Challenge 2: Interplanetary – Risk

This project was to the adaption of changing a current boardgame with some minor elements (or major, not sure) I wanted to change Life to the game of Death with Emos, but that didn’t go with my group too well.

The changes are simple: Take the world map and change it to a two-terrain solar system map. Include several planets with several ground territories to fight over, as well as the added element of the space around the planets as separate territories to include ship battles that must take place to land troops at those planets.

The cards would be changed around to become objective based, goal based, troop reinforcement based, as well as special power cards, though that hasn’t yet been fleshed out.

The gameplay of each race would not be different at all, but their individual appearance would be. Dice rolls and what not being the same.

Edit: Brainstorming session:

General Gameplay:

• There are two types of territories – Space and Land.
• Every planet contains atleast one Space Port.
• Every few turns, Space ports will create a ship, the player choose whether or not they recieve a Transports or Battle ship. Ground troops are created by territories as normal in a vailla Risk game.
• Combat rolls for troops and Battle ships are standard.
• Troops can be dropped anywhere onto a planet as long as it comes from a transport in the planet’s orbit.

Space:

• Space territories do not provide troops, they are merely routes between planets.
• Special space territories provide benefits if their reqirements are met. Example: A resource heavy asteroid field will give an additional one troop per territory if atleast three Transports are in the territory.
• Transports are required to move troops between territories, carrying ten troops each.
• Battleships fight regularly in combat like troops. Transports are weaker at combat, thus every roll above a three for a transport must be divided by two and rounded down before being added up. (A roll of one, two, or three will provide a combat bonus of one, two, or three. A roll of four, five or six would provide a two, two, or three respectively.)

Cards:

• Objective based cards provide benefits for meeting their critera. Example: Kill three enemy Battleships to turn in the card for an additional ten troops.
• Special cards provide one time use benefits, such as paradropping troops into a territory from ships in orbit  (The troops are created when the card is used.), heavy weapons strikes from orbit to damage units in a territory, etc.
• Territory cards are played like regular Risk territory cards.
• Goal cards are a card each player will always have one of. Goal cards provide great benefits for great risks. The cards don’t have a time limit to be activated, but once the player informs other players that they are attempting to complete its requirements, they have a specific timelimit (Denoted on the card) to complete the objectives or they lose the Goal card and are given a new one. Example: Player 1 informs Players 2 and 3 that he is attempting to complete a Goal card that requires he take 7 territories in 3 turns to recieve 30 troops or 3 ships of any type, if he does not complete the objectives, he loses the card and is given a new card.)

Challenge 1, some odd Checkers around here.

First Challenge of the course:
Created a version of Checkers that seemed to stick in my mind for some odd reason, the rules are quite simple, though a little more restrictive than checkers, I think.

1. 5×5 board with one row of pieces at either end.
2. Each piece can move three spaces, these can change direction at any time during its movement. The piece can never, however, touch the square it occupied before moving, or end up on that square at the end of the turn. Example: It can go down two, right one. Or Down one, left two. Or it can even go up one, left one, down one.
2. The piece can move over any enemy pieces during that three square movement as long as the last spot that it lands on is open, however, the pieces that are moved over will not be removed from the board unless they occupy the second square the moving piece has passed over. Example: If a piece goes up two, and left one with an enemy piece on the first and second square, only the second would be removed and the first would remain.
3. The game continues until one of the two players has only one piece left on the board. So two is the operating number out of five.

No idea why this idea came to mind, I was originally working on a Go sort of game with different shapes of pieces that could only capture another type of shape of pieces (So huge combinations and smart planning would be needed.) This idea was scrapped when I realized that Go takes far more than fifteen minutes (As the maximum length specified for this project.). The idea quickly evolved into Checkers.

Edit: Okay, so, the idea didn’t work out too well. I couldn’t find a size for the board (5×5 proved a bit small) that would add some challenge to the gameplay. A slight change to the rules for clarification as well. We tried a 5×6 board, but I don’t think this idea will get far.

The -BLOG-

This was created for a class to document my design and observations of my field of study in College, Game Design.