Bigger Gamespace and New Battling

Tic-Tac-Toe with added chance

In order to add a few elements of chance to Tic-Tac-Toe I've changed a few things.

• Players now play on a 9x9 tic-tac-toe grid.
• The winner of the smaller 3x3 sections rolls a d6 and calls “High” or “Low” (or “Evens” or “Odds”)
• If their call is correct they claim that grid as their own.
• If not it becomes one type of “draw” grid.
• “Draws” can be challenged.
• Challengers roll 3 d6’s, defenders roll 2 d6’s, players compare the challenger’s 2 higher die faces with the defender’s die faces  and the challenger’s 3^rd die is ignored.
• If the challenger wins, they now own that grid.
• If the defender wins, the grid remains neutral and it becomes the next player’s turn.

The blank game. It can just be played on a regular piece of paper, just like Tic-Tac-Toe

This adds multiple games that can be played out at the same time, increasing the skill needed to win or defend the regular tic-tac-toe grid. Since players can stop playing in a grid at any time, there is a better chance they’ll be able to distract the player from moves made on one grid by moving to win at a different grid.

This also gives the player that moves second (“O” player) a new strategy to win. Normally, moving first gives that player (“X” player) a slight advantage, but now the “O” player can choose to change to a different grid at any time, thereby moving first within that grid. For example if the “X” player uses the strategy of acquiring two lines that they can use to win, but the “O” player can only block one, the “O” player can choose not to block either but instead  to change grids. This gives the “X” player a choice to place an “X” to claim that grid or change grids so as not to give the “O” player 2 moves in a grid.

"X" player can win if he challenges the center-left draw

Modifying Battle Hexagons

“Battle hexagons” was my group’s territorial acquisition game.

The board stays the same, the changes are to the game play

• The player’s goal was to acquire the largest amount of hexagons in 20 rounds.
• Players collected wild cards if they landed on a “wild” space
• Players could jump between hexes if they landed on a “portal” space.
• Players could use a fair amount of skill to try and trap other players. Since tiles could not be re-claimed, players could easily be trapped and unable to move.

To remix it as a game based entirely on chance, any mechanic based on skill must be removed or altered.

One of the main skill-based mechanics is the ability to trap other players. This can easily be altered to have a combat system allowing players to acquire another player’s territory, allowing them to not be cornered into a small area. The new combat system would be simple:

• Both players roll the same number of dice, if the attacker’s dice are higher, they move into that player’s territory space.
• The player can then roll the die again for their movement, but they can only move half of their dice roll for that turn and only through free spaces.
• If the player needs to acquire more enemy territory they must wait until their next turn.
• If the defender wins the attacker does not move and play continues.
• In the event of a draw, the defender wins.

Another factor is the rounds. I would like to change it to “Play until the board is filled” but I think that will add too much to the game play. If there is no limit but the amount of spaces on the board then a player could keep one open space protected until they have every other space. If two players do this it would extend the length of game play indefinitely, but not in a good way.

I think it is best to keep the goal as “the winner is the player that acquires the most territory in 20 rounds”. That still keeps an incentive to block your opponent’s path just to slow them down.

The only other factor in Battle Hexagons is the cards. Since these are already randomized they do not need to be changed.

Overall, I believe that allowing players to take one another’s territory will lead to more exciting game play.

Peace of Art

Starry Night - Dreamscape

Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night was painted in September 1888 in Southern France and sent it to his brother, Theo, with some other paintings in September 1889. It is currently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and has been since 1941. It is one of van Gogh’s most popular and recognizable pieces.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ea/Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/300px-Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

Originally van Gogh did not like the painting, he wrote to his brother:

“The olives with white clouds and background of mountains, also the moonrise and the night effects, these are exaggerations from the point of view of arrangement, their lines are warped as that of old wood.”

http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/20/607.htm

An interesting fact about this painting is that although it is a painting of the night landscape van Gogh painted it from memory during the day! This may not seem like such a big deal when the mountains, the landscape and the village were all right outside his window; but when I think about the colours he also had to remember, the dark blues of the mountain and just the difference the nighttime atmosphere can create and how well he replicated it, it’s pretty amazing!

The game:

To turn this amazing piece of artwork into an artistic game, myself and the rest of the Sharpie Farms group decided to make a kind of relaxed collection game based on the agreed peaceful feeling we felt this painting portrayed.

