Analysis of Risk Board Game

Above is a picture of our game in progress. The version of the game we played was "Library Risk Game Set" which has the same rules as the original version of the game.

http://www.kidazy.com/products/risk.jpg

(image of the box and the game board)

Risk

It is very evident that risk is not the type of game to be completed in two hours. When I played the game it was against three other teams (four teams of two people, the maximum amount of players is six... Which of course we exceeded). All of us were unfamiliar with the game's rules or had not played it in a very long time. This is a great thing for students wishing to analyze a game with a critical eye, the first play through of a board game brings up a lot of murkily defined rules within the game.

The game board is designed well from an interface standpoint. Each continent has its own hue with the separate countries/areas in each continent clearly marked with their own shade/tint of the continents hue. There was no confusion when identifying the boarder of any given area and defining water versus land. Another nice interface design choice was the color coding for each army. This version of the game has square wooden blocks that represent one part of a players army. There are also slightly larger odd shapes that represent five parts of an army, in case an area with a lot of one players army is getting cramped, good foresight. Overall, the design is very simple and quickly comprehended.

The rules on the other hand were a little more in depth than we expected. Due to the assumptions made by all of the players in our game, the rules we unintentionally altered. For example, we played with the rule that "once an army in one country has attacked, it cannot attack again this turn". This inevitably slows down an already lengthy game but made players chose carefully whether to attack or not.

Some of the smaller areas of the map seemed cramped for three or more army pieces to be placed, a larger game board may have been nice for this reason.

After playing for a little under two hours, I am able to make some observations based on my lack of previous Risk knowledge and going by what I learned about the version we played. The game is definitely geared toward the Killer player type (referring to Bartle's "Players Who Suit MUDs". The mechanic of the game is to act upon other players and beat there army. There is plenty of room for players interacting with other players so Social gamers will enjoy the game as well. There is little/no interaction with the world itself so a lot of the appeal Adventurers and Achievers look for is not there.

The amount of strategy to the game is great and adds a lot of depth. It can feel a little hopeless at times when you feel behind but if you go with a strategy that the game fosters and plan ahead, then you should at least survive.

After playing this version of Risk, I got to play the digital iOS version on an iPad. It had the same general board interface but with a touchscreen instead of physical parts. The game seem to play a little quicker after the start. The way the designers handled digital dice was a little strange but made some sense. Each player could roll every attack or they could hit a button that rolled until the attacker won the territory or lost all but their last unit. This button was deemed the "Steamroll" button by our group because most of the time it lead to a victory and without the visual element of every dice roll it felt instantaneous.

Overall, I really enjoyed Risk and its decision making system, army allocation, and strategy elements. While I would not pay over couple dollars for the digital version, I would more likely purchase it over the board due to convenience and the same game design but in 2D format. It is nice to not have a large box for the game and just use up a fraction of some Flash storage.

~Will N.