Free War (BoardGame)

Free War is a board game, which my classmate and I created in our CS 108 class.

Session 1(in class):

Before we played this game, this game didn’t have rules. We just did whatever we wanted to do to make our token to move on the board by rolling dice. After few movements, we realized that this was not fun at all. We needed to add some Aesthetics to make a fun game. We started to have a discussion for adding fun into the game. We came up with an ideal to label a question mark in the square on the board to award or punish players. We thought this would make players interacted with the game system. We started to put question marks on the board. However, new issues rose to us: How many question marks on the board? Where were we going to put these question marks? We limited the number of our question marks to no more than 10, and we put them at least few steps away from each other.

After we created our question mark, we started to make cards for awarding and punishment. However, we faced few new issues such as that how to make these cards, how to determine a win or a lose position. We went back to our game concept, which we wanted to create a RP (role-playing) game. Therefore, we came up with level and HP (health points) in our game design. We also set each player to Level 1 and HP 10 to start with. Then we created four cards based on the concept of Level and HP such as Level-1, Level+1, HP-1, and HP+1. After a player picked a card and finished reading the card, the player needed to put the card back to the pile and shuffle them.

After we had our basic rules, we started a new game.  New issues rose to us. Where were we going to put the token to start with? Who was going to go first? After a few minutes discussion, we decided to put a token at a corner to start with and rolled a dice to determine who was going to make a first movement. We also limited 2-4 players for the game.

This game was fun for a while. During the play, we also added attack rules to our game.  But we moved our tokens all directions (left, right, up, down and diagonal).  So we decided to make some mechanics for our movement. We limited the diagonal movement. We only allowed tokens to be moved left, right, up and down. The tokens also could not move back into the same place in one turn.

Session 2(at home):

I brought the game back to home. On the Saturday, my friends went over my house. I told them to play the game with me. I set up the game, and I spent a few minutes to tell them what rules the game had so far. After I told them the rules, one of my friends said that you should make the game more fun with some weapons. Actually, my classmate and I mentioned about weapons in the game at the end of our class session. So I draw a gun and a knife as weapons. What the weapons could do in the game? My friends suggested that the weapons could power up an attack to make more damage to others.

Then my friends and I started to play the game. In the middle of the game session, we lost track of Level and HP. I realized I forgot to write down our Level and HP on a paper to keep track of them.

We reset up the game, and start it over. This time, each player had his own paper to keep track of his Level and HP. During the playing, we slowly discovered the strategies of the game.

We played two times for the game. The first time took us about 30 minutes to finish. However, after we discovered the strategies of the game in the first play, we spend more than 45 minutes in the second play because everyone was critical thinking and trying to find a way to win the game.

After finished the plays, I thought I could make the game more challenge by adding more punishment cards into the Prize/Penalty pile. So I came up with skip two turns, HP-5, and Level-5.

After I had added all new punishment cards into the Prize/Penalty pile, I ruined the fun of the game. Most of the players were “suicide”.  I removed these punishment cards out of the Prize/Penalty pile after we finished the playing.

Session 3(in class):

My classmate and I set up the game. Then, we started to talk about the rules of weapons. We came up with a gun and a knife. I mentioned what function I gave to the weapons over last weekend. He also mentioned his ideas about the weapons. So we combined our thoughts and came up with a new rule to each weapon. For the gun, it had a range of 2 steps, and it also increased damage by one plus the difference between two players. For the knife, it didn’t have the benefit of range, but it could increase damage by one plus the difference between two players.

In addition, we also modified our rules for attack. In order to make an attack, a player must next to another player in the position of right or left or up or down. The player only could fight one of other players (if there are more than two players next to each other). When two players were in the fighting mode, they were going to roll a dice to determine a result. If the higher rank player won by rolling a large number, the lower rank play’s HP was deducted by a certain amount that describe in the rules. If the lower rank player won by rolling a large number, the lower rank player dodged the attack, which means nothing happened to the lower rank player. No player could avoid a weapon attack. So the only way for a lower rank player to attack a higher rank player was by using a weapon.

We also added few cards into the Prize/Penalty pile, such as skip a turn, move 3 more steps.

