Prototype Postulation Practice

The Game

Sorry you lost it.

Over the past few weeks I’ve gone through some light brain activity coming up with ideas for games. I’m pretty... Slow. At least when it comes to designing a working game, even more so if it will be a fun game.
That being said, please accept my condolences for this experiment you’ll be participating in if you try this little game.
The game is called At Odds. It’s a very simple game, with pretty simple rules. Which I’ll explain later. First, here is what you’ll need to construct the game yourself. All the pieces should be relatively easy to find in a house that has games lying around.

You will need:

• A deck of cards. (Make sure to remove all the cards with numbers Ace - 3 and 9 - King, you can even just keep one card from 4-8 in a small pile, up to you.)
• Three to five dice. Depending on the quickness you want from the game. More dice leads to a faster game. Generally I use four.
• Paper to keep score! One sheet should be fine.
• (Optional) A dice cup or other surface for rolling dice. I know plenty of folks who can’t roll dice to save their life without rolling them off of the table. Save some back pain and additional squats by using a dice cup!

The cards!

The dice!

The finished product!

The end result.

Pretty simple, right? Right.
You know what else is simple? The rules of the game (okay maybe not):

• Whoever rolls the lowest on a d6 (six-sided die) goes first. Choose which order players play starting from that player amicably.
• The first player takes a face-down card from the deck and places it face-up in the center of the playing area. Repeat this process each time the first player’s turn comes up. 
• Each turn, that player rolls all the dice (however many you chose to have) then tallies up the amount. Afterward, get the quotient of your roll and the card (the amount of times your card divides evenly into the roll). Ignore the remainder. 
• For example, if I rolled 22 and my card is a seven, I have 3 sevens. This number you have is your points from that turn. With the previous example, I would get 3 points. 
• A player wins if they get a previously agreed-upon amount, in this case I usually stick with 13 since it’s odd and unlucky. 
• (Optional - Can make game longer) If a player would surpass the victory point threshold with one roll, they are instead bumped back to the beginning score plus the number of extra points they gained over 13. (12 pts + 4 roll = 3 points) 

This is pretty much the end of the normal part of my post. Below is a play log and report of how the development of the game progressed as I was working on its intricacies (what few there were).

Game Development Log

Play Log 9/13

The game "Seven" was created among Eduardo, Nick, Tiffany and I. Seven involved dealing each player random hands of cards, and having players take turns to play down their possible combinations that added up to 7 or subtracted down to -7. Solid game, good idea. Played very well.

Seven, in action!

Rules were implemented to enable players to acquire more points when they could play their whole hand to make a seven, and through other ideas.

Play Log 9/18

The game I tried this time was... Hum. I forgot the name of it now. Bother. But Daniel and I tried it out and fleshed out some of the conceptual ideas as we went along. It was a race-to-the-finish game involving powerups which were randomly added across the imaginary track. Players could get items to make them move further each turn, pull other players back, and even make other players or yourself reroll their movement roll.

It was quite enjoyable, and got me thinking about how to implement dice into a game I wanted to create. Mainly, At Odds.

The play went well, and we had some headway in trimming the rules as the playtests went on:

- Initial Rules:

- Revamped Rules #1:

(You know. I actually couldn't find my screenie of the 2nd draft of rules probably because I'm beautiful and overwrote them on accident when saving the screenie. Drat. The second one here should be missing rule 4 , 5 and 6.)

- Revamped Rules #2:

Play Log 9/30

After playing Catharsis, Word Wars, and Cavern Conundrum (and my game), I got a bit of inspiration. I haven't developed this game nearly as much as I would like to make it into a more fun and surprising game. As it is, it's too up to chance and has too little room for strategy, which is what I would like it to have a heavier basis around.

Development of At Odds:

The idea for my game stemmed from when Eduardo, Nick, Tiffany and I came up with the game "Seven." I have a fascination with prime numbers and odd numbers. So I wanted to do something different, I like chance games as well, so I felt dice should be incorporated.

Playtest 1 - Playtest with three players:

P1 roll - 6,6,4,4,2 = 22 : card -- 7 = 3 point(s)
P2 roll - 6,6,6,5,2 = 25 : card -- 3 = 0 point(s) (eight 3's)
P3 roll - 1,1,1,5,5 = 13 : card -- 8 = 1 point(s)

Progress Per Turn:
P1 : 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0
P2 : 0, 1, 3, 1, 1, 0
P3 : 1, 1, 0, 0, 5, 15 Winner!Assessment: 
Player 3 obviously wins when all five dice roll 15 when they get the Ace. The game obviously needs to be adjusted so instant-win mechanics are not as prominent.


