Blog - Weekly Game 8 - Intensity (Spelunky Custom Level)
Wednesday, May 6, 2009I'm doing something a little bit different this week, as I'm behind in my weekly design challenges.
Instead of doing a new non-digital game, I'll submit as my design challenge the custom level I made for Spelunky last week:
The level is called "Intensity".
Here's a video of it in action (at a tragically slow frame rate):
To play it yourself, first download and install the free game Spelunky, which can be downloaded here.
Then download my level here (right click the link and select "Save Link As" from the drop down menu, otherwise you'll just open the level as a text file), and save the file into your Spelunky levels folder.
Finally, boot up the game and in the opening title screen room, press F3, which opens the level loading menu. Find intensity in the list, click on it, and load it.
(You might want to try your hand at playing the tutorial and normal game first for a while to get used to the controls and what all you can do in the game...)
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Designing the game:
I had always intended to do a digital game for a weekly game, although was intending by that to at some point throw together some really simple flash game. I suppose a quick level in Spelunky will do.
It's a pretty nice little platformer game and so I was intrigued when I found out there was a level editor hidden in the game that I could play with.
In any case, I decided to try and create a level that invoked a particular feeling. In this case, that emotion I went with was sheer panic.
As such, the pacing in my design is an interesting starting point for discussion. I admittedly do not allow the player to stop to catch a breath for very long, if at all, although I won't say there isn't a sense of pacing either. There are a few moments where an enemy will approach soon as opposed to immediately. However, the intensity is kept at a pretty high level fairly consistently overall.
I originally had it so there were enemies on the opposite side of the player that forced him to start running from the get-go (immediate panic), but I eventually cut them. In a level that was already fairly difficult, having enemies charging the player from the moment the level is loaded seemed too harsh.
On the subject of it's difficulty, I'm a little torn about that.
I generally don't like to be the kind of designer that tries to outsmart or overcome the player. This level is definitely a level designed to challenge and push players, and I suspect many will not be able to beat it easily, if at all. (I myself have only beaten it maybe 5 times...)
I think in this case it's acceptable largely given the game I made it for. Spelunky is a difficult game in general, and sometimes completing even level 1 of the original main game is difficult. Some of the custom levels that 'ship' with the game are far more cruel than my design.
Of course, I don't know how solidly I believe in that argument: I used to often make levels/tracks for Freetar and Frets on Fire (PC homebrew clones of Guitar Hero), and was constantly annoyed with the community of track-makers making largely only expert-level tracks. Most were only making tracks because they had already beaten every level of the original Guitar Hero games, and craved new challenges, so only expert-level tracks were being made. So, I suppose that's similar to me making the argument that it's okay to make a cruelly difficult level for Spelunky as the main game is already so challenging.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 5:09 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game 7: Casually Devious
Tuesday, April 21, 2009Introduction: In this party game, players attempt to complete secret missions during the course of their normal conversation and behavior, all while preventing opponents from completing their missions.
Players: 2+
(game meant to be played with a group of people at a small, casual party setting)
Materials:
-index cards or paper
-pen/pencil
Setup:
On index cards (or small, identical slips of paper) everyone should write down 1"mission" for another player to complete during the next 15 minutes of the party.
These are the mission cards.
Example missions could include:
-"Get someone at the party to bring you a drink"
-"Get someone at the party to tell you what time it is."
-"Change the channel on the TV."
-"Enter and Exit the bathroom."
-"Make at least 2 people laugh simultaneously"
-"Tell a story involving a school bus."
etc.
Once all players have created a mission card, have one player collect all the mission cards, and after shuffling them face-down distribute one random mission card to each player.
Once all players have their mission cards, begin a new round of play, which lasts 15 minutes.
How to Play:
At any time within the 15 minute round, a player can attempt to complete the secret mission they have written down on their card.
If the mission was completed successfully, the player announces that their mission has been completed, and reveals their mission card, which is kept as one "point" of score.
Once under suspicion that another player is attempting to complete a secret goal, players cannot touch, trap or bind the opposing player in any way when attempting to stop that player's completion of a goal. The only way of completely stopping a player is to make an accusation against that player.
Making an Accusation:
If a player thinks they know what another player's secret mission is, that player may make an accusation at the risk of losing their own mission card.
The accusing player must declare their accusation to all players, stating what they think the accused player's mission is. The accused player must then reveal to all players their mission card.
- If the accusation was correct (the accused player's mission was approximately what the accusing player stated) then the accusing player collects the accused player's mission card as their own point.
- If the accusation was incorrect then the accused player gets to collect the accusing player's mission card as a point!
Group consensus shall be used in case of doubt as to whether the accusation can be considered accurate or valid. If no consensus can be reached, the accusing player is given the benefit of the doubt and earns the mission card as a point.
End of a Round:
Once the 15 minutes are up, players can decide if they want to play another round.