The pieces and their movement:

To achieve a feeling of peace we decided that the game movement should have a free-floating feel. We designed clouds to represent the game pieces and we gave the game a few simple mechanics to affect the player’s movement. These mechanics start with a player drawing a card:

• On this card is something they have to describe, it might be a sheep, a cloud or a waterfall but the player that draws it has to describe it.
• Once it’s described, the player to the left has two chances to guess.
•  If they don’t guess it the guessing continues clockwise.
• If no players guess a card’s description correctly, the player who is describing it can either to lose 1 star or be unable to participate in the next guessing phase (Player will be unable to guess the object on the next card is being described. If the Player elects to lose a star, they place their star on the current node they are on.  To pick this star up again, they must mode off the node then back on).
• That card then gets put into the discard pile and the player on the left draws a card.

• If a player guesses correctly they get to move 1 node in any direction. They then draw a card to try and describe to the other players.

We thought that this would bring a calm feeling to the game to get players to describe calm things. We also liked that it adds a type of movement other than dice.

The board:

For the design of our game we took the starry night painting and thought we could make it an even “starrier” night by adding the full Milky Way galaxy. Following that, we used a silver pen to create the nodes and the paths between nodes. We highlighted the starting nodes (in the village) with blue marker and the nodes that stars will be placed on with red marker.

We also gave the stars and the photo of the galaxy a blurring filter to try and match the brush strokes in van Gogh’s painting and I think it helped to bridge the gap between the painting and the photo.

I hope everyone who plays will feel calm and relaxed, while still having some fun collecting stars right out of their own starry night.

Betters, Bluffers, and straight up Liars

Liar's Dice

This week’s assignment was to take the game Liar’s Dice (which most people know of as the dice game from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest) and change the rules around to get rid of and “positive feedback loop”.

http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20080417015307/pirates/images/3/32/Dice.JPG

Now a positive feedback loop is something within a game that:

• Destabilizes the game.
• Causes the game to end faster.
• Emphasizes actions made earlier in the game.

There are also “Negative feedback loops” that:

• Stabilize the game.
• Cause the game to last longer
• Emphasize actions made later in the game.

Our job was to identify the positive feedback loop in Liar’s Dice and add new rules using negative feedback loops to eliminate the positive feedback loop.

First, an outline of the rules of Liar’s Dice:

• Players: 2 - 6
• Each player starts with 5 dice and a cup.
• Players roll their dice and keep them hidden from other players.
• A one is counted as a WILD dice; it can have any value from 2 to 6.
• The first player makes a bet based on their dice and what they think the other players rolled. (ex. 6 fours)
• Each player after them must bet a higher sum than the previous bet (ex 7 fours, 6 fives etc.) until someone calls a player’s bluff.
• Bluffs can be called only on your turn and only on the person before you, after he bet.
• Once a bluff is called, all players reveal their dice.
• If it was not a bluff (i.e. There were more dice of that kind that could have been called, or exactly as many dice that were called) the player that called it a bluff loses one of their dice.
• If it was a bluff (i.e. There were not that many dice rolled) the player who bluffed loses their dice.
• Play continues until only one player remains.

The positive feedback loop in Liar’s Dice is that once a player begins to lose dice it becomes more likely that they will continue to lose dice. They will continue to lose dice because once one is lost they have a smaller percentage of dice that they are able to see and use to make an educated bet or bluff.

For example: The player loses a die --> the player has more chances to lose --> the player loses a die --> the player has even more chances to lose and so on...

We added mostly simple rules to eliminate the positive feedback loop. Our rules are:

1. Limit the number of players from 2-6 to 2-4 to allow less competition.
2. Increase the number of dice to 7 per player.
3. Adding the “house cup”. This cup has 7 dice that all players can see to add to the guessing pot. (The player must bet more than what is shown by the house cup. For example: if the house cup is showing 3 twos, 2 threes, 1 four and 1 six, then the player can call 4 twos or 3 threes etc.).
4. Finally if a player only has 1 die, they can gain 2 of their dice back if they correctly catch another player’s bluff.

With the addition of these rules we had to have a few play-through's to see how the new rules affected the game play. 

1. This rule was just a simple rule to reduce the number of players, creating less competition for upping one another's bets. This makes it easier to place bets because the bets will not raise as quickly as they would with 6 players.
2. This rule simply add more dice, making a longer game, and the ability to bet higher.
3. This is a lengthy rule with a simple concept. The "house cup" allows players who have lost most of their dice to still have a general idea of what kind of bets or bluffs to make.
4. Finally, this rule allows players to regain some of their lost dice. It is hard to accomplish but when it works it helps to extend the game play.

