Grid game first prototype

This relates to my new game log in the last post. I have been thinking about this concept for a while now and have finally had a few hours of spare time to get it out of my head and onto my table.

I got rid of the colors idea, and just went with various combinations of orthogonal and diagonal lines on the cards. I think my prototype ended up with 4 copies of about 8 different patterns. Here is a picture of how one game looked while bieng played:


Sorry the lines are so light, the index cards I cut and used were super thin and I didn't want to mark heavily with pencil due to needing lots of erasing when I didn't like how a pattern worked with others.

It is less of a game, and more of a mechanic at the moment. I have no real end condition, but i liked how the mechanic started working itself out. The current rules are simple, you play one card which has every line match another line already on the board and then put a token of your color on that line. The central card is the starting spot and it generates all the rest of the lines.

I have lots of ideas about where I want to go with this, but i'm not convinced on any. I'm hoping to get a conversation going either here or in a game night setting to get other people's opinions. I love the idea of making this cool looking grid, as well as the interesting decisions of which cards to play and when. However it is WAY to simple right now, in my ideal world it would in time develope into a game with player boards and skill advancements. Each playing card would have a symbal which equates to some stat perhaps, and controlling various numbers of them will allow you to do more things. I obviously need to work in some kind of real player interaction as well, so you could stop your opponents from running away with an awesome set of stats.

Unfortunately I think I need to flesh out the base mechanics first. And come up with an interesting end game condition. Like normal I don't want VPs, and I am trying not to have the same condition as Mutation (where after X turns the largest network wins). Perhaps it will have to do with controlling a certain number of a variety of "stat" markers? I should put some on the cards and see what tha tlooks like.

As far as interaction, I have some ideas too. Maybe when you fully surround another players card with cards you control you remove their piece and put yours in? My concern is that that player who got removed might have a very hard time getting back into the game.

What if that opponent was simply displaced? Well that brings up the other big thing I want to integrate into this game. Multiple actions a player can take on a turn, but they have to only choose one. So perhaps instead of placing a card and placing a token, you only get to do one or the other. Currently this doesn't make sense since opponents could then just place their tokens on cards you placed before you get a chance at going on them. But its the direction I want to go with the game so there would need to be some sort of barrier others would have to overcome to do that.

Ok, thats enough of my ideas onslaught. This is more of an extended brain dump, but I'd love anyone's opinions on this game if they have any.

New Concept idea log

Had a brain flash this morning, just have to write down some ideas for a new game concept.

1. Square cards with a range of 4 to 8 colored lines coming from the center and going to the corners or middles of the sides
2. Players have a hand of these cards, they play one per turn down onto the board so that a line coming out of a previous card on the board matches the color of the orientation where you place your card. You then put a marker on top of your card to show that it is "yours"
3. Players start with some small number of super cards in front of them that they can choose to use instead of playing from their hand at any point in the game.
4. Regular cards might have smaller powers on them that get activated when they are played.
5. Game end is when the draw stack is depleted (maybe), and the player with the most connected markers wins.

This is super rough, but i'm running to work and don't want any of these bits to fall out of my head!

New Un-named project begins!

The design process for mutation actually started out as a proof of concept for a dice stacking game which I wanted to make with all my blank dice. Instead it turned into a fun light filler that I am happy with as a stand alone game, but I still have a more complex and less random game I want to get out of my head and into the world.

Yesterday i came up with a simple binding idea for me to start with. I would go with similar die placement rules with Mutaiton, but instead of rolling dice the player would simply place the blank die on the board and there would be no "values". I would create a payment structure for every die placement that would actually force the players to pay to other players different currencies in order to do what they want. I ran out to the store and bought a couple hundred glass pebble things for $8.

I started messing around with 25 blank dice (now called cubes) of 4 colors and then a pile of glass resources that matched each player color. I must have messed around with 5 different ideas and 4 hours before I found one set of rules that started to work together. The player just paid the cost of the number of sides the cube touches and the colors of those adjacent sides. I won't go into the details, but the end product was a very cool idea. The player could not increase their own network of cubes by themselves because they could never generate resources of their own color. The only way for that to happen was to have an opponent place near your color and then generate it into their resource pool. Then they would have to stack next to or on top of your own piece and then PAY you your resource color. NOW you have your own color resources to increase your network.