If so, new mission cards can be created to replace the ones that were collected as points. Once the new mission cards are distributed, another 15 minute round begins.
Mission cards collected as points are kept as an indication of total score.
Winning the Game:
The player with the most mission cards collected as points when all players have decided to cease play is the winner.
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Designing the game:
I thought it'd be interesting to do a party game, and thought the idea of blending the game play into what players are already doing at the party was an interesting twist.
As I've mentioned before, I really like working with hidden information in my designs, and this can clearly be seen in the design of Casually Devious.
It's a completely last minute addition, but I really like the way the missions are created and distributed (each player creates one mission, and players get a randomly selected mission from the entire set created by all players) because it means your particular mission is only known by you and the original player who created it, which could be hypothetically the same person.
This leaves what most missions even are completely unknown to most players, and as the missions are designed to be blended into the normal behavior of the players, one has to question any activity the players are engaging in as a part of the game even if the action was not intended to be.
It allows players to still be free to engage in normal interactions/behaviors at the party, but makes all of those activities a part of game.
Because this game is so open ended, this was another game that needed a tie-breaker system of some kind. I like to try to tie such systems to the other mechanics/materials used in the game itself. For example, in Pennies and Dimes, a game played mostly with coins, the tie breaking mechanic was the flip of a coin. So, for this game, I decided to use group consensus since the game is meant to be played at a party, with a large group of people, and meant to be a very social game. (Again, the mechanics of this game are entirely built around the social behavior players are normally engaging in at a party.)
I feel this one is still pretty rough and messy and could use some play testing and more iteration to clean up the clunkier elements of the design.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 10:47 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
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 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game 5: Jerks in a Minefield
Sunday, February 22, 2009Introduction: The title of this game says it all: in this game players find themselves in a minefield with the goal of being the only one left alive.
Players: 2-4
Materials:
-1 6-sided die
-25 square tiles (you can make your own from paper, index cards, etc.)
-tokens to represent the players (coins, beads, etc.)
On 10 of the tiles, draw a skull on one side - these tiles are the tiles that have mines.
Setup:
Take 9 of the unmarked tiles, and lay them down on the table in the shape of a cross, with one tile forming the center and 2 tiles out in each of the 4 directions from it.
Shuffle the remaining tiles and add them (face down so the skulls are not showing!) until you have a 5 x 5 grid of tiles, with the initial cross forming the center lines for each axis. This grid acts as the game board.
place your character tokens on the center square of each outside edge of the grid.
-In the case of a three-player game, one edge will not be used.
-In a two-player game, each player controls two tokens, set on opposite sides of the board.
How to Play:
In the game players attempt to move around the board, avoiding landmines, and attempting to get into position where they can shove opposing players into the mines.
Movement:
There are two kinds of movement in this game: cautious movement and fast movement.
In cautious movement, the player's character is attempting to navigate the minefield using their minesweeper. A player attempting cautious movement can only move one tile in that turn, but has the choice of revealing one adjacent tile (to either their starting OR ending position). The player does not have to reveal the tile to any other player - it can be considered that player's own strategic knowledge.
In fast movement, the player does not get the luxury of revealing tiles but can potentially move much faster. Players using fast movement may roll the die and travel that many tiles on that turn.
In either case, for any tile landed on, players should flip over that tile to reveal it. The exception is the central cross tiles, which are always mine-free.
Should the player have stepped on a mine-tile (a tile with a skull) then his or her movement is halted immediately and they are killed.
Once a mine has been detonated, leave it skull-side up. This is an inactive mine, and players can travel over it in future turns.
[optional movement rule: have players allowed to travel over potentially mine-ridden tiles with a die roll: On a roll of 4, 5, or 6, the player crosses the tile fine, but on a roll of 1, 2, or 3, the mine detonates and the player is killed.]
Shoving:
When players are at any point in their turn on a tile adjacent to an opponent, they can chose to shove the opponent. The shove, if successful, will move the opponent up to 2 tiles in the direction the opponent was from the player.
Example: If the opponent was to the left of the shoving player, the opponent will be shoved 2 tiles to the left.
If the player is near-enough to the edge of the board that they cannot travel 2 tiles, then they'll only be shoved as far as they can.
To perform a shove, both players involved will roll the die. If the shoving player rolls equal to or higher than her opponent, then the shoving player was successful and the opponent is moved 2 spaces. Again, as the opponent crosses each tile, flip each tile over and if that tile contain a skull, the mine is exploded and that shoved player is killed.
Ghosts:
If you're a player who got blown up by a mine, don't despair! Although you've lost the chance to win you're not out of the game quite yet.
When a player gets killed, they lose their next turn, but then return as a ghost.
Ghosts no longer have a token and therefore no longer move.
Instead, on a ghost's turn, the ghost can perform one of the following actions:
-Reveal a tile. Much like how players can reveal a tile to themselves during cautious movement, a ghost players can reveal any tile on the board to themselves on their turn.
