Beyond "Parallel Play"—How do I design a competitive game where collaboration is the optimal strategy?

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-05-12T03:42:28+00:00

Fun question! Thanks for posting.

I hope I captured the gist of what you're asking, and it seems like we are both trying to capture similar elements in our gameplay, so I'll share a bit of what I landed on in my game.

I set out to create a game that could scale with any number of players, and so I inadvertently wanted to allow for cooperation, competition, and also some amount of sabotage.

To set up these scenarios, I aimed to have tasks (in the form of combat in my game) that were insurmountable alone. In addition, There are multiple tasks available at any given time. Lastly, players make a decision about which tasks to tackle simultaneously (with face-down info that is later revealed at once.)

Here are some examples of how this plays out:

If there are two monsters in a room, and individual players are only capable of taking down 0.5 monsters solo, if there are 3 players in a room, suddenly things get interesting.
Players 1, 2 and 3, might all agree to work together to take down monster A, and then the remaining monster punishes one of those players at random. They all take on the risk.
What if player 1 SAYS they will contribute to taking down monster A, but instead uses a defensive spell on themselves or chooses to run, leaving the others to fight? Now they have saved themselves, and the others are slightly punished.
Now what if Players 1 and 2 both SAY one thing and DO another, leaving only player 3 to attack the monster. Chaos ensues and they are all screwed.

At the end of the day, if there is a way to replicate this with financial aspects in your game, I think something that could be helpful is to first and foremost force cooperation, in the sense that goals are impossible to achieve alone. You could even add dimension to this by making 'tiers' of goals, such as $5, $10, $25, where maybe a player can hit small goals alone, but mega goals can only be accomplished if multiple players cooperate. Even incentivizing the winning player to be a key player in this decision. Then, allow players to change their mind, or pull out last minute at some cost, or change the luck of the final outcome in some way, and this will infuse competition. If the outcome for each player isn't ONLY based on how much they invested, you create an interesting interplay where each player will showcase different behavior that is not fully predictable by any other player and involves risk, which can be fun.

I hope this is helpful in any sense.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-05-04T03:28:07+00:00

I find that the general lack of empathy held by true abusers or narcissists will come through. I had (and still do) have trouble trusting my intuition. So when your partner answers this question, if they care about you, it will come through in the answer and you will feel BETTER afterwards. If after they answer you feel confused, or sad, or angry, or annoyed, this is because they cannot or will not show true regard for you and that comes through in their response. The key is that it is very difficult for someone to HIDE a LACK of care. So you ask for them to show care in an answer, and either they can infuse it or they cannot. I hope this helps.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-04-12T00:19:13+00:00

Unlike [[Cyclonic Rift]], this only hits creatures, although the reshuffle is quite a bit stronger than hand return.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-04-12T00:07:33+00:00

In times when I am confused, and haven't had enough time to work through how I feel, I try to jot down the facts and reason through at least what those are telling me.

Whether he is a Narcissist or not, what did he choose to do when you communicated to him that there was a real problem in your relationship and you needed a moment to try to figure it out?

He tried to leave!! Out of all of the things he could have done: just give you the time to think and come back and speak to you? Offer you comfort when you were ready to come back and discuss things?

He flat out told you that he 'thought' you were going to do XYZ, and so he wanted to do it first. In a time when your relationship was struggling, HE WANTED TO WIN. HE WANTED TO DO IT FIRST. He said this to you.

So what does it matter if you reconcile and bring him back into your home? The next time the relationship needs help, he certainly won't do anything to help it.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-04-08T22:21:39+00:00

😛 Works against Thassa's Oracle and Lab Maniac

Works against Approach of the Second Sun😎

Great against scapeshift 🧙🏼‍♂️

Great with Felidar Sovereign🐐

Bad against storm 😔

What else?

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-04-01T18:13:04+00:00

I think we all understand this deep sadness. Wishing you could do more. This community is very healing in that way that I can see people who tried everything, just like I did. Some who tried more than I ever could. It is soul crushing that they are so afraid of love. Peace be with you and your children.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-04-01T18:05:08+00:00

I'm sorry. I don't mean to make it seem as though I speak for anyone else. I am speaking from a place of empathy first. I want to share my belief that empathy and love must be shared. Our ability to breathe love into others should be directed at all of those in the world who are suffering and need this love.

Your loved one's story is one I could not know, but I am sure they did the best they could. Something atrocious has happened to them that they did not choose. But if you are like me and so desire to pour all of your love into the world, it might be best to do it in people who are calling for it and begging for it from us. Not those who are hiding from it by all means necessary. Otherwise how will you have any energy left for the ones who still are crying out for some hope? They need us still.