I'm sure that came out too confusing. Simply, you need your opponents to generate the resources you need for you. It creates this awesome cycle of resources through all the players and sets up very interesting dynamics of what players can and cannot do depending on how much they want to pay their opponents. It ended up feeling abit like Hansa Teutonica in that you had to get into other peoples business and block them in order to have them get rid of you and in the process pay you resources which is what you really wanted in the first place.

COOL.

Today Owen and Charles came over to my place and we played through a couple game prototypes including one from the internet and a cool space cat/mouse game that Owen is working on. We ended up playing through a 23 round game of my new game and made several changes right away.

1. Stacking was too cheap, so an added cost of 1 random resource per cube level was added.
2. Stacked cubes had their network value changed from 1 to whatever level they are at.

There were several other small changes, but we ended up getting through the full game. Charles won on a tie breaker, having the same value network as me but having ONE more resource in his pool at the end of the game. Below are a couple pictures:




I have plans for this game, i'm not sure how many and which will actually work. My first is I will actually create a "board" on which it is played. I want to build into that board a bank of some sort which you can pay various resources in order to unlock different cube placements. I intend to play a couple games of this by myself tomorrow and then try and lock down a "current" set of rules and then post them. Currently it is abit to wishy washy to bother trying to put them down into words.

I have a feeling this game will be much harder to get my head around then Mutation was. I look forward to the challenge.

Small Mutation update

Mutation has now been played almost 10 times among the Berkeley gaming group and there has been a suprisingly small amount of changes that have come from these playthroughs.

1. You may re-roll a double if you don't want to take the removal action and do not like the number of the double rolled.
2. You may not removed a die that has been "blocked in" on all four sides.
3. 2 player is simply not fun and waaaay too dependant on die rolls. I am officially stating that it is not an option any more.

At this point I believe the game is well into a refinement phase and I do not expect to make any huge aditions to it's gameplay. i will continue to try and get it out there and played...and at some arbitrary point I will decide that it is finished :P

Oh and Mutation is BoardGameGeek.com official now!

now for the next game...

San Diego "Mutation" update

Since bieng in San Diego I have been able to get three plays of Mutation in, with three different numbers of people, and the feedback has been very constructive.

The first game I played was just with Mike in a two player mode. This was the first time i've played against someone else in two player and while it was fun, it was also a little autonomous. I will test out this mode more in the future but I am not sure if there is enough going on with only one other person to make it really great.

The next night we had a 5 player game in which I sat out and moderated. This game was played with the rules as they are stated in the blog post underneath this and it was very interesting to watch. The first issue that cropped up was the stacks of dice getting precariously tall. This has come up in pretty much every game that has been played so far, one or two stacks would get 5 or 6 dice on them. The second issue was the game needing a tie breaker condition since we had a tie. After discussion these are the two solutions we came up with for the moment:

Create a maximum dice stacking ceiling height. We discussed having it be at various heights and generally agreed that three high makes the most sense for the first couple tests. 4 high starts to get shaky, and 2 high just seems too short.

The tie breaker is the second longest strain.

This 5 player game ended looking like this:


This morning we played one three player game using the changes I mentioned above. There were some interesting strategy options that come out of having a dice max height, one in particular being placing dice on top of your own. Since you can not place a 4th die on top of a stack, the third die is a very secure position. The only way to lose a third stack die is to have it doubled off which happens much less then simply being able to cover it up. I really liked this interaction, it leaves the player with more decisions of varying risk. Do you cover an opponents level 1 die and increase your Strain (but leave it vulnerable to someone stacking a third on top and having that be very secure) or do you place a third level die on top of your second level die to better secure that position?

Having a max height also forced more sprawling which was not only more stable but also interesting because it creates more options to play with.

This game ended with Robyn winning (clear) with a tie breaker, all three of us had a largest strain of 6!


Every single game i've played has been very close, usually someone gets beaten back and somehow rebounds and is at least a threat to win by the end. The 5 player game took about an hour to play through, though there was some discussion and rule clarification in the middle. All told I am VERY happy with how this is progressing and look forward to getting some plays in at game nights back in the Bay Area.