-Re-activate an already exploded mine. Simply flip over the tile back to its original state.
This can be done to a tile that a living player is currently standing on, which causes it to explode yet again and kill that player!
-Swap tiles. Pick two tiles and switch their positions with each other.
This is the only way the central cross and player start locations can be rigged
with mines. Note that a deactivated (already exploded) mine does not re-activate when moved!
Whether or not a ghost is allowed to swap tiles that players are currently standing on should be decided by the players before the game begins. Should a ghost be allowed to, placing an active mine under a player causes it to instantly explode and kill that player.
-Shove. Last but not least, ghosts can also shove players. A ghost wishing to shove can roll the die and on a roll of 6, can shove any living player up to two tiles in any direction the ghost wants.
The rules shoving are otherwise the same as for living players.
Winning the Game:
The last player left alive wins.
In the case of a two-player game, the team with at least one token left alive wins.
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Designing the game:
Still interested in playing around with the idea of tile-laying games, I decided a mine-field would make for an interesting choice of theme for such a game, particularly as I also like playing around with imperfect and/or asymmetric information in my designs. Very early on I came up with the title of the game, and that influenced a lot of the design. ;)
I found early on in playtesting the game that leaving the whole board completely up to random shuffling often created situations where certain players were completely sealed up in certain areas. This is why I ended up ensuring that there was at least one safe path to every other player through the use of the central cross. However, the downside of this is it causes players to not want to ever leave this safe path, so the game often gets a little gridlocked. It also left the areas where players could potentially stumble into mines shoved off into the corners of the map where they seem less effective (for a game that's entirely based around the gimmick)
Unfortunately I thought only of the optional die-roll to cross through mined areas too late, and I haven't had the chance to playtest if that concept can be used to once again allow a completely random distribution of mines around the board, which is regrettable as it seems like that could work and would produce a game more like the original concept I was intending. I also feel like it empowers players with yet another strategic choice, with some risk-reward going on: to risk getting to move through a dangerous tile on a 50/50 chance...
While on the subject of the optional movement rule, the reason there's several optional, player-decided rules to this game were in part due to my lack of time to playtest this game properly (currently working on programming three different games all due this week! eek!) In the case of the optional rule involving whether or not ghosts are allowed to swap tiles someone is currently on, I left optional because I myself couldn't decide whether this should be allowed or not. On the one hand, being the victim of this move could make one feel rather cheated, but on the other hand one of the ideas I wanted to explore with this game with the ghost mechanics in general was the idea of not being too much of a jerk or else it will (literally) come back to haunt you, and the swap-to-instant-kill rule would be a prime example of this.
I decided to leave it as a player-decided rule to A.) empower the players with yet another choice B.) soften the feeling of being cheated should you fall victim to the move if you had agreed to the rule earlier.
For these weekly game experiments I've been tending to stick to games with short play-times because it's always handy to have something quick to play and because I make and therefore also playtest these games in a short span of time, producing a game I can playtest and iterate quickly is very helpful.
Therefore, because this is a game that goes by quickly AND is centered entirely around player-killing and a last-man-standing goal, I felt like it was a good game to try my hand at a mechanic that other students in one of my classes explored during one game project: the idea of having eliminated players return as ghosts to cause mischief in order to let players keep playing to prevent downtime. I felt it was especially suitable for this game, given the title and theme: players are expected to get into character and actually be a jerk in this minefield, but now it can literally come back to haunt them. Also, as a consolation prize for already being eliminated from the competition, the ghost players get to cause lots of silly chaos, which lets them be jerks even from beyond the grave.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 11:58 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game 4: Parkour
Saturday, February 7, 2009Introduction: This game attempts to simulate the urban sports of parkour and free-running, where participants overcome obstacles of the urban environment with feats of agility.
In free-running, runners attempt to keep moving forward despite all obstacles they may encounter. In this game, players are to try to live up to this philosophy and keep advancing until they encounter an obstacle they can't handle.
Players: 1 (Solitaire)
Materials:
-A standard deck of playing cards
-Plenty of table space!
Setup:
Shuffle the deck and lay the top card from the deck face-up on the table to act as the first obstacle card.
Next draw 5 cards for your hand of cards.
Set aside the rest as a draw deck, leaving space to discard cards.
How to Play:
It is first important to note the differences between the cards in your hand and the cards acting as the obstacles you encounter.
Hand Cards:
The cards in the player's hand represents the abilities of their runner.
The different card suits determine how these cards are used:
*Spades represent their runner's ability to jump or vault over obstacles.
*Clubs represent their runner's ability to overcome other kinds of obstacles through miscellaneous feats like sliding or climbing.
*Hearts represent their runner's endurance, and ability to push forward in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. They are used to either modify the power of Spade or Club cards, or can be exchanged for a new random draw.