I hope everyone in class enjoys our addition to Liar's Dice. I'm not bluffing, have fun, but be careful who you challenge!

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbt8223QJJ1rcjxzvo1_500.gif

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

Paperboy Card Game

Paperboy was created in 1984 for the Atari System 2 upright arcade system. In this game you play as a paperboy delivering papers to subscribers, not delivering to non-subscribers, and avoiding obstacles. The game is won by perfectly delivering your papers to your subscribers throughout the 7 levels (Monday to Sunday).

For the purposes of our card game we have 6 different types of cards. There are newspaper cards, coloured houses, grey houses, cars, kids on skateboards, and kids on trikes. Each card has different rules:

Newspaper Cards: These are your main cards. They are used to collect points by combining them with Coloured House cards, or lose points when combined with Grey Houses.

Coloured Houses: these are subscriber`s houses. They need paper delivered to them either in the player`s hand or placed into the pile for the other player to compete for. When a coloured house is placed down, any other player can score the point. To score, the newspaper they have must be delivered quickly. Once the paper has been delivered they keep the combination to keep track of their score.

Grey Houses: these are non-subscribers. These houses do not get paper delivered to them.  If a paper is delivered that player keeps that combination as a -1 to their score and there is one less newspaper in the deck.

Trikers: these kids constantly get in the players way. These cause the next player to lose their turn.

Skateboarders: these troublemakers steal all of the current newspapers the next player is holding. These newspapers are placed at the top of the discard pile and the player must draw the same number of cards they lost before they play a card.

Cars: these combine the troubles caused by trikers and skateboarders. The next player loses all of their newspapers and their turn is skipped. They do NOT draw any number of lost cards from the deck.

Play continues until there are no newspapers left to deliver and the player with the highest delivery rate wins.

There were a few issues creating this game. First of all, it is difficult to take an established idea, a game that already exists, and create a brand new type of game from it. One of the biggest issues was creating a reason to play coloured houses. I believe this was fixed with the delivery competitions, though I`m still not sure if players will want to play coloured houses unless it is the only thing in their hand.

We also found that there would be no point to have coloured houses if the player could not combine them in their own hand. If the player was expected to place them to continue play without any possible reward for themselves they would quickly realize that they were just giving points to other players.  

The grey houses were another difficulty. These cards would make more sense in a game built more like ‘War’. For example players would have to react more quickly to the image of the house to gain the point; they may not notice it is a grey house until it’s too late. This is mostly fixed by the ‘War’-like idea of delivery competitions. This makes players react more quickly to the image of the house and more likely to place a newspaper on the wrong type of house.

The rest of the cards are simple cards to annoy the player after you, causing players to lose a turn or drop all of their newspapers.

Since the goal is not to be the first to get rid of all of your cards I think this will make an interesting game. I hope everyone enjoys our rendition of Paperboy!

Land Ho!

The Island, The Treasure, The ... Fruit?

For the latest Game Design project, I was once again recruited by Jordon Mattison, Alex Golenishchev and Sidd Panchal. After wrestling Jordon away from his polygons (his first game was “Battle Squares”, followed by our last game “Battle Hexagons”. I think there was a pattern emerging...) Alex presented an idea of pirates on a desert island collecting treasures, and Natives on that island collecting resources. 

After a fair amount of brainstorming the inner workings of the game we all split off to create… The Island Adventure!

4, 8, 15, 16, 23... Wait wrong island!

On the island you play as either a Pirate or a Native. The available roles depend on the number of players.

• 2 Players: 1 Pirate, 1 Native
• 3 Players: 2 Pirates, 1 Native
•  4 Players: 2 Pirates, 2 Natives

Each player chooses one of 4 starting locations (2 for Pirates, 2 for Natives). Players travel around the board using a 6 sided dice. They can travel in any direction they want to collect treasures from the “Items” spaces. Once a Player has 5 cards in their hand they are unable to draw any more until they discard one first. Players must take their chances, while they could easily discard a Banana to find a Gold Chest, they could also just find Sand.

If 2 players land on the same space they can steal cards from one another. They fan their cards out to their opponent (keeping the face of the card hidden) and both players simultaneously draw 1 random card from the opponent’s hand.

After 20 rounds the players tally up their scores to figure out which player has attained the most valuable items. This can be done in two different ways at the same time.

        1.   Using the value system

The value system uses the value of each item as displayed on the cards. The value of the item depends if the player is a Native or a Pirate (Natives have no use for a Gold Coin, just as Pirates have no use for a Coconut). The value of the players cards are only calculated if it is necessary for a combination or a player has no combination.

