Blog - Weekly Game 6: Tape Worm
Wednesday, April 8, 2009Introduction: In this game, players compete to have their tape-worms eat the most points, growing them one segment at a time.
Players: 2-4
Materials:
-standard sheets of paper
-1 roll of scotch tape
-1 pen or marker
Setup:
The game's board is a single sheet of paper, and meant to be disposable.
Draw a grid on the paper using the pen or marker.
Each player must then tear 5 pieces of tape for themselves, at whatever lengths they choose.
It is recommended you read the rest of the rules before doing this step, so you can decide what lengths of tape may be appropriate.
Once all players have all 5 of their tape segments, each player should compare their largest tape segment to the largest tape segments of the other players.
Whichever player's longest tape segment is the shortest of those compared is the player that gets to go first.
How to Play:
Players attempt to build a worm out of tape, growing it in ways to eat the most points. This is done by placing the tape over intersection points on the grid.
Tape Laying:
Players take turns selecting one of their 5 segments of tape, and placing them on the paper.
Tape is always played only at right angles.
A player's first tape segment must start with one edge aligned to any point along any edge of the sheet of paper.
An example legal first move.
Tape segments cannot cross over other segments of tape, regardless of which player owns the tape. In other words, a tape worm cannot cross over itself or any other worm. Worms can share edges however, running parallel to each other or themselves.
On a player's future turns, they must build onto their own tape worm by selecting their next tape segment and attaching it at a right angle, touching but not overlapping, to the end of their tape worm.
Examples of legal additions to your own worm:
Players are attempting to place their tape segments down so they cover more intersection points of the grid than their opponent, as each intersection point covered nets one point.
Note how the 2nd player's worm has earned twice as many points as his opponent, just by placing his tape slightly differently.
If a player can no longer place his remaining tape segments, his or her turn will be skipped until the game ends. Players can also elect to not place any more tape segments onto the paper.
Winning the Game:
Once all players have placed all 5 pieces of tape or cannot make another move, the game is over.
Count all the grid-intersections that each player has covered with their tape, and mark them with the pen or marker.
Each grid intersection covered is worth 1 point.
Intersection points that fall on a worm's edge do count as points earned for that worm.
The highest scoring player wins.
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Designing the game:
Back from my hiatus from doing these weekly challenges. (It's been a hectic past few weeks...)
I am currently working on two card games which I didn't do for this week because A.) I felt they needed more time to develop and be balanced, as I feel they have a lot of potential to be made into truly successful games... and B.) Both do kind of shy away from the notion of making games people can easily make and play with junk they already have lying around.
As for the latter point, this game really shines. I made it because I found a note I wrote myself a long while ago that simply stated "Make a game using only tape."
I have no idea what I was thinking of when I first wrote that, but it seemed like an interesting challenge.
I decided doing a sort of tape-based version of Snake seemed like a good starting point, given the properties of tape. In a very early version of this game, I just had a blank sheet of paper with pennies randomly scattered on it, and players took turns building up their tape snakes to try to reach the rapidly dwindling population of uneaten pennies. Although the end result of a bunch of pennies taped to a sheet of paper looked pretty rad, the scattering of pennies was always too random, and the player who went first could often decide the course of the game with his first move.
Even when I later went to the grid system where the 'points' you were trying to eat where the intersections of the grid, the first player still proved to have an unfair advantage. The workaround I created of having the shortest of the longest pieces makes for an interesting twist I enjoy. There's still a big benefit, at least early on in the game, to have a huge segment of tape, but now it's a gamble of whether you want to try to go for collecting those extra few points or going first. It's difficult to gauge exactly how much larger or shorter your segment is to your opponents as you're tearing it off, so it provides some interesting tension.
I really liked the idea of having the players create their tape segments in advance and having to live with the strategic implications of that choice. I love character creation systems in games, as they allow players creativity and to personalize their game. By being allowed to create their own tape units, players are given a choice that is creative and meaningful expression, which greatly affects the outcome of the game.
Trying to plan ahead for having the right sized segment for the right situation leads to interesting strategic thinking, but in a way that doesn't slow the game down too much as it happens before the game actually begins.
And by limiting the players to only 5 segments (and having to fit on the page) it also reduces this analysis paralysis time as there's not actually that many choices possible left, especially as the game goes on. I wanted to make this game a strategy game that was pretty quick and disposable, so that you could play more rounds than just being stuck on one epically long chess-like game of contemplating possible moves.
This game really feels like it's just a prototype for a game that wants to be digital, like a flash game. In digital form, rules like proper placement and perfect right angles could be enforced. I'd have to ensure that the grid was created just randomly enough to still be interestingly varied though.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 3:18 PM
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