*Diamonds represent the runner's perception and quick-thinking - it is used to explore possible alternative routes and plan combo moves.
Obstacle Cards:
Throughout play, the game world will be built using cards laid down onto the table as tiles. These cards represent the obstacles the runner will face in the game world.
The suits of the cards determine what kind of obstacle is encountered:
*Spades represent obstacles that players must jump or vault over, using spade cards from their hand.
*Clubs represent obstacles that players must use alternative means to overcome, by playing cards of the clubs suit from their hand.
*Hearts represent an open stretch, free of obstacles. No card from the player's hand is required to pass this card, but the card also awards the player with no new card either.
*Diamonds represent obstacles that the player can foresee multiple ways of overcoming the obstacle. Either spades or clubs cards from the player's hand can be used to overcome this kind of obstacle.
Defeating Obstacles:
The player can defeat obstacles with the cards from their hand.
To overcome an obstacle, play a card from your hand with a number matching or higher than the number on the obstacle card.
Example: If the next obstacle is a 7 of spades, if the player has an 8, 9, or 10 of spades, or any of the face cards (including Aces!) of the spades suit, then any one of those cards can be played to overcome the obstacle.
In the case of an obstacle that is a diamond card, the player can play a higher-or-matching spades or clubs card to overcome the obstacle.
Example: If the next obstacle is a 5 of diamonds, the player can play a 5 of spades, a 5 of clubs, or any higher card from their hand of the spades or clubs suits.
Cards from the player's hand of the hearts suit can be used to boost the power of the runner's moves.
Example:If the next obstacle is a 7 of spades, and the player only has a 3 of spades but also has in his hand a 4 of hearts, he can play both those two cards from his hand to defeat the 7 of spades.
The player can also choose to discard any hearts card from his hand to draw a new card from the draw deck.
Lastly, The player can spend cards in his hand of the diamond suit to find alternative obstacles to overcome if the current one looks too daunting, or if he wants to risk performing a combo.
To explore an alternative route, simply discard one diamonds card from your hand, and draw a new card from the draw deck to act as a new obstacle, placing it directly to the left or right of the current obstacle.
The player can then choose to tackle the original obstacle OR this new obstacle OR play another diamond card to explore yet another possible route.
Alternatively, players can choose to play a diamond card to draw and place a card directly behind the current obstacle or an obstacle of an alternative route.
If the player can defeat both obstacles (or more, if the future sequence was continued) with the cards in his hand, then the player is said to have performed a combo of moves very elegantly, and this will award the player with more cards for his hand (see the next section)
Acquiring New Cards for the Hand:
For every obstacle card the player overcomes, draw 1 card from the draw deck to place immediately behind it as the next obstacle (unless the player performed a combo, in which case, place the next card behind the end of the combo sequence).
If a hearts card was drawn, draw and place yet another card after it, until a heart card is not drawn.
Once the next obstacle has been placed, the player may then draw the next top card from the draw deck into their hand.
If the player performs a combo, draw an additional card for each extra obstacle the player defeated in a single turn. As hearts do not count as a proper obstacle, they do not award this additional point.
Winning the Game:
Once the player can no longer make a move (In other words, the player encounters only obstacles they cannot defeat) then the game is over.
Award one point for each row of cards in the sequence of obstacle cards - i.e. one point for every move forward the player made. This does include heart cards.
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Designing the game:
I had explored this game as an idea for an earlier weekly game, but ended up building the DJ game instead for that week's challenge. I lacked the materials necessary for my other game idea for this week, so I decided to revisit the Parkour game for this week's challenge.
I liked the idea of using playing cards as tiles for a tile-laying board sort of game ala Carcassone, much like I did in the previous challenge, Pennies and Dimes. It certainly made sense given that Free Running is largely about spatial awareness and use of space, so needed to make a game that involved some sort of game world to provide the obstacles the runner was to overcome. Tile-laying of cards seemed like a reasonable solution to this problem.
I liked the core idea behind free running that the participants are intended to move forward at all costs, regardless of what obstacles they may face, and that the run is done when they can no longer move forwards. (By comparison, parkour allows runners to change directions and is more free-form - according to my research that's the main difference between the two related sports)
In any case, I thought it was the reasonable basis for a game based on the two sports.
I took a bit of inspiration from a few earlier games I had done, namely the earlier weekly game Creature Battles, as well as a game I worked on for one class using a CCG as the basis of a tabletop RPG, in using the properties of various cards to act as the stats for your player.
I especially liked the mechanic of using diamonds as a representation of the runner's perception and quick-thinking to find alternative pathways or alternative means of overcoming obstacles or plan advanced combos.
Still, this system lead to a few clunkier features of this game I haven't yet found solutions to that satisfy me yet, such as what happens when the player draws hearts cards as obstacles.