Mutation rules and setup as it stands

First, a note on starting setups
One note that came from last night's playtest was the idea of having an initial setup of dice on the board to work from. I liked this idea so much I went out and bought a set of white die in order to have "neutral" die on the board to start.

Below are the 4 initial setup layouts for the different number of players, 2 and 4 in the first, and 3 and 5 in the second. 2 and 4 was pretty straightforward, but 3 and 5 were really tough. No matter how I arrainged the die, one of them was always closer to more enemies then the others. It is tough at the moment to decide which is an advantage and disadvantage. Being green seems disadvantagsous because it is nearer more two enemies as well as only having less open sides. however green starts with the greatest number of options for expanding, I hope this all works out in the end. Playtesting should shed some light there (in a mock 3 player game green ended up winning).




The Rules (as of now anyway)

This is intended to be a clear and concise ruleset for the next round of playtesting that I hope to have while in San Diego. There are some tweaks from our playtest last night.

1. Every player rolls a die to figure out who starts. The highest roll is the start player, reroll ties.
2. Each player takes 22 dice of their color, and then uses one of these to create the starting setup pattern that matches their number of players. All dice should be rolled before placing. If a 3 or 5 player game put the starting players die in the green position from the example pictures.
3. Whenever the term "adjacent" is used for the rest of the rules, this implies orthogonal adjacency. Diagonals are never considered adjacent. The top die on any stack is the only die that counts towards adjacency. Example: A die on top of 5 other dice is technically adjacent to a die orthogonally next to its stack but on the first level with no dice underneath it.
4. When the rules refer to a players "Strain" this is any number of adjacent die of their color on the board. A Strain can consist of one die.
5. The starting player rolls two die. They then place one of the die according to the following rules:
- Place the die on the first level, adjacent to one or multiple die of their color. The placed die's value MUST match ALL adjacent die of their color.
- Place the die on the first level, adjacent to any die which is not their color. The values do not have to match.
- Place the die on top of an existing die of a different color then the players. The covered die must be adjacent to a die of the players color as well as have the same value as the die which is placed on top. A opponents die cannot be covered if it is their last remaining top die on the board.
5. If the player rolled the same value on both dice, then they get to do a special removal action after placing their die in step 5. They may remove on opponents die permanently from the board with the following conditions:
- Opponents die must be at the top of a stack.
- Opponents die must be adjacent to one of the Player's Strains which is at least 2 dice in size.
6. The unused die from the player's roll goes back into their dice pool.
7. The next player clockwise now takes their turn starting at step 5.
8. If a player does not have 2 die to roll then they cannot take their turn and the game has ended.
9. The player with the largest Strain on the board is the winner.

In conclusion
I hope to get in a few playtest games while visiting friends in San Diego. Ideally i hope to try various numbers of players, especially 3 and 5. If you have any comments about the initial setups please let me know.

Here is the end of a mock 3 player game with the current initial startup. Green ended up winning but it didn't seem to have anything to due with it's bieng closer to more die numbers in the beginning.

Dice game "Mutation" update

So the un-nammed dice game now has a tentative name of "Mutation".

Last night I was able to play it for the first time with other people, and it was a full game of 5 players. I stuck with the same rules from the last post with the following exception:

- Rolling double now let you place one of the die following the rules, and then remove the top dice of any location that is orthogonally adjacent to the die you placed this turn.

It became obvious very early that this needed a stipulation added of "dice on the ground level can never be removed" since we rolled several doubles and before we could start stacking we had hard to manage holes in our playing area and Owen was completely knocked off the board twice. This brought the second change that will be in the next game, a player can never be completely covered, so if they are down to one die showing they will be invulnerable to bieng removed or stacked on.

One other note was about an alternative win condition. I won't be instituting this just yet but i'll keep it in the back of my mind, and that is having a "you win immediately if your chain gets to X size" so that there is alittle more tension if someone is exploding even though the game is only half over. We had that happen last night and by the end that player had the smallest chain of anyone. (Blue in the pictures below).

Testing will continue, i am super happy with how well this is already playing after 2 playtests. The final outcome is below, I won (I was the clear dice).

The name works for a tentative them of organisms in a petri dish fighting it out for dominance. The dice structures represent bacteria that are mutating and when they mutate right they can attack others and diversify their numbers and therefore make it easier for them to grow more. I like it.