No matter what sort of gamer you are – into heavy eurogames or if you tap out at anything more complicated than “Sorry” or “Connect Four,” chances are you have played Uno at some point – and you probably have a deck stashed in a drawer somewhere. So, I thought – what if you could take out those Uno cards and play a game that’s not only entirely different, but orders of magnitude more engaging and interesting? So… I decided to design an original game around the familiar Uno deck, and for some reason I cannot explain, I wanted it to be a deckbuilder.
Plenty of themes were considered, but the bright colors of the deck, along with the use of symbols rather than text (on most decks, anyway), I thought a sci-fi setting would be appropriate, and the concept basically fell out of my brain entirely intact: you’re crew members on an old, ill-maintained mining station. You’ve been awakened from cryosleep because the station’s computer is malfunctioning, and unless you are able to fix it in time, the reactor core will melt, and everyone is dead. Welcome to Mandatory Overtime, now get to work!
The entire concept struck me as immediately engaging and absurd, and leaning into both tech jargon, and corporate exploitation, were the natural language of the game. All that being said, here’s a peek at the introductory text for Mandatory Overtime:
You are the skeleton crew aboard a derelict mining station. The senior crew is safely preserved in cryogenic suspension, presumably because they were considered too valuable to be exposed to the working conditions.
Unfortunately, you have been awakened.
The station’s computer is malfunctioning. The reactor is failing. Systems are producing increasingly concerning error messages. Several things are on fire. Fortunately, Management has sent a memo confirming that production quotas remain unchanged.
Your job is to keep the station operational, resolve the main computer’s accumulating Faults, and meet quarterly production targets before the station experiences a catastrophic systems failure.
Management appreciates your flexibility.
Remember: Compliance Produces Results.
The game itself is played, of course on a standard Uno deck. At the start of the game, the malfunctioning computer is rebooted, and spits out a series of Errors by way of numbered cards. To fix the errors, all you need to do is commit additional number cards of the same color, until the contribution matches the Error card’s value. Simple enough. The Wild, +2, and Wild +4 cards function as “currency” in a sense, in that you use them to add cards to your deck… which is rapidly shrinking because as you attempt to address errors, cards are removed from your deck. Add to this the fact that the computer’s errors are constantly changing – either being rerouted to different systems, where your attempts to fix it will no longer apply, or changed to an entirely new error, again rendering your efforts moot.
The other familiar cards, Skip and Reverse are used to perform some of these feats of data mangling. And, if that weren’t enough, the clock is ticking. Periodically the main computer is programmed to reboot itself, resulting in a cascade of new errors which can easily act as roadblocks to progress. But, more importantly, every card taken from the system’s supply deck – including both new errors, and cards you purchase to bolster your rapidly shrinking deck – mean the computer is one step closer to running out of precious system resources, whereupon the computer will fail, and so will all players.
Cooperative?
On its face, Mandatory Overtime seems like a cooperative game. After all, you’re collectively working against the clock to avoid a table loss. However, this is still a workplace, so even after the computer’s fixed, only one of you will be able to take all the credit, and win the coveted “Employee of the Month” title – and with it the game. You lose as a group, but there’s only one winner.
Mandatory Overtime is prototyped now and we’re getting plenty of playtests in, revising the rules to arrive at the crucial balance between “this is too easy” and “this feels impossible”… not to mention ensuring that in a game where, even though cooperation is necessary, it often becomes necessary – even mandatory – to get in other players’ way, and make a bad situation worse. Preserving player agency and ensuring actions are meaningful and rewarding enough is also a strong focus.
Mandatory overtime will be in public playtesting very soon. The game will be a print and play title (at first, and at least) which includes the rulebook (formatted as an employee handbook of course), and a couple of printable pages which function as a playmat. Here’s a preview of one of those printable play surfaces, formatted as dot matrix printer output:
As you can see, though the components are printed, I leaned into the “print and play” theme by making the play area look like literal printer output. I’m not gonna lie – I giggled a lot while putting this mat together. While I do plan to produce a custom deck, that Uno deck in your junk drawer or stuck in the back of your gaming shelf will work just fine.
If this sounds like a good time, consider playtesting! Shoot me a note via the contact form. I’d love to hear from you.