Then we started to play our game. During the play, one weapon question rose up. If the weapon couldn’t be applied at one turn, could the player keep the weapon? After a short discussion, we modified the rules for weapons, again. We set a limitation of keeping weapons to three turns. If the player didn’t use the weapon after three turns, the weapon needed to put back to the Prize/Penalty pile and shuffle the pile. No player could have multiplied weapons at the same time.  

After most of the rules were created, I enjoyed playing the game. I think this game is a simply and a fun game. If you have time, I recommended you to play it!

Clue Game Session Report

Clue is a classic detective board game designed by Anthony E. Pratt. The first version of the game is published on 1949. My group played the version of 2011. This game is best with 4 or 5 players. This game takes about 45 minutes to play it. However, if you are completely new to the game and to the category, you may take longer than 45 minutes. That is my group case. Some group mates and I have never play Clue before, so my group used full period to play the game. Clue really needs players to play critically. Before we show how to play Clue, let’s see how to set up this game.

Set-Up

There are six characters, and each character (Scarlet, Mustard, Peacock, Green, White, Plum) of the game needs to be placed in the small square in the center.

Then each player takes a character that has not already been taken by another player.

After that, players need to sort the cards by type (there are three types of cards) and shuffle each pile couple time with facedown.

Without looking at the cards, take one character card that is going to be the suspect, one weapon card (there are 6 weapons: Wrench, Candlestick, Dagger, Pistol, Lead Pipe, and Rope), and one room card (there are 9 rooms: Bathroom, Study, Dining Room, Game Room, Garage, Bedroom, Living Room, Kitchen, Courtyard), and slide them into the envelope.

Then pass out the rest of cards one-by-one clockwise to the players until all cards are passed out.

Players can also have a detective notebook (shows above) to help them eliminating all the false possibilities. Don’t let other players see your notebook once the game start.

Start Play

Each player rolls two dices to determine who goes first. After find out who is first, and turns continue clockwise around players.

Players can only move horizontally or vertically; players can also stay at the same position.

There are also some secrete passage that allows players to jump from one room to others that requires only one move.

Strategies:

First, players need to look at their own cards and mark the cards on the detective notebook to eliminate the false possibilities.  

Each turn, when a player asks a combination of cards (Who? What? Where?) mark them down to the second column. If the left-side player of the player has one of the three cards, he or she must show the card to the player. Otherwise, suggestion continues clockwise around players. If any player showed a card to the player, and other players can guess one of the three cards is not in the envelope.

Player can ask card on his or her own hand, too. This is a good strategy to eliminate false possibilities. For example, if one player has Study and Wrench, but not Green. Then the player can ask who has Green, Wrench, and Study. In this case, if anyone shows the player a card, then the player can eliminate the Green. Otherwise, the Green must be in the envelope.

In some case, the player rolls two dices, but the player gets a smaller number and cannot reach into one of the rooms. The player should try to reach the Question Mark to get extra helping card. Some helping cards are very helpful.

Win/Lose

By repeating those steps show above, if a player thinks that he or she solved the case by eliminating all the false possibilities, the player needs to wait until his or her turn to roll the two dices to move his or her character back into the start place (where is in the center).

After reach to the start place, the player says the combination of three cards. Then the player can open up the envelope and confirm with his or her own answer. If the player has the right answer, then the player wins. Otherwise, the player loses, and secretly replaces the three cards back in the envelope without revealing them to other players. The game continues among other players.

This is a great game for someone who enjoys thinking things out. If anyone has time, I would recommend the game to you. 

passage1_SessionReport

In order to play the game: passage. we need to download it from http://bit.ly/passage and install it on our computer.

The instructions of the game is up-down-left-right to make the two characters move in the game.

The game tells a story. At the beginning of the game, a male meets a female and falls in love with her. They got married and are living together for rest of their life. During the game, the two characters are getting older and older; in the mean time, the two characters' horizontal position also moves from left to right. When one of the characters moves to the end of the right, the character is removed from the screen. Other character keep moving forward to the right, until it reaches to the end of the right. When it reaches to the end of the right, it is removed from the screen, and the game is over.