The current solution works, but doesn't at all feel like the best solution yet.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 2:21 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game: ....my game for the Global Game Jam.
Saturday, January 31, 2009As I'm participating in the Global Game Jam, I'm going to count the game I'm making for that as my weekly game this week.
The game jam is already insane enough. ;)
Labels: global game jam, weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 8:41 AM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game 3: Pennies and Dimes
Sunday, January 25, 2009Introduction: In this game, two players lay down playing cards as tiles, and attempt to land thrown coins onto the cards for points.
Players: 2
Materials:
-A standard deck of playing cards
-5 pennies
-5 dimes
-another coin for flipping to solve disputes
Setup:
Shuffle the deck and lay the top card from the deck face-down in the middle of the playing surface or table.
Each player should then draw 7 cards.
Set aside the rest of the deck as a draw deck to draw new cards from, and leave space to discard unwanted cards.
Players must then discard any two cards of their choice from their hand, so they start with a hand of 5 cards.
Players should decide who will be the Red Player and who will be the Black Player.
The red player gets the 5 pennies, and the black player gets 5 dimes.
As there is a slight disadvantage to the player who goes first, a coin-flip should be done to determine which player gets to go last.
How to Play:
This game has two phases: Tile Laying and The Coin Toss.
Tile Laying:
In this phase, players take turns placing the cards from their hand down as tiles, in order to create targets for themselves to aim for, or for their opponents to accidentally hit.
Cards must be placed edge-to-edge from a card already on the table, which can include the face-down card in the middle. Cards cannot be placed diagonally, as in corner-to-corner.
Players may also pay for the right to discard one of their cards in their hand and draw a new card. Doing so costs one of their 5 coins. This can be done as many times as the player wants, although the player needs at least one coin for the second phase.
Players may also choose to trade cards with one another at any time during this phase.
When both players have laid down 5 cards, the game moves to the second phase.
The Coin-Toss:
Players now take turns trying to toss their coins onto cards for points.
Each player tosses only one coin each turn.
The red player earns points for any red card (Hearts or Diamonds) a coin lands on, and the black player earns points for any black card (Spades and Clubs) that coins land on.
This point-earning is true regardless of which player threw the coin, making it possible to accidentally score points for your opponent.
A card earns points equal to the number of the card.
So a coin landing on the 7 of diamonds earns the red player 7 points, regardless of which player's coin landed there.
For face cards, just continue numbering, so a Jack would be worth 11 points, a Queen worh 12 points, and a King worth 13 points.
Aces are high, at 14 points.
If a coin lands in between two or more cards, players should try to determine which card the coin is "on" the most.
Example: if 1/3rd of a coin rests on the king of spades and the other 2/3rds are over the 3 of hearts, then the red player would earn 3 points.
If there is dispute over where exactly a coin has landed, or if a particular throw was unfair in some way, flip a coin to determine which player gets to make the final call.
Points are scored only after all coins are thrown.
As such, if a coin is knocked into a new position by a later coin, its final resting place is what is scored.
After all coins are thrown, the face-down card is revealed and all cards are that coins landed on (including the face-down card) are scored.
Winning the Game:
Once all coins have been thrown, the player with the most points wins.
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Designing the game:
I only realized late on Saturday night that I hadn't created a new game for this weekend yet, so many of the design decisions resulted from this near-panic.
I needed a game that sounded quick to design and playtest.
You'll note a play session of this game is fairly brief and that's intentional.
Partially so because I didn't have much time to make or playtest the game, so a short game allows for far more playtesting. Secondly, I'm interested in games with short play times, as players can play even if they only have a few minutes to spare, and if they have more, they can always play again.
I had earlier considered a game where the 'board' was created by a random scattering of cards and players would attempt to bounce a rubber ball in ways to try and land on high-point cards, perhaps with some sort of multiplier for each subsequent card the ball hits. I even bought rubber balls for this, but never ended up even trying that idea (future weekly game, maybe?) instead deciding (due to a lack of suitable testing space in my cluttered living room) to go with a scattering of coins instead.
So with that rather simple base mechanic, I decided to try to think of ways to make a game a bit more deep.
I decided first there should be some sort of strategic card placement, rather than a random scattering, providing some sort of strategy. Players can chose to try to keep their cards separate as larger target areas, or infect rival player's target areas with their own cards hoping to be accidentally hit.
Initially I was envisioning the coins would all be thrown all at once as a giant scattering, but in practice throwing individual coins one at a time was far more effective. Players could build strategies and planning based on their previous throws (or throws of their opponent!) and it builds tension as they increasingly run out of future chances.
Taking turns for the throws aides in balancing and this building tension, and especially with the possibility of bumping coins out of position, adds an element of strategy as well.
