Game Design Thingy From School

[eller]

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.




Rules:
- The central square is owned (that is, shared) by both players.
- Red begins. (Yeah, okay, totally arbitrary.)
- Each player in turn is allowed to fill in one square with their pen. The player then "owns" this square.
- A player is only allowed to fill in a square that is a neighbor of a square already owned by this player. Neighbors are up, down, left, right, as well as all four diagonal directions.

Aim of the game:
- If the whole board is filled, the game ends in a draw.
- If a player cannot make a legal move, and it's not because the whole board is filled, that player loses.




Diagram 2: The game after two moves (completely filled squares) have been played. The move opportunities of both players for the next move have been indicated with dots in the players' respective colors.

Strategy:
- Ehhh, I never analyzed this with a computer (it wasn't a priority back then LOL) but with optimal play I suspect games should be a draw. (In reality, they almost never were!)
- You're trying to prevent your opponent from making legal moves. That is, you're trying to surround areas. Does that sound familiar from somewhere?
- YES: indeed, some move sequences, especially when it comes to intruding into board areas controlled by the opponent, are actually suspiciously similar to Go. Which is hilarious because neither of us knew Go at the time, but I later had some deja vu moments... LOLOLOL
- I feel lucky: I had the chance to figure out all that theory by myself, which was a great mental exercise!
 

Much more interesting than school!

Comments

[yhlee]

How extremely cool! =D

You're familiar with Sprouts, right? Different game (and no draws in that one) but I am reminded of it somehow.

[eller]

Uh, no? I've never seen that one before - it looks interesting, though! XD

The thing is - I've never been all that much into game design, so all those "mathematically designed" games, ehh... I just never paid attention to this stuff (although you'd think that I as an algorithmics nerd should have been interested). I was busy playing chess! XDDD

[yhlee]

Well, chess is much prettier. I only learned of Sprouts through a science fiction novel (not particularly recommended, Piers Anthony's Macroscope) and only played it once or twice, to get a feel of the thing - because I am interested in game design, so a certain amount of breadth of experience is considered desirable. XD

[eller]

See? I'll only design games if my only alternative is to try and listen to a teacher. XD I mean, E. and I did come up with some more games, but really, that was just self-defense.

[yhlee]

This is probably how the Royal Game of Ur really came into being - some bored nobles, "Oh god that priest is going on and on about Gilgamesh again, ugh, let's scratch a board game into the clay..."

[eller]

Come on, Gilgamesh is much more interesting than having the Pythagoras triangle thingy (and that it also works if you name the sides x, y, and z instead of a, b, and c - yes, unfortunately I'm not joking here; this was explicitly mentioned more than once) explained to you for the hundredth time. But surely boredom existed in all ages! XD

[yhlee]

I loved Gilgamesh, but I'm a weirdo. XD

I actually have had to tell high schoolers that yes, it's okay if you substitute variables to work the problem. For some reason there are kids who completely freeze up when they see an x or a y or a z. The one thing that always worked for those kids was to replace the variable of the day with ♥. That made them smile and somehow made the variable no longer intimidating. Weird trick but whatever works...

[eller]

The Epic of Gilgamesh is awesome. But then... I always had a distinctly nonstandard taste in literature, and while old German poetry is still my favorite, there's absolutely nothing wrong with Mesopotamian. I mean, I'm not nerdy enough to be able to read that in the original version, but, I mean... Translations of that stuff are nice.

BWAHAHA. Well. Why not. I mean, variable names are totally arbitrary. Might just as well use a heart, or a random squiggle.

[yhlee]

I do remember my brain breaking in that one class in uni where π was used as a function name (covering map maybe, in topology?), instead of 3.14159...got over it, fortunately. XD

[eller]

XDDD How mean!