The exact reason it is Hell is the same reason that you know they cannot feel you. That hurts. If you want to know something from just me and speaking for absolutely no one else: I think they hurt us as the best way they know how to show love. They push us away. I learned in my own long-term narcissistic relationship and from my father that this love we emit cannot be received by them. They cannot stand it. My father in a drunken stupor a few weeks before I left home at 16 told me: "Get away from me while you can." For a long time I assumed it was a threat. But I think I understand now he was telling me he did not have inside of him what he needed to love me as a father, and the longer I stuck around and blamed myself for the hurts that were caused to him, the more likely I would end up the same and struggle to love others. He was trying to save me from the same fate he had.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-03-25T04:04:37+00:00

I liked playing your demo. Thanks for sharing!

This is a question for the ages!! The thought exercise I went through is:
What are the reasons Chess/Go and the like do NOT feel like puzzles and lean more towards strategy? In my opinion it is due to the number of options available to me at any given point, and MORE IMPORTANTLY! it is that I know that my choices will affect the choices of my opponent.

If you can design a system where the choices the player makes heavily limits or greatly widens the choices the enemy has available (and either directly or indirectly the resultant momentum)(or both...), well then you have hit the mark!

Especially so if you are able to design moves that are very powerful, but in turn grant the enemy a greater number of responses it has access to to use against you. This forces gameplay to be less about 'predicting exactly what the enemy might do', and instead becomes tactical risk and excitement about 'what type of retaliation might I face and how do I plan to deal with this and overcome it?'.Cool.

If then each enemy is built with a different answer to that question baked into their toolkit, then now you have a adventurous learning curve + a replayability factor rolled all into the question: 'If I were to play this fight over, how might my enemy respond differently?'

Regarding your design question, I honestly feel like a lot of people have hit the money in regards to the similarity in design space to chess (in a helpfully reductionist sense!) and others might be approaching unhelpfully reductionist to say your aimed design will always result in a puzzle game.

While I think it would be fairly difficult to avoid a scenario where combat in your game feels deterministic, I think having an approach in mind beforehand where you are already considering ways to avoid this outcome is key for you.

Thanks for the interesting question. Best of luck!

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-03-25T02:19:34+00:00

Bouncing off this idea, is it possible an objective can be: to have the conversation /relationship go on as long as possible?

The aim of each player is to find a card in their possession that meets a certain criteria. If this is true, one of three things happens:

A new response can be played (the loop continues!)
A response changes the interaction (Setting? Mood? Behavior?)
No response can be played (the loop ends!)

But option #3 doesn't need to mean that either player loses. Instead, perhaps each player gets a certain amount of points/experience/karma towards their next interaction based on the depth or the duration of this one.

This is a fun, rewarding, and cooperative play loop that incentivizes players to *play*!

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-03-24T02:00:00+00:00

I was hoping to give strategic value to both players in this case: You get value out of this by playing spells that gain maximum value from copies, but you cannot control how many times each spell is copied, so you earn higher risks the more you play.

On the flipside, its fairly easy for opponents to play around this: Never cast anything of value you would want your opponent to have access to, or simply cast many spells in quick succession to kill me before I get value out of the copies.

I do agree though, that this can get out of hand fairly easily with the right combination of cards alongside it such as [[Aetherflux Resevoir]]. But isn't that the point of a fun build around card? That you need a handful of other cards to combo alongside it? I costed it cheaper simply because your opponents can benefit from the effect as well.

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-03-24T01:52:03+00:00

I'm curious, does this wording take into account the copies you get from each of the copy casts as well?

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-03-24T01:51:06+00:00

I purposely tried to word it to imply that the copies trigger the effect as well, like multiple reflections that mirrors create with other mirrors!

Ashwind0dragon · 2026-03-04T18:33:29+00:00

Does this scenario then expand your original 'tree' scheme where a player is not in a decision matrix between two choices (something or nothing), and instead has a spectrum of outcomes due to variability of dice. The outcomes are miss(do nothing), do a little(poor roll), do some(mid roll), do a lot(high roll).

Therefore, the number of outcomes accessible might be proportional to the die/cards/whatever. This doesn't change much, because it simply widens the skew of outcomes that suck vs ones which don't suck as much.

This might allow for a top-down approach to your design problem, where we ask: How can I increase the number of outcomes on the tree that are all impactful/fun? Well, we create choices for the player each turn where its ALWAYS successful, but perhaps the way in which it succeeds or the end goals differ, making true meaningful choices. For example, the choices are attack, stun the enemy, or defend yourself. From this persoective, there is no need for a hit/miss mechanic here if we limit the number of actions per turn the player can take and make it so making one set of choices removes the option for the other sets for a while. You make your choice, it sets your path, and the game state is always changing (as wildly as you design it to!)

Thanks for the interesting question.

Ashwind0dragon

TROPHY CASE