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Game Design Concepts: Level 3 Challenge

Here was the assignment:

Most war-themed games have an objective of either territorial control or capture/destroy (as described earlier). For this challenge, you’ll be pushing beyond these traditional boundaries. You should design a non-digital game that includes the following:

The theme must relate to World War I.The primary objective of players cannot be territorial control, or capture/destroy.

And here’s what I came up with:

Tunnels and Trenches

Tunnels and Trenches is a two-player, tile-laying game where the object is to be the first player to dig a tunnel from your trench to your opponent’s trench.

Components

• 1 game board (an 8×8 grid)
• 16 Trench tiles (9 tiles with a tunnel outlet, 7 tiles with no outlet)
• 56 Tunnel tiles (similar to the road tiles in the game Carcassonne )

Setup

Trench tiles:
Shuffle the trench tiles and deal them all to the two players (8 tiles per player).

The players then take turns laying the tiles down in the row closest to them on the game board. This row is the player’s trench. Note: Once the trench is complete, some of the trench spaces will have tunnel outlets and some will not.

Tunnel tiles:
Put all the tunnel tiles in the draw bag and mix them up. Each player then draws three random tiles from the bag. This is the player’s hand. A player may look at his own tiles, but not those of his opponent.

Game play

The player who did not lay the first tile in the trench-building phase goes first. Play then alternates between the two players.

• The player draws a single tunnel tile from the bag and adds it to his hand.
• The player then places a tunnel tile from his hand onto the game board. The placed tunnel tile must connect to the player’s trench via the trench’s tunnel outlet. On subsequent turns, the placed tile must connect to either the tunnel already under construction or to another of that players tunnel outlets along his trench.
• The player’s tunnel is never allowed to connect with his opponent’s tunnel.
• If a placed tile has two separate, unconnected tunnel segments, however, it may be possible for the player to add to his opponent’s tunnel while in the process of building his own. As long as the two tunnels don’t connect, this is allowed.
• Similarly, if a tunnel segment that has already been placed is not connected to either player’s tunnel, a player may connect to it on his turn, provided that all of the other rules are followed.
• After drawing a tile, if the player cannot legally place a tile or is unsatisfied with the tiles in his hand, he may put ALL FOUR tiles on the discard pile and draw three more tiles from the bag. The player is not allowed to play a tile on this turn.
• After all of the tiles have been pulled from the draw bag, the discard pile goes back in the bag and those tiles may be reused.

Game End

The game ends when a player successfully connects his tunnel to his opponent’s trench. Note: A player may connect to any point on the opponent’s trench. A tunnel outlet is not required.

Game Design Concepts

My brother and I are both taking an online course in non-digital game design this summer. Just a week and a half into the course, I am finding it both extremely challenging and highly rewarding. The class forum is closed to the public, so I’ve decided to share some of my coursework on this blog as well.

Though the class forum is private, you can follow the class blog here.