Diamond Trust of London: spying, bribing, and profiting from blood on the DS
It seems odd that Majesco, the same company that’s lived off Cooking Mama sequels/spin-offs and licensed rubbish in recent years, would contract an indie dev like Jason Rohrer to produce something as offbeat and serious as a “two-player strategy game about diamond trading in Angola”, but the publisher is following through with its plans to release Diamond Trust of London this year.
The blood diamond theme isn’t the only feature from this game that’s caught my interest; Diamond Trust of London has its roots in resource-gathering German board games (see pen and paper prototype in the image above) but takes advantage of players using different systems to allow behind-the-scenes bribing and spying:
tags / diamond trust of london / jason rohrer / majesco / gdc / gdc 2010 / indie / ec“One thing about the screen environment that pen and paper can’t offer is a unique view of the world for each player, says Rohrer — in a board game both individuals are looking at the same world, which makes something like spy mechanics difficult to pull off: ‘One thing you can’t do [with a physical game] is send a spy, unbeknownst to your opponent, into your opponent’s secret area,’ for example.
