Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

Re: [Icehouse] Rough game idea - not fully worked out - thoughts?

  • FromJeff Zeitlin <icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateWed, 10 Jan 2007 19:28:51 -0500
On Tue,  9 Jan 2007 23:50:49 -0500 (EST), Marc Hartstein
<marc.hartstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>On Tue, Jan 09, 2007 at 06:20:08PM -0500, Jeff Zeitlin wrote:

>> Working name is Martian Coaster Chaturanga.

>> (Comments, please?  Also, if anyone has any ideas for including the
>> fifth color of the Treehouse stash in the game, I'm all ears.)

>I have a question: who wins?  Maybe I missed it: I see the condition
>which ends the game, but I can't seem to find an object or a winner
>anywhere in the rules.

Oooh, good catch.  I need to work up a win rule; my initial
shooting-from-the-hip thought is "Most points", where you get one point
for each pip on a piece held when the game ends, and two points for each
pip on a piece you could legally move, other than a re-entry on a
portal, when the game ends.  (Yes, that means that pieces on the board
can contribute to two different players' scores.)

>The rules could probably use some reorganization, but I realize this is
>a draft.  Maybe an intro which explains the rules, an overview of the
>turn order, then details on each of the steps.  Right now you learn the
>details of what "moving a piece" means before you learn that you'll be
>moving pieces or under what circumstance you'll be doing so.  That tends
>to be a little confusing.

No question that it needs reorg; it was written practically
stream-of-consciousness.  Are there any broadly similar games out there
that you could point me at that you consider well-organized in terms of
presentation?

>I'll be interested to see how this turns out...

I came up with a two-player variant; basically, each player plays two
colors (the ones diagonally opposite each other on the board; their
starting pyramids are the opponent's colors).  Might make it easier to
get a game going if you can't get four people.

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