Chance Mechanics: Chess

So, Chess. A century old strategy game that has inspired many a thing, from other strategy games to actual military operations (probably, the people who ivented chess needed something to practice strategy with and they're dead now, so we can question their motives to our cynical heart's content)

How would you add chance mechanics to something so tactically pure as Chess? It'd be like having gun attachments in Frozen Synapse, and that wouldn't work at all. But guess what? It does.

Chance mechanics can be applied through a dice roll, but how it is applied can vary. For example, if when two pieces were adjacent to each other the game takes on a similar deciding mechanic to a modern strategy game such as X-COM: Enemy Unknown. The mechanic would make all the pieces have an even value, which is a problem when the Bishop, Queen and King pieces are considered. To stop this, the dice roll would have a mininum threshold that must be met in order to capture that piece, escalating as the piece's value increases.

If they were applied through a deck of standard playing cards, then the card drawn would decide which piece is moved. Of course, face cards can apply to Kings, Queens and Bishops, but it may just be easier to only use cards from Ace to eight, red suits moving the corresponding piece in another row.

FTL? FTL.

Oh man, FTL. I don't need to say any more about that game than the mere mention of its title. As a modern rouglelike-like, it destroyed Kicktarter charts, earning well above it's requirements.

Getting the opportunity to make a board game out of this was one I was never going to miss. Thing is, how do you do this? Random cards ala Carcassone? Monopoly style board and event cards? The first option works better; I tried both. Wanna see? Of course you do!

Conveniently, a despicable thief/ failed assassin took any visual evidence of the board that existed before this, but it was horribly designed and in a way that didn't quite make sense.

This kind of hexagonal card system ensures the random nature, and allows for use of the very well made game background assets.

Weapons were handled in a similar way to the digital game, but in a physical form. Power usage was made redundant by the lack of any such mechanic in the physical iteration; it allows to keep things simple and will prevent the protagonist player from being stuck without a usable weapon from the start. 

Weapons such as bombs and beams are not used in the same way because there are no longer room damage or subsystems. Instead, they cause damage the same way missiles and lasers do, respectfully.

Missiles, fuel and scrap still exist as resources, and running out of missiles or scrap are discouraged but do not end the game, unlike fuel, which is a loss condition.

Combat is conducted through D10 die rolls; when the player rolls a number under the criteria, the attack lands and the appropriate damage is dealt. For lasers, the die is rolled for as many attacks there are on the card. Some attacks can miss or hit the shield in place, invalidating that attack.

"Da bomb"

We were tasked to build a prototype game where there was some form of bomb defusal involved.

I decided to try my hand at a not-so different take on Minesweeper.

The four red squares are the bomb, they must be avoided. The grey squares are the switches that must be found. It worked well enough, but I can't say I was too into this assignment.

Game Design: What's Yours is Mine!

Our solo project revolved around an ownership theme, where one player will take something from another player. Classic physical examples of this type are Chess and Snap. Digital examples include Capture The Flag game types and territorial control game types.

My game was based around an attack/ defence scenario where a group of Mercenaries (controlled by the attacking player) had to steal an experiment from the Security team (the defending player). Players move and attack through dice rolls and can divide the number shown between their units. For example, if one player rolls a 6, they can divide it so that they can move two characters two spaces each. Starting combat would end the turn regardless of whether it succeeded or not.

Combat initally relied on range and cover. If a character was far away, this would affect their dice roll. If the character was behind a wall in the way, they couldn't attack at all.

 The board was set up in a linear fashion to fit better with the context. However, it was found that the linear nature made it boring to use, and players wouldn't strategise as I thought they would. This called for a change in the board's design.

This board was intended to remove the idea of a stylised layout, instead using an arena-like design. It was also on Four A4 sheets making an A2 size board, in an attempt to make the game require strategy. Unfortunately, this didn't improve anything, instead making it take longer for anything to take place. The final design went back to the A3 size but did something different:

I made walls out of but and folder business cards and stuck them down with tape, to allow them to fold properly. These walls allowed players to really see what was low cover or not, and would help them use line of sight properly. 

This also allowed me to add another combat mechanic; characters with rockets (as seen above) are able to remove walls from play, effectively removing cover and creating new paths. This kind of unit wouldn't be able to attack characters directly.

Game Design: A/ B

Our first few weeks in the Game Design module were spent planning, creating and playing a board game based around getting from A to B; one object from one part of the board to another.

We worked in groups of two for this project, and myself and Bradley Butcher (http://bradley-butcher-xb1000.blogspot.co.uk/) created a game in a similar fashion to Ludo.

The rough sketch board was quickly made on a sheet of A4, and formed the framework for how the final game would turn out.

This prototype is rudimentary, with an uneven number of spaces, but served well as a platform for  development.

The objective was to move players from the outside edges on the cardinal points, around the board and into the center. Players could only move inwards on a certain point to their left or their right.

When playtesting, we found that players would effectively block each other, so we added a duelling mechanic; whoever loses a dice roll will be sent back to the start of that layer, or to the beginning. We also made odd number rolls move the players to their right, even moving them to their left. We were told by others that the design of the board was too confusing, so we redesigned it using more than one sheet of A4 paper and added colour bases to help differentiate starting points.

To add variety to the gameplay,, we added turn missing and place swapping mechanics, whilst these weren't fully implemented on the board, they were met with positive reception.

This iteration is much clearer than the first, which helped the players and us to develop the game in a more decisive manner.

Working on this project with Brad has helped to re-inforce mechanics and dynamics into my creative process, and has also helped me to be that much more analytical when playing any kind of game.