Nice Games Jam: "Space Mall Mystery VHS Game"

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In this episode Lydia is back in the clubhouse to discuss her first job, and to help make a game about said job. But, because your nice hosts couldn't choose just one, it is also about Ellen's job at her parents' pet store, and Stephen's first job. Mark's also.

When introducing Lydia to the concept of a nice games jam, the stages of the nice game jam are referenced. Here are the stages: 1) Panic 2) Prompt 3) More Panic 4) Scramble 5) Oh, we can do this 6) We did this - let’s do more
We have throw pillows now
While designing this game Stephen mentions the phrase "experience bij." This comes from the 'Star Trek the Next Generation Interactive VCR Board Game."
Star Trek the Next Generation Interactive VCR Board Game
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Board Game Geek
Compilation of "Experience bij."
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YouTube

Prompt

"Create a game based on one of your team’s first job (either gig-based, such as babysitting or lawn mowing or paycheck based), but set in a world with either evil robots, monsters, or aliens."

Game type

Tabletop game

Materials

VHS tape

Mall map

Rules

Takes place in a mall, in a starbase
- Theater, retail, pet store, cafeteria
- Pen and paper RPG, players need to figure out what’s going on outside without leaving the mall/their jobs
- Communication is limited somehow
- Nosy kids?
- Point where we’re in too deep?
- It’s now a VHS tape/DVD game.
- Each character has unique roles and abilities based on their job
  - Cafeteria unboxer person, sees recycling bins, can make things out of trash
  - Retail, interacts with customers regularly
  - Pet store, young kid who does mischief things
  - Theater, technical expertise, interacts with other staff of theater
- Mall wide announcements (security, mall, etc.)
- Different locations have a stack of cards containing information, they have unique ability to access these different decks. Info from cards cannot be talked about, you need to move to another player to give them that information.
- NPCs move on a track separately, they move during the “computer” turn, the mall is a separate turn/entity
- NPCs control how much players can move (they may have customers they need to deal with)
- Each round the players have certain actions, different actions if there are customers in the store
- Some cards are gossip (from customers), some cards are evidence (physical things you find)
- Some of the gossip is false, good/juicy information is rare
- Narrative
  - Three acts
    - Act 1: Something’s going on!
      - Busier than normal, more security, longer shifts than normal because everyone needs to be in the mall, the management wants to keep everyone there
      - A lot of the rumors are about not being able to do their regular jobs outside of the mall
    - Act 2: It’s one of three things
    - Act 3: Did we figure out what’s going on?
- You have to figure out what the threat is, afterwards pick some number of ways to deal with it, depending on the response you have a list of tasks to complete to fulfill. If the tasks you did relate to the actual threat, you get points.

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