Prototyping: “Shape Wars”
“Shape Wars” is a two-player game that I am currently prototyping. It is set up with a gameboard of 64 square spaces, 64 game pieces, and two 6-sided dice/two 6-sided spinners. Each player has 32 pieces of their own color. The core mechanic of this game is grid coverage. Under specific rules, and some strategic placements of your game pieces, the player who is able to play the most game pieces on the board wins the game. Your task as a player in this game is to strategically try to block the other opponent from covering the grid while simultaneously trying to take over it yourself with the luck that you are given.
In the first session, my partner and I came up with the rules that at every turn, you can play the number of pieces that you spun. So, if you rolled a 4, then you can place 4 pieces, and they have to be placed in squares that are adjacent to each other. All of the pieces you place have to be at least adjacent to one side of the squares that your past pieces are placed on. Each player also has to start on any corner of the board. Other features of this prototype included a coin toss and a counter. The coin toss gives players at any point in their turn to have a chance at converting an opponent’s game piece to their own color. The counter gives players only three chances of his feature in one game. However, if a player gets tales, then the opponent of this player can convert a color of the player’s color to theirs. My partner and I also allowed re-spins in this game. If a player gets a number of 3 or below, they can re-spin for a chance of a higher number. If the player receives the same number, they lose their turn.
For the second session, I had to make some changes. It turned out that the coin toss conversion feature did not have any significance or helped players win in any way, so I decided to remove it entirely. I also noticed that it was really challenging for players to get around the gameboard if placing pieces diagonally were not allowed. It was easily possible for a player to completely block the other player from passing through the board. So I allowed that players can place pieces within each turn diagonally from each other. I also added the rule of having each player start on opposite corners of the board.
Finally, in the third session, after the game was fully explained to my new partner through a practice round, my partner immediately won within 2 turns by 1) spinning 2 big numbers, and 2) spreading his pieces so far diagonally that he was able to completely block the one game piece that I played. To prevent this from happening, I decided to go back to the rule of only allowing adjacent placement of pieces within a turn, making the player form a shape from the pieces. However, on the next turn, the shape that is made cannot adjacently touch the placements/shape from your last turn at all. The shape of your next turn has to share at least one corner of your last shapes. The following pictures are visuals of what is allowed and what is not.
I also added some additional rules for what happens towards the end because there was a lot of confusion on what to do during these following scenarios that can happen. Towards the end of the game, a player can pass their turn if they cannot place all the pieces of the number that they rolled/spun. If a player cannot make any more moves and is fully blocked from placing at least one game piece diagonally, the opponent can go ahead and place as much as their game pieces where they can on the board as long as it is diagonal, and not adjacent to their past game pieces. After no moves can be made by any player, the person who was able to place the most game pieces wins. My partner and I in the third session played with these changes, and the game went smooth, with no immediate wins.