I realized from my observation of the carnival games at the Renaissance fair (mentioned in an early entry) that games that involve throwing objects at a target have a wonderful quality of luring players into believing that they always have a chance. Throwing is so basic and fundamental, we imagine it in our heads to be easier than it actually is, so even after continue failing to hit a target we still think "Next time, if I just aim a little bit higher, I just know I could hit it."
The coin-toss phase of this game proved to ring very true in this aspect - it is much harder to get a coin to land on a specific card than I had anticipated.
This lets the strategy of placing cards so that your opponent will accidentally land their coins on your cards very viable. Still, with a bit of practice, I got better and better at getting the coins to land approximately where I wanted, but it was still random enough with the ways the coins would bounce or slide to add some randomness for surprises.
Because I had already decided that cards should be strategically placed to create a strategic round of play before the more dexterity/skill-based (and admittedly very random) play of tossing the coins, I decided to play with an affordance of playing cards I had not yet employed, realizing that cards could be used as tiles in a strategic tile-laying game format.
For this I took some inspiration from Carcassone. I liked how Carcassone starts players with a root tile from which to build their world off of, and felt that kind of grounding is helpful to players. However, unlike the root tile of Carcassone, there was no reason players needed to actually see what the card was, and decided it was an interesting chance to add a bit of hidden information, using the root card as a sort of wildcard. I think it adds a little bit more interest to the game having the middle of the 'board' as a wildcard, and liked the aesthetic quality of the core of the game world being an different, icon card unlike the rest.
As it was apparent this game is one where the latter player gets the advantage (of reacting to the first player's moves) I determined there may be a need for determining player order. Having also created games before where tossing an object at a target was a key mechanic, I knew that disputes can arise as to whether the tossing player was too unfairly close to the target, or somehow performed an illegal throw, etc. Through playtesting it also became apparent that coins rarely landed squarely onto any one card. So I realized I needed mechanics for dispute resolution. An obvious answer manifested: a.) Players were expected to already have coins as part of the required materials for the game b.) There are exactly two players anyway and c.) not only does the game use coins, but the core mechanic involves tossing coins.
Having players perform a coin-toss (flipping a coin) was a logical answer as it fits perfectly with the already established core and theme, it's a binary randomizer perfect for a game with exactly two opposing forces, and reused one of the game's existing materials for a new purpose, playing off the affordances of a coin as a binary surface.
Several mechanics of the tile-laying phase were added because I was often winding up starting with terrible hands and felt the game needed more opportunity for players to upgrade their hand with something they could actually use.
Since the game already gave the players a stockpile of the coin resource used for the latter phase, I decided it would be an interesting risk-reward situation to have players spend the coins (a logical affordance of coins!) to attempt to purchase an upgrade. Players could risk one less coin to throw to attempt to find a better card to aim for.
As the red players was often winding up with a starting hand of all black cards and vice-versa, and given that hitting target cards was often more difficult than one anticipates anyway, I decided allowing players to trade cards with one another could be used as an alternative card-replacing choice. It fosters social interaction that benefits games like this, and leaves the players more likely to end up with cards that benefit each player, where it would have otherwise left both of them frustrated.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 1:06 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game 2: Warm-Up DJ
Sunday, January 18, 2009Introduction: A Warm-Up DJ's job is to get everyone prepped, excited and ready for when the headliner, peak-hour DJ spins.
In this game you play as a warm-up DJ, trying to get everyone onto the dance floor.
Players: 1 (Solitaire)
Materials:
A standard deck of playing cards and some kind of small tokens, such as coins.
Optionally, some sort of surface to represent the dance floor portion of the club, like a large book, may be useful.
Setup:
On the playing surface, define an specific area to act as the dance floor. The rest of the area is considered to be off the dance floor.
Shuffle the deck and lay the top 10 cards face-down in the area outside the dance floor.
Split the remaining deck approximately in half, and set aside the bottom half (it will not be used.) Of the remaining deck, the player may then look at the cards, and select any 5 cards into his hand. Set aside all remaining cards as they will also not be used.
The player should now have 10 face-down cards on the table, and a hand of 5 cards of their choosing.
At this point, the player can now flip over the 10 face-down cards and begin the game.
How to Play:
The player's hand represents the DJ's music collection, and the 10 cards on the table represent the people in the club, called the dancers.
Playing certain cards from the hand will cause the dancers to react in different ways.
Cards played that are similar to a dancer will attract them to the dance floor.
Similarities include:
-Cards of the same number/face
-Cards of the same suit (diamonds, hearts, spades, clubs)
-Cards that are even numbers or odd numbers will attract one another.
(Evens attract evens, odds attract odds)
Some cards will repel certain dancers, however:
-Even-numbered cards will repel odd-numbered cards, and vice-versa
-Hearts and Spades repel each other
-Diamonds and Clubs repel each other
Note: Face cards (Jacks, Queens, Clubs and Aces) do not count as numbers and therefore are not effected either positively or negatively by even or odd numbered cards!
