Why do people play games?
To decide a winner
Why decide a winner?
Usually to go first
Why do people want to go first?
Going first is usually an advantage
Two Player Versus Games
- Tic Tac Toe
- Rock Paper Scissors
- Connect 4
- Chess
Two Player Cooperative Experiences - Cooking
- Solving Problems
- Stretching
Versus games tend to be more engaging so we decided to make a versus game
that’s really simple like Tic Tac Toe. It would be something you can play on paper
with pencil.
We decided to make an easy to draw 4×4 dot grid.
We started with a “Why” ideation process but we couldn’t really balance the
game this way.
We realized being able to use diagonal lines was too strong so we limited it to
just one usage to balance it out. It’s still unfair, but so is Tic Tac Toe.
Cliche units:
- Turn based
- Square – rectangular grid:
- this can be changed by having more ‘maps’ (i.e., more layouts to
play on). Live service game? - it’s a 2 players
Throughout this process we found out its harder to reinvent a simple game like
Tic Tac Toe than it is to remake a more complicated game.
A few factors go into why its much more difficult to make a simple game.
The first reason is making it easy to recreate on paper. People don’t want to draw
complex layouts for a basic game.
The second factor us the complexity of the rules. What can a person do or not
do? It needs to be limiting, just like Tic Tac Toe.
The final grid layout was 4×4 and you have to reach the other side without being
cut off. If you’re cut off and unable to reach the otherside, you have to head back
to your original dot.
We also made a rule where you can only make one diagonal traversal in the
whole game.
Overall, our game is imperfect but we put a lot of thought behind how to recreate
a game of a similar nature to Tic Tac Toe. It was basically like trying to reinvent
the wheel, it was pretty darn impossible.
