This week we were instructed to recreate an Atari game as a board game as part of our homework assignment. As expected the majority of the class recreated the popular game Frogger in various ways which seemed quite interesting. Within the large list of popular Atari games, these names would include, Space Invaders, Frogger, Dig Dug and much more.
Our group decided to choose the infamous PAPERBOY! Ever played it? It’s a classic… recreating it wasn’t the easiest thing to do but together as a group we actually got some ideas down and came up with something. Now Paperboy was a simple concept, you pretty much just had to deliver papers to different houses in a route, and you would have a specific list of houses that you were supposed to deliver for extra points.
Here’s a video link of the original game:
Pretty simple, so basically we turned it into a board game that kinda borrowed traits from Monopoly. The board was arranged like the following:
(Game Board Created By: Shing Lee)
The players will move across the board by rolling dice, this would allow them to move across the board and stop at houses to deliver papers. Each player would start off with a certain amount of paper and they would gradually decrease as they delivered papers. The question mark spots on the board would prompt the player to pick up a card which would be a specific event. Now the original Paperboy would have things like cars and obstacles that would hit the player or challenge them in some way. The player can receive more paper by passing the Paper factory in the corner (similar to Monopoly’s Passing GO system) Players would receive points by delivering papers obviously. Each player would have a customer list with specific housing addresses to hit for bonus points. Once the customer list was completed, the player would receive additional bonus points. Basically the player who would have the most points at a certain time, or reach a certain number of points would win. Depending on how the players would like to play. Pretty cool huh? Definitely something people would probably play on a 90s rainy day.
The second part of our assignment was to play Liar's Dice. Ever heard of it? You might remember it from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. A personal favorite of mine. If you did see the movie, this game is the one that is played aboard the Flying Dutchman by the crew members. It is later played and explained somewhat when Will Turner challenges Davy Jones and bets an eternity of service aboard the ship. This was done in order for him to find the key that opened the Dead Man's Chest. Basically the game plays by each player having a cup with 5 dice. They would be rolled, and each player would look at their own dice and make a bet saying how many of a certain die face value there was... this was across all players, so if I had three 5's, I would bet with a minimum of three 5's, I could however bluff and say I had more, but then someone could call me a liar if they don't believe. If I am proven to be a liar, then I would lose one of my dies. Pretty complex game, makes for a good gambler... though I'm not too sure if most people have that many dice. Heres a video from Pirates of the Caribbean:
Our job for this assignment was to add/remove/manipulate rules of the game in order to remove a positive feedback loop. We established that this loop was found when the bidders would keep increasing the bids and repeating the cycle. My rule was actually quite useless to removing this loop, but it did bring upon a cool concept. I proposed that we make the game more like Poker with a cup and dice set in the middle of the playing area, that players would also be able to add in with their bets. They weren't able to look at the middle set until after all the bids were made, this way every player could lose to the "dealer"....the problem is, nobody was controlling that dealer spot, therefore where would all the bets go? Maybe if it was implemented in a Casino or something, with an actual personnel controlling it, it would make more sense. But it would kinda be like adding a new player. Either way, this was one homework assignment that I actually did somewhat enjoy.... obtaining 20 dice was a problem though.. hopefully we don't have to do this again... That's it for this week.
Christian Perera
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