Written by Ariele, edited by Elizabeth.
I have selected some board games with similar touch points to Heimarmene: Closing Night. I mostly looked into deckbuilding games, games with secret objectives and mechanisms such as hidden objectives and emergent narrative. The points I’m looking to analyse with these games are replayability, price, narrative focus and hidden objectives.
Feed The Kraken
This game features hidden objectives and contrasting player roles.
Dominion
This game invented the concept of deckbuilding and defined the genre for future games.
Ticket To Ride
This game features asymmetrical secret objectives, and much of the strategy is focused on deducing other players’ secret objectives.
Ticket to ride USA - Welcome - Play different.™ | Days of Wonder
Oath
This game is heavy on emergent narrative and storytelling, and who is about to win constantly changes due to the revealing of hidden objectives and trading of roles.
It’s difficult to determine if a board game is overpriced because the price relies on the weight and difficulty of the game: generally the more components, the more expensive (and complicated) the game will be. I’ve reserved the highest scores for games that I think are cheap for their weight, which was taken from BoardGameGeek.
| Competitor | Score | Analysis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed The Kraken | 9/10 | The price ranges from £42 to £139.89, not including delivery fees. The English language versions tend to sit at the bottom of the range. | Feed the Kraken - best deal on board games - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
| Dominion | 7/10 | The base game ranges from £40 to £96.99, without including delivery and shipping fees, while expansions sit around £30/45. The score was given considering replayability relies on the purchase of expansions. | Search results for dominion - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
| Ticket To Ride | 10/10 | The English language version of the game sits around the £30 mark, other versions and expansions can go as low as £11/12. | Search results for Ticket to ride - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
| Oath | 9/10 | The range is form £83.70 to £108 for the English language version. As of right now there are no expansions. | Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile - best deal on board games - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
Given that the weight of our game sits at about a 2.5/5, the same as Feed The Kraken and Dominion, the price for our game should sit at about a £40/50 pound maximum. There are no planned expansions at the moment, however a theoretical expansion would only be made up of cards and therefore should be around the £25 range. A distinguishing factor is that our game board is partially 3D and made in lasercut wood or punchboard, which could potentially add some costs that would surpass other games, but it has no additional game pieces.
| Competitor | Score | Analysis | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed the Kraken | 7/10 | Feed the Kraken is heavy on theming, and definitely narrative based. The narrative however relies mostly on plot twists from reveals or certain pieces being played. Over time the narrative stays the same and can get redundant. | Feed the Kraken - best deal on board games - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
| Dominion | 6/10 | Dominion has some theming, serving as an explanation for play, but it is realised more as worldbuilding than a narrative. | Search results for dominion - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
| Ticket to ride | 6/10 | Like Dominion, ticket to ride has a setup and theme, but the building on the narrative comes in the form of changing the look of the environment. | Search results for Ticket to ride - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
| Oath | 10/10 | Oath relies heavily on narrative, as a sort of never ending storyline. It features lengthy amounts of writing, along with character design and a great amount of worldbuilding. | Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile - best deal on board games - BoardGamePrices.co.uk |
While all of these games are very creative when it comes to theme and building a setting or a narrative, our game narrative is unique in its entirely emergent and multi-layered nature: a story within a story, told by the players in the interactions they have and the behaviours they exhibit. After a game, the group should be able to look back on their shared experience and discuss the overall story they told together, and how it surprised them. The way to have most fun with this game will be to find your place in the narrative and play it.