Example:
Playing a 3 of diamonds will attract all diamonds, 3's and odd-numbered dancers onto the dance floor. (With the exception of the opposite card - see below)
Tokens:
the tokens represent a dancer's level of enthusiasm and endurance.
When cards are played that appeal to a dancer certain amounts of tokens will be placed on that dancer.
Cards that repel a dancer will take tokens away from them.
All dancers also lose a token each turn (as real dancers get tired after a while.)
When a dancer runs out of tokens, they are removed from the dance floor at the start of the next turn.
Token Placement/Removal Rules:
-If an even-numbered card is played, all even-numbered cards get one more token, and odd-numbered cards lose a token.
-If an odd-numbered card is played, all odd-numbered cards get one more token, and even-numbered cards lose a token.
-All cards matching the same suit as the card played get two more tokens.
Cards of the repelling suit lose 1 more token.
-All cards of the same number as the card played get three more tokens, with one exception:
The card of the same number but of the repelling suit as another card is considered that card's opposite.
The opposite card will be instantly repelled completely from the dance floor!
Example: If the player plays a 7 of diamonds, the 7 of hearts (if it were one of the dancers) would get 4 tokens (3 for having the same number, and 1 more for also being odd-numbered), the 2 of diamonds gains 1 token (two for having the same suit but loses one for being even-numbered instead of odd) and the 7 of clubs would instantly lose all it's tokens and be repelled from the dance floor, as it is the opposite card.
Turn Order:
This game has a very specific turn order which must be followed:
1.) Remove dancers that no-longer have tokens.
2.) For any dancers remaining on the dance floor, remove one token.
3.) Play a card from your hand and using the above rules for attraction, see which new cards get attracted to the floor.
(Cards that have been played get set aside and cannot be used again)
4.) Distribute the appropriate number of tokens to cards based on the new card played.
If a card is required to lose a token and has no more tokens left to spare, the card is removed from the dance floor.
Winning the Game:
The player wins when he has all 10 dancers on the dance floor at the end of a turn.
If the player has exhausted all 5 cards from their hand, and all 10 dancers are not on the dance floor, the player has lost.
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Designing the game:
For one of my classes this quarter we had to pitch an expressive game we are to make over the course of the class. One of my pitches was for a DJ game, based on my past work experience as a mobile DJ and my observation that it was very game-like.
Although the professor favored a different pitch of mine for the class project instead, I decided that doing a DJ-simulation game might be suitable for my weekly game challenge.
This game is a little weird, and has some kinks I'd love to work out if I had more time. Balancing proved challenging - the first few iterations were far too easy, and I made the game more challenging. I fear it's a little too challenging now.
The game also relies a little heavily on luck in a negative way, as depending on the initial cards selected, the players can be doomed to fail from the get-go: certain card combinations make it impossible to win. And even when it's technically possible to win, one wrong move can easily doom you to fail. So, if I had more time I'd like to try to play around with fixing those issues.
Another problem comes in with the fact that I didn't have time to have anyone else play test this at all, which is problematic given the rules are a little more complex than I'd have liked. So I hope the game is playable from the above. I'll try to get someone to play test it and update the rules accordingly if there's any glaring holes I missed.
On the issue of complexity, that is another area I struggled with:
complexity vs simulation. The game was intended to simulate what it is like to DJ, and so a large part of the challenge on my end was trying to make a game that simulated the experience as simply as possible.
It's easy to keep adding rules and exceptions, but that makes for a clunkier game, and I wanted to avoid that.
As a result, I think the overall idea came across pretty well, although the game still feels a little abstracted. I'm not sure to what degree that actually bothers me, so I'll mark this game (despite it's flaws) as at least fairly successful in it's goal of simulation. I think the game is far more difficult than actual DJing is, which is problematic, but on the positive side at least it accomplishes my goal of demonstrating that DJing isn't as easy as it looks either.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 1:14 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game 1: Creature Battles
Saturday, January 10, 2009Introduction: In this game, players build creatures with their cards and engage each other's creatures in battle.
Players: 2+
Materials:
A standard deck of playing cards. (Alternative: use two decks)
Setup:
Shuffle the deck and deal three cards to each player. Leave the remaining cards as the draw deck. Leave space for a discard pile next to the draw deck.
How to Play:
On a turn a player must make one of these three actions:
1.) Play a card from their hand on their own creature, and draw a new card.
2.) Play a card from their hand on an opponent's creature, and draw a new card.
3.) Engage in battle with an opponent's creature.
Creatures:
Creatures consist of three cards: a head, a body, and feet.
The players should agree on a system for how these parts should be arrainged.
For example, cards could be arrainged as a vertical column, with the top card being the head, the body card in the middle, and the feet as the last card, closest to the player. Alternatively, players could have a specific way each card is positioned (heads laid down vertically, body's horizontally, feet diagonally, etc.)
