Week 6 – Redesigning War, Tic-Tac-Toe, and Remixing a previous Board Game :)

           This week has proven to be unique, compared to the past weeks, as we were told to redesign 2 popular games, as well as to remix an old board game presented by someone from this course.

            For redesigning the card game “War”, I have decided to allow the players to draw 3 cards at the beginning of the game, as well as drawing another card every time players begin their turn. After the draw phase, the turn player will enter the optional set phase, where they will be allowed to set one of their cards face down (which they cannot be used until their current turn ends). This set card, when flipped up, has its value/rank boosted by 5 points. The player then enters the battle phase, where both players choose one card in their hand or one of their set cards to battle with, and simultaneously reveal that card. The player who has the card with the higher rank/value wins the battle, and gets all the cards involved in the battle, which goes to his/her discard pile. In the event of a tie (war), players then draw 3 more cards, and set any 3 cards of their choosing face down. Play then resumes as per the original rules, where players flip the first of the 3 set cards, and battle once again. This can repeat in the event of another tie. 

            For redesigning the game Tic-Tac-Toe, I have altered it so that players must roll 2 dice every turn, in order to determine which column and which row they can put their piece on. The first dice rolled will represent the column to place the piece on, and the second dice will represent the row to place the piece on. For example: player1 chooses to be “X”, and chooses to roll 2 dice, and ends up with a “1” and a “5”, so he/she would then place an “X” here:

(The red numbers represent the columns and the blue numbers represent the rows)

In the event that your piece is to be placed onto another piece, the player can then choose to reroll, or place your piece onto the existing piece, which will return that piece back to that player’s pile of pieces. Players can also opt for the option of flipping a coin, which then determines if they destroy one “X” or one “O” (however, players cannot place a piece if they choose this option). Any piece that is destroyed cannot be played again, and will go to a separate pile. Players only start off with 8 pieces, so strategy is still somewhat necessary to win.

            The game that I have chosen to remix will be the game “Card Collection Frenzy”, which was created by me and my group (Christian Perera, myself-Edward Kwok, Shing Hei Yee, Seonghyun Lee, and Yang Zhou) for homework3. The game “Card Collection Frenzy” starts off with 2-4 players who start off in each of the corners of the board. The first player to go will then roll one dice in order to determine how many steps they can move their piece. Players can go in any direction, but cannot take any steps backwards. If players land on any of the black squares, they can draw a card from the pile of cards, and players win the game by collecting 3 cards with the same shape. Players can also trade in 3 cards of the same color when they land on the middle tile (the “trade tile”) for a wild card, which counts as any shape.

In order to turn the mechanics of this game to be based on pure luck, players should not able to decide which direction they will go in, and instead, players must roll a dice to determine which direction they will go in (odd/even, or 1/4, 2/5, 3/6 if the player is at one of the starting positions). I will also remove the wild cards from the game, and instead, the middle area will just be another spot to allow players to draw a card from the pile. 

            I have found all of these changes to be very interesting, as it alters each of the games dramatically, and sort of adds a new twist to each game. 

            That’s all for now, stay tuned for more exciting material next week :)