Game Design Thingy From School

Today, not a chess post! Instead, this is one of my very few forays into “game design”, or rather, “school survival”. I used to play this simple game during boring classes with my friend E., and while I don’t doubt schoolchildren all over the world have come up with similar games, I thought I’d show this particular way of managing boredom. (I should add that E. and I were equally strong players, and the only reason she didn’t ever play any games competitively was that she’s entirely too nice not the right kind of personality for tournament play. It’s a shame: when it comes to theoretical playing talent, she has just as much of that as I. Still: those were interesting games!) I came up with the initial rules; much of the later refinement – like the ideal choice of “board” size – was done together while playing.

Interestingly, we never gave the game a name: it didn’t need one. XD

You only need checkered paper and two different colored pens. (Basic consideration: easily available and unsuspicious to bring to a class.) We used whatever pens we had at hand; in this case I’ll use red and blue.

Playing area is z*z with z an odd number. We initially experimented with different sizes but later usually chose 9*9 because anything smaller was over too quickly, and anything larger got boring because the game in those cases usually was decided long before the playing area was filled.

The square in the middle belongs to both players: it’s filled in with both colors.




Diagram 1: empty board with a central square belonging to both players.


( The rules... )

Much more interesting than school!