Duello!

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Duello Status

Inspiration

Duello is a two-player game idea I'm toying with now using T2D. The inspiration for the game comes from games such as Othello, Go, Chess, Scrabble, and Magic the Gathering.

The board

The basic idea I have in mind is to present the players with an initial board much like Othello does. You will have a largely empty board upon which you'll be playing your pieces. There will be a few pieces to play off of already on the board. In addition, there will be special locations on the board that will have different effects on the game play and they will largely impact the strategy of the game.

Some board space ideas:

• Normal space - this board space has no special attributes.
• Blocked space - this board space does not allow pieces to be played on it and has no color associated with it. This space will block chains.
• Locked color space - this board space does not allow pieces to be played on it and has one color associated with it. This space can only be an end-point to a chain.
• Locked 2-color space - this board space does not allow pieces to be played on it and has two alternating colors associated with it. Each turn the alternate color shows. This space can only be an end-point to a chain.
• Locked 5-color space - this board space does not allow pieces to be played on it and has five alternating colors associated with it. Each turn the alternate color shows. This space can only be an end-point to a chain.
• Edge color space - this board space exists only on the edge of the board, outside of the play area. This space does not allow pieces to be played on it and has one color associated with it. This space can only be an end-point to a chain.
• Much like Scrabble, certain board spaces will have a permanent bonus opportunity on it, such as a x2 chain bonus. Any time this board space is involved in a play the bonus will apply. In addition, some of these board spaces will have limited usability. Each time the board space is involved in a play, it consumes one of it's uses. Once its use count is zero the bonus is removed from the space.
• In addition to these bonus opportunities are random bonuses. At random intervals a bonus opportunity will appear on a board space. This bonus will stay on the board until its use count is consumed. Alternatively, we could try to put a turn-limit on the bonus. In this case the first player to use the bonus consumes it. Or in this case we could allow each player to use the bonus as long as it is in play, which might be three or five turns, for instance.

The pieces

Most pieces you play will be simple stones that have no special abilities. Each piece will be of a certain color. However, unlike in Chess or Othello, there will be more than two colors. There will be five colors. There will also be a few special pieces. An example of a special piece would be a destroyer piece. This piece would allow you to remove a piece from the board and replace it with the destroyer piece. This piece would have a color just like the simple stones once played, with no further special abilities. The idea is to come up with enough variety between the pieces and the playing board to allow players to form complex strategies, similar to Magic the Gathering, but on a much smaller scale.

Some piece ideas:

• Normal - this piece has a color associated with it and no other special attributes.
• Blocker - this piece will block chains. This piece has one color associated with it.
• Replacer - this piece will replace any piece on the board. This piece has one color associated with it. This piece may also be played as a Normal piece.
• Destroyer - this piece will remove any piece on the board.
• Multidestroy - this piece will remove any pieces on the board involved in the score during play.
• Hidden Bomb - this piece will show up as a Normal piece to the opposing player. The first time the opposing player involves this piece in a play, any points scored during that play are given to the opponent. In all other respects this piece acts as a Normal piece. Once the bomb goes off it becomes a Normal piece in play.
• Multiblocker - this piece will temporarily make all pieces scored during this play a blocker. These pieces will revert after the opposing player takes his turn.

The play

Players will take turns playing stones on the board, and each player is assigned a color. This color does not correspond to the colors of the stones. Each time a stone is played, the player is scored on his move. A move will be similar to what is found in Othello, at least at the most basic level. So, the longer your chain and the more chains you create will help you score. In addition, the background of the board will be updated with the color of the player as you play. At the end of the game, each player will receive bonus points based on how much territory they control and this will be determined by looking at the colors/state of the board on the last play of the game. We might also look into figuring in history of control into the scoring to reward players who dominate during a game, but ultimately end up with fewer control squares on the last play.

The fake screenie

A fairly simple board layout with a game in progress. I want to put more fake screenies up with various gameplay scenarios later.

The storm

This is sort of a brainstorm section - the idea is to dump random neural firings here and then sort them out into categories (and later pages) when time permits.

• Each player will have a hand of pieces to play. I am thinking at all times a player will have three pieces available to play, and once a piece is played it is replaced in the hand with a new randomly-determined piece.
• Players should be able to build their own boards.
• I'd like to allow the players to influence the board in more ways than just colors. In particular, I keep coming back to the game Bonkers, which essentially let the players *define* the board itself. My thoughts for Duello are to either have pieces that affect how they are played or pieces that affect how chains are created during play once it is in play. The former might have a piece with an arrow on it that points to the left. In order to play this piece on the board, you would have to find a play which would have a matching piece to the left of the to-be-played piece. The latter might have a piece with an arrow on it that points to the right. Any time that this piece is involved in a play, it will check to its right for a play, and if one exists it will add this play to the chain.
• Another way to attack the board influencing plays would be to have board spaces only allow plays from one or more particular directions. I need to put together a concept image to show this better: