A Tic-Tac-Toe inspired game

This Game is inspired by Tic-Tac-Toe, and changed with number of players, game board, rules and the win condition. 

Players: 3

Material: pen, paper and cards-12 cards numbered 1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,5,5,6 and 6. (If you do not have cards, you can definitely make cards by yourself, write down numbers on each piece of paper)

Rules:

Players mark the board in turn.

Decide mark location by choosing a card, for example, the cards are 3 and 4, then mark the board either in 3,4 or 4,3.

Mark the blank space or any where in the smaller game board.

To win: The first one who makes a line/diagonal line with 4 marks.

Game board:

When we do the game experience, we found that the more people engaged, the more interesting the game is (from one to four). For the game which requires two players and make decisions only by rolling dime, actually only one person is needed because there are no other thing to think other than roll a dime. When two players play a game which requires communication and guessing what the opponent's thoughts, it seems like they are more engaged in the game. When four players play the same game, they need to be two teams, so the two players in the same team should make decisions together, and that provides more opportunity to communicate. In my game, three players, or three teams, two players can defend or attack the third player together when they are in bad conditions, and play back to three players at any time. 

Pompeii: A Game of Dice, Family and Natural Disasters

You are playing as two ancient Roman families who are trying to escape the burning ruins of Pompeii after the eruption of Vesuvius. Can you properly navigate your entire family through the burning ashes? Or will be you caught by the searing flames of Vesuvius? Take your chances in, Pompeii.

-Zachary Goldblatt-

Materials:

-One 6 x 6 Board

-Two Dice

-Twenty Hellínos Family Tokens (Blue and White)

-Twenty Romus Family Tokens (Purple and Gold)

-Twenty Volcano Tokens (Red and Black)

Rules:

1. Each Player takes turns placing their specific tokens on the Board

2. After both Players have gone, roll two dice. The first dice corresponds to the number of the X-Coordinate or bottom number line and the second dice corresponds to the Y-Coordinate or the number line on the left of the board. 

3. Place a Volcano Token on this square. Remove any previous tokens placed there. No Player may put one of their tokens on a Volcano Token.

4. This cycle keeps going until the entire Board is full, then the scoring phase commences. 

5. Players receive 2 Points for every all of their Token Groups which are two in a row, 3 Points for three in a row, 4 Points for four in a row, 5 Points for five in a row and 6 Points for 6 in a row. You may only use a token for one grouping and may not stack multiple groups in one larger grouping.

6. The Player with the most Points wins. 

Reflection:

Being the person I am when I was first presented with the task of redesigning Tic-Tac-Toe my original plan was to make it over complicated and complex so I tried to boil it down to what kind of games I enjoyed, those being European style board games. That is what first inspired me to do the Victory Point/Euro-Style scoring which created my first draft of the game. It was originally a very bland game until I thought about how by trying to make all of these groupings they somewhat resembled roads and that is what started the idea of possibly including a narrative. It was originally called Roman Roads and just focused on making groups of tokens. This was alright but quite bland and during one of the play tests, my partner recommended that I possibly include a wall mechanic to block off opponents. I liked this but wanted to make it random so I included dice and wanting to still include the Hellenic/Roman theme I eventually settled on the theme of Pompeii with each token representing a fleeing family member and by getting tokens in a row you are rescuing families. I think for such a simple game it actually managed to use this narrative to make it much more than just a glorified tic-tac-toe game. The event of having a volcano token rip your family in half brings about great feelings of frustration for one Player and glee for the other. 

Moving Dice-Tac-Toe

Description:

                    Moving Dice-Tac-Toe is a brand new competitive game which combine two games in one to satisfy everyone. The one game is original Tic-Tac-Toe, another one is rock-paper-scissor. No matter you have play these two games before or not, you are welcome to play with anyone when you have boring time. You may think it is just a puzzle game, but later you will find out it is not only about win the row because you have to make a good plan to save your dice team.

Materials:

1. Pencil

2. Paper

3. 20 dices.

How to play:

1. The game require in 2 players.

2. Each player picks up 10 dices  and choose a number from 1 to 6 to represent your team.

3. The goal of this game is be the first player to get five in row on 5x5 grid, or make the other player lose 6 dices.

4. There are five small game board set up in each row. If you want to have this space, you have to win the game by playing Tic-Tac-Toe with “X and O”.

5. Once you have this space, no one can attack you or move you in any situation.

5. Players alternate placing dice on the board until either one player has five in row, horizontally, vertically or all twenty-five squares are filled. You cannot move in diagonally.

6. While you decide to attack other player, it does not means you can have this space. You have to play rock-paper-scissor game with other player. Once the winner, can have the space and no one can move you or attack you in any situation. 

7. If all twenty-five squares are filled and neither player has five in a row, the game is a draw.

Reflection:

We have tried several different kind of games from last week. The only one i have enjoyed into it must be Tic-Tac-Toe final version. There has 3x3 grid first and each square has one more 3x3 grid inside. I was not like this game at first because it sounds really complicate for me. Later on, i practiced once. I understood the rule and know the goal of the game. I'm kind of get into it. It takes awhile to figure how to make decision of your X or O. I guess that is the motivation of this game. You have to make a plan of it not just think about filling 3 in a row is victory. In the beginning, i just want to have some fun with dice, because i think it is a good material for a game, but i feel like become a fans of Tic-Tac-Toe. I still want to keep it in my design game. Therefore, i decide to combine those two together in a good way. For me, i like do not like game to be too easy to win, i like do something competitive to win. I believe this kind of game always need to spend more time to have fun with. It's also good to killing the time. Another good point of my game is you have to keep thinking how to make a plan to win. It can be a good skill to gain. People always do something without think about the result. As you can see, my game only has seven rules, but you have to follow each steps and you would enjoy it.

Flowers, sparkles, and everything nice -- a game inspired by tic-tac-toe

When falling down the pit of boredom with limited options ahead of you, grab a pen, paper, and a friend or foe to play a subtle retake of tic-tac-toe with cuter pieces and the option to literally blow your opponent away -- Flowers & Sparkles!!

RULES:

• played on a 5 x 5 board
• horizontal or vertical wins require 5 in a row with a mixture of normal x or o pieces and special x (sparkles) and o pieces (flowers). A diagonal win is not possible with only normal pieces.
• special pieces: a ＊for the x-player and a flower for the o-player. Special pieces allow diagonal wins of either 3, 4, or 5 in a row. 2/3 of a 3 in a row win must be special, 2/4 of a 4 in a row, and 3/5 of a 5 in a row.
• The catch: special pieces have a cost. Each special piece takes 2 turns to make. A player can choose to place a special piece on an empty spot on the board, or upgrade an existing normal piece to a special one.
• Blow outs: if a player has 2 or more adjacent special pieces (horizontally, diagonally, or vertically), then during their turn the player can choose to clear out all the pieces in the respective row, column or diagonal. Each player may choose to blow out only once, ever, during a round of the game.

Reflection:

So far in testing, the game works and is reasonably fun as long as both players are properly involved in the strategy of the game. Though I feel it's satisfactory and still has the nice properties of tic-tac-toe (it's portable and convenient), it doesn't offer much impact or really that much creativity to the game world. The basis of this game is hard to get excited about, and there's not really that much of a "I want to play!" kind of feeling. Given more time, I would've liked to make the changes required to offer players that kind of draw, maybe adding a narrative, or have some cooler unexpected ways to play the game? 

I think the game is playable for all ages, and it did have the side effect of shutting my sisters up while they were thinking about their next moves. It ended up being pretty effective against the problems of draws or obvious wins, but not effective enough I think. I do think it does a good job of offering players different strategies to win, and I like the social, kind of social element that leaves your opponent guessing as to where you'll place a special piece. Since the game can be won without special pieces, however, I do think I should offer more of an incentive to use special pieces, since that's where the real fun of my game lies. In testing, some games the players would just opt to use very few special pieces and from there on the game would devolve into an even more boring version of tic-tac-toe.

DRAW DIS 'N' DAT. TRIPLE D. SO. MUCH. D.

• A written description of your game, written like a pitch on the cover of a box — this should be 1-3 sentences, and be designed to entice someone to read further. it might go something like “Square-tac-toe is a fast paced tower defense game, played with x’s, o’s and a board mounted on a cat’s back. It’s the perfect thing to keep your toddler engaged over long weekends! Keep the trolls from reaching the castle (or from killing the cat) and you win!”

Description:

Love a challenge and sabotaging your friends? Like forcing your friends to draw different things and watching them struggle while pointing and laughing? DRAW DIS 'N' DAT seems like the game for you! DDD is a simple game where two players fight over a doodle, trying to make sure that the outcome comes out looking like they want and not what the opponent wants. But with a twist! The final judge is someone who has no idea what you're supposed to be drawing! It's a game perfect for any place, whether on the bus, or in the middle of class when you're supposed to be listening to lecture!

Players: 2 artists, 1 outside judge

Materials

• Pencil
• Paper

Rules:

1. Players must take turns drawing strokes towards their own assigned doodles.
2. Players must assign different subjects to draw.
3. Assigned subjects must be within reason (ex. not a super specific character from a show unless both players are knowledgeable).
4. Strokes must be drawn within the general shape of letters “L”,”O”,”C”,”S”
5. Strokes must also be drawn onto pre-existing strokes
6. Once the stroke is drawn, the player cannot erase it.
7. When asking third party for judging, they must not have prior knowledge of what the players were supposed to draw.

Instructions:

1. The two players decide what to assign each other to draw. (ex. Jimmy and Hai are playing, Jimmy assigns Hai a picture to draw and vice versa). Assigned images can be anything within reason.
2.   Each player is given x amount strokes to draw their assigned subject, taking turns after each other drawing strokes. (I want the game to be more open ended for the players so they can choose how many strokes to draw, but the optimal number would be 15)
3. After each player reaches a maximum of x amount strokes, a third party is introduced as the judge where they are asked what the doodle looks like.
4. a) Say that the players are assigned a donkey and a castle, if the judge happens to recognize an architectural structure (or anything remotely castle-like) in the picture, the game would go to the player who was assigned to draw the castle. Same goes for the other player and the donkey. 

Lawn mower vs Otter

Reflection: 

This game isn't exactly a remake of TTT, but more of a game taken from the elements that make up the game. I took the elements of how TTT is a game for killing time, can be played almost anywhere, and only requires a paper and pencil. The reason the game is based on drawing is because I didn’t play games that frequently as a child, I mostly drew pictures.

With testing, the game has been generally well received. The only problems that really arose was how to classify a “stroke” as it could be different based on the person. So on the last day of testing, I was suggested to limit my strokes by using letters and having the players take the general shape of them (thank you, Dominic!). Aside from that kink, I think that the game works rather well as it’s pretty simple to understand. It’s a game you can also play anywhere as long as there is paper and pen. Compared to TTT however, it’s a longer game as the players have to plan their strokes. It’s not as fast, but it’s a fun and simple game if you like drawing/sabotaging pictures. I wouldn’t really change much if I were given funds or time because I want this game to be played out of convenience and boredom, a “bus game.” TTT is a low commitment, time killing game that takes minimal supplies, so I’d want my game to be similar to that. The addition of funds wouldn’t change anything rather than the quality of the pencil and paper that the player is using. I think that this game is best for any age, as long as they know what they’re drawing. It’s such a simple game, the players are just taking turns drawing strokes towards their aimed picture, and a 5 year old could do that as long as they knew what they were drawing and understood the concept of taking turns. As for positive consequences, I’d say that it’s a game that teaches problem solving and creativity, as you need to figure out how to draw the image to your subject.

Tic-Tac-Toe Revised

Description

If you like strategy games with bad names, this is the game for you! A blend of the classic Tic-Tac-Toe and chess, this game will test your ability to outthink and outplay your friends. Its web interface allows you to play anywhere you can bring a internet-enabled device. Play now!

Rules

Note: The web app keeps track of all these rules and prevents players from making invalid moves.

Setup

The game is played on a 4×4 grid. The middle four pieces are initially controlled by the second player.

Turns

Each turn, a player may move a piece and take an action if possible. The first player must move a piece before taking an action. The second player must use an action before moving a piece. This means that on the first turn, the player cannot move a piece at all.

Moving

A piece can be moved to any of the up-to-eight neighboring tiles. Whenever a player places or moves a piece, the player takes control of the tile that the piece is placed or moved onto. A player may not move a piece onto another piece.

Actions

Actions require the player to own a certain configuration of tiles in order to be used. Currently, the only action is placing a new piece, which can be used if the player controls two adjacent tiles or on the first turn. A piece may only be placed on a neutral tile or a tile the player owns, but not on the opposing player's tiles.

Winning

A player wins by having four pieces in a row horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.

Reflection

I wanted to create a game that plays like a more complex version of Tic-Tac-Toe: I feel that the most boring part of the game is that it's too easy to determine the correct move at any given time, but I like that all the information you need to determine that correct move is there in front of your face. It's like a logic puzzle that's just too easy—there's no fun in solving it.

My solution was to add the ability to move pieces and use actions other than just placing pieces. To add additional strategic depth, I decided that players would have to meet certain requirements in order to use actions—in the case of placing pieces, the requirement is controlling two adjacent tiles.

I wanted to add more actions (such as moving two pieces instead of one, placing a piece on the opponent's tile, moving an opponent's piece, swapping pieces, flipping rows/columns, or even taking control of an opponent's piece), but I found that it was far too difficult to balance them on my own. Additionally, during playtesting in class, I quickly realized that just having a single action is already complex enough for most players, and adding any more would be overwhelming. (However, this is now mitigated a bit by the rules tracking that I've added to the web app since presentations/playtesting that now keeps track of turn order and keeps players from making invalid moves (and tells them what they're doing wrong). Also, the text form of my rules do a much better job of explaining the rules than I do verbally.)

Given more time, I'd like to implement optional actions that can be toggled on and off (and maybe with custom requirements configurable by players before games) for customizable complexity in the game, which would also double as a mechanism to keep the game from becoming stale after a while (as Tic-Tac-Toe quickly becomes once children learn how to play). (From a code standpoint, I've already made it pretty easy for myself to add more actions; I just haven't spent the time to do it.) Right now, the game plays fine and is fun for anyone who is just bored of Tic-Tac-Toe, but with additional actions, it can scale to be a challenge for even the best logicians and have multiple different possible winning strategies.

Challenge Tic-Tac-Toe | Melinda Kuei

This version of Challenge tic-tac-toe is a game inspired by the simplicity and convenience of tic-tac-toe with the excitement of truth and dare games. It's a fun party game, because even though it's a two players game, spectators can watch both players make a fool of themselves.

Materials:

- writing tool

- paper squares

How to play:

- Both players (or the audience) write challenges on squares of paper. These challenges can be random or themed (eg. exercise or kid-friendly)

- They then shuffle the pieces and arrange them into a tic-tac-toe board.

- In order to put a mark in a square, the player has to complete the challenge.

- If they cannot complete the challenge, then they forfeit their turn and the square they wanted to claim.

Reflection:
When I first received the prompt, I wasn't very sure where to go. Tic-tac-toe in itself is an extremely simple game with nothing much to expand upon. My early iterations were focused on changing the board and gameplay to make it more challenge and sophisticated, and potentially some narrative. After some playtesting, I realized that these additions and changes were extremely superficial. I then turned my attention on the fundamental attributes of tic-tac-toe and tried find a way to make it more engaging. I was then reminded of how much fun cards against humanity was when we played it in class. Even though there were a limited number of players, the classmates who were spectating also had fun reading our responses to the prompts. I wanted to incorporate the simplicity of tic-tac-toe with the social fun aspect and came up with my current idea. I was worried that this game was too simple, but many people who played it had fun and they liked that the game was easy to pick up. It's not too dependent on strategy or techniques, which makes it low stress and a fun party game.