As I’ve told recently, I’m attending this online game design class. The course is flowing, and, I must say, it is extremely well written and conducted. So, kudos to Ian Schrieber, which is leading it.

The first assignment of the course was to design a simple racelike board game in 15 minutes and then to prototype and test it, changing rules to obtain something playable.

Though far from perfect, my creation is here, it was tested and it seems to work pretty well. It is a pretty quick game, you can play it in around 20 minutes.

It’s called “The X mARRks the spot”

Set in the blue seas of the Caribbean the game sees two to four players sailing their pirate galeons to reach a treasure island and come back to the port with gold and gems.

The game takes place on a small board, like the one you can download here. You need also up to four dices and four galeon token, plus one treasure token.

At the beginning of the turn, each player secretly chooses a number on the dice. All players say “One, two, three, ARRR!” and on the “ARR!” count they simultaneously reveal what they chose. Now, all the players that chose the same number don’t move this turn.

The other players get to move their ships of the chosen number of spaces, starting with the highest number and continuing in a descending fashion.

The player can move in the direction he wants, but he must keep moving in that direction for that turn (i.e.: if you got a six, you can’t move four space forward and two backwards, but just six spaces in one direction).

If the player reachs the island, she takes the treasure token (if present), and stops. Then, on the next turn, she can leave the island and go back.

When a player crosses a space occupied by a player with the treasure, he stops into that space and keeps in mind the remaining movements. Then a dice fight stars. The moving player and the one with the treasure both roll dices. The player without the treasure adds to his roll the remaining movement and the highest result wins.

Example: Alice has got the treasure. Bob is currently two spaces away from her, and has a five on the dice. He moves two spaces, landing on Alice’s spot. Now both players roll their dices. Alice has a six, Bob a five. But since he has a remaining movement of three, it adds up this value to the dice, obtaining a score of eight. So he wins the fight, takes the treasure and sends Alice’s Ship back to the port.

The winner takes the treasure and sends the opponent immediately back to the port.

The first player reaching the port with the treasure is the winner. The player doesn’t have to reach exactly the port space.

Two player variant: when playing a two player game, each player controls two different ships. It will be useful to use colored dices in order to know exactly which ship is associated to one dice.

The game still suffer of a lack of balance in excitement: last part is more fun because of the stealing mechanic and the fast changes.

Some possible enhancements would be:

• Adding up extra strategy by providing different routes (and maybe using different treasures, with different values)
• Using a set of cards, instead dices to control movement, so to have special cards affecting other players and changing the rules

So, if you have a chance, play it and tell me what you think :)

Tagged as: board games, design, exercise, games