The item values are as follows:

Items                                    Pirate Value       Native Value

Native Knitting Set                         0                           4

Coconut                                        1                            5

Banana                                          3                            7

Watermelon                                   5                            9

Pineapple                                       7                           10

Dragon Fruit                                  8                           13                                                                                              

Pirate Scope                                 4                            0

Ivory Carving                                5                           1

Treasure Map                               7                            3

Gold Coin                                     9                           5

Gold Chest                                   10                          7

Diamond                                      13                           8

Sand                                             0                           0

Sailor's Skeleton                            1                           1

Water                                            2                           2

Fire                                               3                           3

Cloth                                             4                           4

Rusty old pistol                              5                           5

Gun powder                                  6                           6

Rum                                              7                           7

                                                                                                                                             

Cards Natives will want

Cards Pirates will want

Cards equally useful/useless by Pirates or Natives

         2.    Using the combo system

The combo system is used to boost players score if they collect a certain combination of items, much like in poker with the “4 of a kind” and “Royal Flush” and all that. Although our Island Adventure uses quite a few more combinations that poker, they are:

Combos                                                                                                      Value
5 fruit - "Eating Good Tonight"                                                                x1.5 hand score
4 fruit, 1 Dragon Fruit - "Eating Good Tomorrow"                                    x2.0 hand score
2 Watermelon, 2 Pineapple, 1 Dragon Fruit - "Eating Good All Week"     x3.0 hand score
2 Banana, 2 Pineapple, 1 Dragon Fruit - "Eating Like A King"                 x5.0 hand score
5 treasure - "Good Haul"                                                                           x1.5 hand score
4 treasure, 1 Diamond - "Excellent Haul"                                                  x2.0 hand score
2 Gold Coins, 2 Gold chests, 1 Diamond - "Amazing Haul"                       x3.0 hand score
2 Treasure Map, 2 Gold Chest, 1 Diamond - "Perfect Haul"                      x5.0 Hand score
4 Coconuts 1 banana - "Suggestive Eating"                                             40
4 Ivory Carving 1 treasure map - "Promise of Fortune"                            40
5 Watermelons - "Melon Party!"                                                              50
5 Gold Coin - "Rolling in Gold!"                                                              50
4 Gold Coin, 1 Gold Chest - "Money, and a place to put it"                    60
Gun Powder, coconut, fire - "Explosive Nuts"                                          Combo counts as 15
Fire, Cloth, Rum - "Molotov"                                                                    Combo counts as 20
Sailor's Skeleton, Gold Chest - "Dead Man’s Gold"                                +5 to hand
Gun Powder, coconut, cloth, rum, fire - "Island Demo-kit"                        30
5 Sand - "I like sand"                                                                                26
Rusty old pistol, Sand, Fire, Water, Gun powder - "Fixed Pistol"               30
5 Native Knitting Set - "Staying Warm"                                                     100 if Native
5 Pirate Watch glass - "A Way Home"                                                       100 if Pirate
Dragon Fruit, Diamond, 3 Rum - "Lucky Mans find"                                 120

Some rules can be confusing at this point such as the “Combo counts as 15” or “+5 to hand” so I explained it in the general rules document.

Players can have combos within their hand (such as the “Molotov” which will count as 20 points), following that, the player adds the value of the last 2 items in their hand to get the total value.

In some cases players can have multiple combos. For example you are a pirate with a “Molotov” and “Dead Man’s Gold”, in this case the Molotov counts as 20 points, the Sailor’s skeleton is 1 point, the Gold Coin is 9 points, and the “Dead Man’s Gold” adds 5. Your total would be 35 points.

One Minor Issue

The only thing I don’t like about our game is how (as I've noticed with a few of games each group has made) is the rule that “After a number of rounds the game ends”. There’s no explanation as to why the game ends and it takes away any end goal, making the whole experience seem pointless. But at the same time I believe the game would be far too massive if we kept the collection going until someone was somehow able to escape the island.

My goal for the future is to try and put a stop to this pointless "end of game" rule. It’s easy enough to tweak the theme to incorporate some threat that will end the game in so many rounds. That would make much more sense than just ending the game.

The ending of the game can be easily fixed by adding some bad guy wanting to destroy the island and either paying him off (Pirate) or getting help from the island gods (Native)... There I more or less fixed it, but at the moment it's not worth reworking the items around this idea.

Aside from that I think this game is great and I hope everyone enjoys their own Island Adventure!