Changelog:

• Removed all Aces, even numbered cards, and face cards.
• Cut down the dice being rolled to four.
• Players maintain a pulled card each round instead of each player. e.g. : P1 pulls a 7, each player rolls for 7s before a new card is chosen, to promote equality.

Playtest 2 - Next Session:


Progress Per Turn:
P1: 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 0
P2: 5, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 5 Winner!
P3: 5, 1, 0, 1, 0, 1, 3, --


Assessment:
This game went much smoother and quicker than previously now that players didn't get stuck on absurdly high cards that were difficult to roll for. I need to think of a new mechanic for disabling the higher rolls like 5, like making low card matches worth less points. Will contemplate this and make changes. The changes to card deployment are much more friendly to players now. Will contemplate keeping a certain amount of even cards in just in case.


Changelog: 

• Re-added even cards 4 through 8.
• Removed cards less than 4 from the playing deck.

Playtest 3 - Last Session:

Progress Per Turn:

P1: 1, 0, 1, 0, 3, 1, 1

P2: 0, 3, 1, 0, 3, 5, 1 Winner!

Final Assessment:

The game works very well, it took little to no explanation of the rules for my new subject to play it efficiently. Since it's a game of chance, there isn't so much skill involved as other games, so one does not need to learn how to play quite as much. I felt like I needed to prolong the flow of the game for smaller amounts of players. Perhaps I will work on more mechanics to lengthen two-player games in the future.

Board Game Bonanza

Welp, looks like it's time for another post! This time, I'll be talking about the board games I've played recently that I hadn't heard of before. If board games bore you, then perhaps you may want to wait until my next post. I, for one, find board games both stimulating and very good fun for all who participate.

Guillotine

The first of the board games I played was Guillotine. A delightful game of picking and choosing who you execute and trying to acquire the most points based on those executions.
A game starts with a certain number of victims on the board in the middle. The victims can perform effects if you get them as yours, detract from your points, or just grant large amounts of points. The goal of the game is to acquire the most points before the third day ends. (A day ends if an entire lineup of victims is emptied and needs to be refilled.)

The game starts off simply with a small number of action cards, six or so I believe. Then a lineup of victims are displayed in the middle, with the rightmost one being the soonest to be executed.

The action cards are what each person carries in their hands. These cards can perform effects once on your turn that vary anywhere from adding more hapless execution victims to the end of the line, switching the positions in the line, to ending an entire day in the game.

Each turn, a player would play one action card, and then gather the victim closest to the executioner's block. Some victims would not allow action cards to be played on their turn, others would grant you additional action cards when collected. Some victims had more unique abilities as well.

All in all, a very enjoyable game with very simple rules and minimal complexity.

Thirteen

The second game I tried was Thirteen. A game I had heard of before, but never truly participated in.

Thirteen only requires a basic deck of cards. 

The game revolves around the concept of planning your moves in order to grant other players the least amount of moves, while granting yourself the most amount of moves.

The game begins with a player setting down a set or card. The player who goes first is the player with the Three of Spades, as this is the lowest card in the game, it must be gotten rid of first. However, this can be either a single card, a pair of the same card, triples, quads, or a straight of cards played. 

After that, each player around the table takes turns playing their higher cards on top of it.

The order of card hierarchy is skewed slightly in this game in that 2 is the highest card, and a 3 is the lowest, as opposed to Aces being highest and 2 being the lowest.

The order of suits goes from the lowest to highest in this order:  ♠ ♣ ♦ ♥ (If I remember correctly)

Let's do a short example, the game starts. Player 1 sets down two 4's. Player 2 cannot place any single cards, triple cards, or anything that is not a pair, lower than 4, or a 4 of a lower suit than the current 4 pair.

So if the first play was 4♠ and 4♦, the valid plays from there would be: 

(4♣,4♥), (5, 5), (6, 6), (7, 7), (8, 8), (9, 9), (10, 10), (J, J), (Q, Q), (K, K), (A, A), (2, 2);

All cards not given a suit may be any suit in the previous list. Note how 4's can still be played, but as long as one of them is a higher suit than the other two. I believe that's how it goes at least.

The two games I played both elicit a degree of planning and precognition of the board and other players. Both are a game of strategy, with a sprinkling of luck. Card games are probably one of the most tried-and-true games alongside dice or gambling games that have withstood the test of time for their usability and enjoyment of players. The fact that new games and game types are made using cards as a medium is a good indicator of that. So get out there and play some card games! They're fun, I promise.