-2? A $-1? A $0?).
There's surely some level where they should say, it's not worth it yet.

Shannon

[crunc.is]

Well, I don't agree that it's useless, especially not for a game like
this, one which I can't buy in it's real form yet! Also, it's just
nice to be able to play a game with friends/strangers you're with when
you don't have the real deck handy. When going on vacation, for
example, I can bring all my iOS games, but only a handful of real
ones, if any.

Online is great, but it's not the same as playing a game in-person. I
get burnt out with Carcasonne, et. al's asynchronous play pretty
easily. Mind you, I would still like that, because when everyone is
online at the same time it is a lot of fun, but I also want pass-and-
play.

On Feb 4, 10:17 am, Tim Harrison <tha...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I agree. Pass and play is all but useless. Online play is what everyone wants.
>
> -Tim
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 4, 2011 at 10:14 AM, Eric Burgess <erburg...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I would also note that many games with AI that didn't challenge the, ahem,
> > 'expert gamers' like us improved considerably with updates. That's one of
> > the beauties of iOS and the like - the delivery model is so good that we can
> > get the updates over time. With a game like Gold that actually came out in
> > app and physical form at the same time, there aren't developed strategies to
> > draw on like implementations of Tichu, Money, Mu and other apps had. Sure,
> > you have the play testers but you know the community as a whole will build
> > that out much more.
> > Asynchronous multi-player is even more attractive than pass-and-play,
> > IMNSHO.
> > ...ERB
> >www.boardgamebabylon.com
> >www.strategicon.net
>

> > On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 11:56 PM, Shannon Appelcline <shann...@skotos.net>

[Shannon Appelcline]

On 2/4/11 6:52 AM, crunc.is wrote:
> Shannon - could you explain the end game scoring in Gold! better? I
> think I understand it that, at game end, whoever has the highest total
> for a given color gets to add their highest card in that color to
> their score. Is that correct?

Yes.

> What happens, though, if one player has a -2 and nobody else has any
> cards in that color? Do they get -2, or do the other players have a
> higher score (0) in that color even though they don't have any of that

> color? --

It's actually the highest POSITIVE total. So if someone has a -2 and no
one else has a card in the color, no one gets to score anything.

[Question from the other email on ties]

If players tie for the highest total, each tied player scores their
highest card in that color.

I've already done one major rewrite of the scoring text, but I'm now
going to look over it again for the next rev.

Shannon