Most importantly, however, these cards should be laid face-down on the table, so other players cannot see them.
A player can look at his own creature cards at any time, however.
Creature Construction:
Spades are used to build heads.
Hearts are used to build bodies.
Clubs are used to build feet.
Diamonds can be used to build any of the three parts.
Cards from a player's hand may be played on any creature as a new part.
Parts played on a creature that already has a part of that type (i.e. playing a spades card on a creature that already has a head) will replace the existing part.
The old part gets discarded into the discard pile.
In other words, a creature can only ever have one of each type of part.
When playing a diamonds card on an opponent, the player should specify which part the card will assume (as a head, feet, or body.)
Example:
At the start of the game, player 1 does not have any parts, so she plays a 5 of clubs on her creature to add feet. Player 2 has a 3 of diamonds in their hand they do not want, so on their turn they play it on the player 1 creature's feet. Player 1's creature now has a 2 of diamonds for their feet, and the 5 of clubs is discarded to the discard pile.
Battles:
If on a player's turn they have a complete creature (a head, body, and feet), and an opponent also has a complete creature, the player may choose to battle that opponent's creature.
Players may not play a card AND battle in the same turn.
When a battle is initiated, both players flip over all three of their creature cards.
Each part is compared with that of their opponent, with higher numbers winning (Aces are high). Compare head vs head, body vs body, and feet vs feet. The best two out of three wins.
The winning creature is set aside by that player as an indication that they have earned one victory, and the losing creature is discarded into the discard pile.
In the event of a tie, both creatures lose and are discarded.
Both players can then begin to build a new creature in subsequent turns, but keep their hands.
Example:
Player 1 feels confident that she has a powerful creature, and so on her turn chooses to battle player 2. Both flip over their creature cards.
Player 1's creature has a king of spades for the head, an 8 of hearts for the body, and a jack of diamonds for the feet. Player 2's creature has a 9 of diamonds for the head, a 10 of hearts for the body, and a 7 of clubs for the feet.
Player 1's creature wins, because although it's body is weaker (8 vs 10), her creature's head and feet are more powerful than player 2's creature.
Player 1 keeps her three creature cards off to the side to indicate she has won one victory, and player 2's creature is discarded.
Winning the Game:
The first player to earn 3 victories wins the game.
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Designing the game:
When David did his designs, he stuck with materials players were likely to have around, which I agree is a good idea. I knew I had a deck of cards around and hadn't made many games using it, so i thought I'd give it another try.
I'm also very interested in the idea that gameplay often stems from forms of play we enjoy as children, so I'm trying to explore for now game ideas based around such forms of play. The one that spawned this particular game was the concept of an exquisite corpse, which I remember doing now and then as a child.
The resulting game doesn't feel much like one though, and grew into something else.
The most notable hurtle in the process of creating this first weekly game is playtesting. Creating at least the first iteration of a game is not that difficult. It can easily be done in one sitting. In fact, I had this game's basic design done when I created my first entry on my resolution to do weekly games and had intended to post it then.
But what took all week was getting people to playtest it and provide feedback, revise the rules and experiement with new iterations. I now forsee that process as the tricky part to this weekly challenge. I'll have to ask David how playtested his Sunday design games were.
In any case, I first playtested this game by myself a few times, solitaire, and loved some of the interesting patterns and dynamics that emerge. I particularly like how players can cooperate to defeat an opponent: one player can play an awful card on an opponent so the next player can battle that opponent at an advantage. That players are forced to act with limited information gives the game an interesting, somewhat poker-like feel when it comes time to decide whether to battle or not.
The game still feels like it was not playtested enough, however. People suggested alternate variations that would be interesting to experiment with if I had the time. In particular the flow of this game is a bit odd as it builds up to an intensity when players are ready to battle, but afterwards things die down until people are ready to battle again. This is an issue that would be nice to try and address. But alas, the week is up already and my deadline is here, so like all games, it must be released.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 1:29 PM 0 Comments Links to this post
Blog - Weekly Game Designs: A New Years Resolution
Monday, January 5, 2009I feel I haven't been designing regularly enough.
Perhaps this is merely a strange insecurity, as I'm usually always working on some sort of project, both in class and out.
And I've worked on quite a few games already although many of them never make it into the light, to be seen here or in my portfolio.
In any case, I am in my last year of school, seeking employment upon graduation, so the fear that I'm not doing enough still hits me.
My friend and former design partner David McDonough --now employed at Firaxis-- challenged himself to create a new simple game on a weekly basis to post to his blog.
I admired the discipline, and have long considered running with the idea myself.
Well, I'm not normally one for new years resolutions, but given that this is my final year and I want to shine I'm going to try for it.
I'll provide my first offering in a separate entry.
Each game in the series will be tagged with a special "weekly game" tag.
Labels: weekly game
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 7:48 PM 0 Comments Links to this post