Our favorite game during the field trip was Good & Bad Ghost, we are surprised that such a simple mechanics could result in such an interesting game. After reading to book Game mechanics: advanced game design, we decide to make a complex system using our own simple rules and combine it with the on-going Russian-Ukraine War, trying to provide players an emergent playing experience.
Our board game is placed on a 10×10 board. Each player owns four types of pieces: soldier (7), commander (1), political commissar (1) and unmanned kamikaze drone aircraft (1). Two players sit on two sides of the board. Each player puts their pieces at any place at the last three rows of the board towards himself. Players take turns to move the pieces and every turn they can only move one piece. Players can only see the types of their own pieces and the types of their opponent’s pieces will only be displayed when the piece is captured. The rules of the pieces are listed below:
Soldier: move one square for once (forwards, backwards or sideways), can capture any opponent’s pieces.
Commander: move one square for once (forwards, backwards or sideways). If one player captures his opponent’s commander, he wins.
Political commissar: can move one square for twice (forwards, backwards or sideways), allows pieces within two squares (a diamond shape area) to move twice in one turn.
Unmanned kamikaze drone aircraft: move one square for once (forwards, backwards or sideways), can choose a piece at any position and check its type. If the piece chosen is not a commander, destroy it and unmanned kamikaze drone aircraft itself. Else, destroy the unmanned kamikaze drone aircraft itself and reveal the commander of each player.
We will test and revise our board game after we finish it in class and see how we can form a more emergent system with these simple rules. We plan to make the board game with cardboard. We will make cones as the pieces and draw simple symbols on them to distinguish their types. Below are the rough draft of the symbols:
Soldier:
Commander:
Political commissar:
Unmanned kamikaze drone aircraft:
