I like designing games! One of these days, I'll probably publish one. But today I have a game that I've been thinking about for a while - it's a two-player board game version of Conway's Game of Life. Now, I know that Life is not really a 'game', but this is.
In the normal version of Life, the rules are simple. If a dead cell has exactly three living neighbours, it becomes alive in the next generation (or timestep). If a living cell has two or three living neighbours, it remains alive in the next generation (otherwise it dies). That's all!
My game is pretty simple, too, but for two things: first, each player has a different colour. If a dead cell has three living neighbours, it becomes alive as life of the same colour as the majority of its neighbours. Second, players alternate turns. On a player's turn, they select a 3x3 area containing at least one of their cells, and the cells in that area are the only ones which update.
Here's an example move:
What are the dots in some of the cells? Good question. It's the scoring system. But first, the game ends when either a player has lost all of their cells (in which case they lose) or players consecutively play moves which don't affect the board at all (or the players agree on the outcome). The winner is the player who controls more of the board when the game ends.
A player gets one point per cell they have alive and one point for each cell adjacent to only their cells (not opponent's cells and not the edge of the board). So, Red had (9+9=18) points before the move and (10+9=19) points after, while Blue had (10+10=20) points before and (10+9=19) after.
The last little bit of rules is how the game begins. Players alternate placing up to 3 living cells in any cells on their side of the board (there's a faint red/blue border around the two halves of the board). Instead of placing more living cells, a player may instead place one of their opponent's cells in the centre of the board and take the first move.
As this is just a 2-player game and games can move slowly if waiting for a particular player, I'm going to open this up to two teams of up to three players each. To join a team, simply make a move and post the updated board, preferably with a green square around the move that was made (adding scoring dots once the placing phase of the game is done). Communication between players on a team is encouraged!
I'll start the game immediately in the next post, but feel free to comment on anything related to the game with or without making a move.
[Last edited by Someone Else at 04-17-2017 06:12 AM]
