A Hiatus - and some Deep 6

Well, first blog post for some time after the MA. After sorting out the caramelcentre and atomic websites most of the time has been spent with little Maya helping her get over illnesses, sleep issues and making the house baby-safe. Recently, with Maya sleeping better I've been able to get back to ... game design!

Actually, amongst other game design stuff, I have been eagerly anticipating the windows-friendly release of Unity 2.5, wanting to get to grips with a prototyping tool that has better support and a larger user base. Learning Virtools and creating a basic prototype for Atomic last year gives me the confidence to want to try rapid prototyping of paper ideas into digital game scenarios.

I've recently reviewed an old paper game idea I mocked up and played with a friend (Ollie) over a year ago - Deep 6.

Deep 6 - Then
The basic game of Deep 6 is for two players and comprises of a hex board and six stones or pieces for each player. Play is turn-based, with each player allowed to move one piece by one hex during their turn. The idea is to 'capture' an opposing piece by surrounding an enemy piece with four of your own pieces. The captured piece is then taken off the board.

The board is hexagon-shaped, roughly 15 hexes a side. Players initially line up their pieces along opposite edges of the hexagon board. The board has 6 red hexes spaced out egularly near the centre of the hexagon. The centre hex itself is coloured black. The first player to occupy the black hex gains an extra player for the duration of the game, the only corollary being that the extra player cannot be moved off the centre square so therefore can be a burden as well as a benefit, depending on how the game pans out.

The 6 red hexes are 'chance' hexes, where the player recieves a random consequence card and must follow the instructions.

There are 6 consequence cards:
1) gain an extra mobile player piece for 6 turns
2) lose a mobile player piece for 6 turns
3) player piece becomes immobile for 6 turns
4) nearest mobile enemy piece becomes immobile for 6 turns
5) -
6) -



There are obvious issues with the Deep 6 concept which was apparant even before we played it - if the game continues after one player loses a piece they will be at a gross disadvantage for the rest of the game, unless they are lucky with the 'chance' hexes. Also, there is no point continuing the game if one player is down to 3 pieces!

When we played the game, we decided the win condition was a player capturing just one piece.
The game was interesting, and we were begining to look at the mathematics of strategy to see if there were definite win tactics that could be employed, but Deep 6 as it stood wasn't a 'replay classic' by any means .....

Thinking beyond the paper game, I went back to a particular motif I have been playing around with during my MA year - that of having two worlds, either one-up-one-down (ie a world and underworld) or two worlds layered on top of each other, slightly askew with each world being invisible to the other.

I thought about a process of capturing the opposing player's piece - how about if that piece turned into a ghost piece, that travelled on the UNDERSIDE of the game board, and who's movements could not be seen by the enemy player. The player with the ghost piece would have an extra move in their turn, where they move the ghost. If the player can get their ghost back to their 'home edge' (where the pieces originally started from) without the enemy player landing on top of them, the ghost takes on a corporeal body and becomes a normal playing piece again. The ghost cannot move onto an underworld square that has it's corresponding overworld square occupied. If the ghost is unable to move during their turn, or has their overworld space occupied by an enemy piece, the ghost is destroyed and the piece removed from the board.

What is interesting here is the mathematics involved in ghost survival. In a typical capture by being surrounded by 4 enemy pieces, the ghost has only two options for movement, so therefore will have a 50/50 chance of surviving till it's next turn. Provided there are not other obstructions, if the ghost survives the first turn it can definitely survive it's second turn.