New word game : Shootlet

With 260 spots, the board seems nightmarishly unwieldy. Without tokens, it looks like an excel spreadsheet. Since it is extremely hard for people to distinguish between objects when they are collected in groups of more than 7... it seems intimidating.

But, very quickly, I realized that I was not be paralyzed by the number of options. Since the letters organize the board far more than the numbers, it wasn't difficult to track all the relations. So, I think it will be important if you produce this design to allay people's initial visual reactions so that people don't get turned off just by overwhelming number of columns and rows.

As for the design itself, I think it's pretty ingenious. Since you are each operating from the reverse alphanumeric position in both dimensions, there are some very novel and complex ways that the pieces (words) can overlap with each other. It is, to me, the word equivalent of blokus, with the potential for extremely novel interlocking shapes to emerge.

I have two suggestions which I think would increase the focus on the test of vocabulary which is central to most word games. First, I would reduce the number of rows (length of words) from 10 to 8. You lose a lot of words, but I think you gain greater overlap. Seeing how there are still tens of thousands of words which are 8 letters or less, I think this is a decent trade off. But, this is testable. Second, and more importantly, I think you should change the victory conditions. I think that a player should win if he is the first to place all 50 of his tokens on the board. This makes intuitive sense and I think you will find is surprisingly difficult. But, primarily, I think it will really emphasize the need to make words which overlap with your opponent's words so that you knock back his progress while advancing your own. In addition, it is an active equalizer. The closer you are to winning, the more letters you have on the board and therefore the more targets your opponent has.

Ultimately though, given the number of spots and inversion of order, I foresee letters accumulating faster than they are eliminated. So, the game will end. The key is that they end in favor of the person with a larger vocabulary.

Obviously, a change to the victory conditions would also eliminate the option to 'score two of your pieces' instead. So, you would have less mechanics. But, I think it would end up being more strategic.

For the sake of exemplary clarity, let's talk about a board with 8 rows and 26 columns. So, the largest word that you can make is 8 letters long. Let's also assume that the order of the 26 columns is precisely opposite. So that A mirrors Z and B mirrors Y, etc... Let's also assume that you have 40 tokens you need to place on the board to win.

So, the board has 208 spaces, of which, at the most, 79 will be occupied by the end of the game. That means that only about a third of the board will be occupied at the end of the game, and the remainder will be blank spaces.

Since every word in the latin alphabet normally contains at least one vowel... every play will have at least one token in one of the 80 spots that contain a vowel. So, vowel tokens will be on the A/Z, E/V, I/R, K/O, O/K, R/I, U/F, V/E, Z/A. The construction of most longer words makes it more than likely that there will be at least two vowels and most of them will be located in the middle spaces. So, certainly, players will likely end up 'shooting' tokens back and forth in the middle near the vowels as they construct words.

And, so that we are clear, by 'shoot', I mean, if you make a word which uses a spot that is already occupied, you remove the token which is already on that spot and return it to the player's hand. So, tokens are either in your hand or on the board. The goal is to get all of them on the board by making words with 8 or less letters. One word per turn.

As this process goes on, there will be a lot of collateral placement of other letters throughout the board. Especially if you introduce the (sensible) rule that you can never duplicate a word, the reversal of the orders and direction of construction (one player from the top down, the other player from the bottom up) will make it nigh impossible to clear tokens at the same pace that they are placed on the board. But, that doesn't mean that each player won't try to make words to knock out the other players letters... it just means that the shrapnel which accumulates in the process.

The reason that I really like this design is because I believe it will ultimately be a very good test of player's conscious and triggered vocabulary. Players which are able to construct words with strange letters like Z, V and K will be able to knock out a lot of the opponents vowels. And, if the other player cannot do the same, then they will slowly amass more 'collateral placement' along the board and win.

But, I think the game has a lot of promise because it is also a highly aggressive game. Who doesn't want a take that game?! If you can figure out a word to 'shoot' off the opponents tokens, then it is pleasurable, even if you end up losing. But, as long as the victory conditions are set so that you need to place all 40 on the board, there will be a lot of back and forth 'shooting' of each other, with ultimately the most verbose person winning.

That's exactly what a word game should do. So, I think it has some real potential, not just as a learning tool, but also as an alternative to boggle, wordace, scrabble, etc... That is, if you can figure out a cool way to make the board itself less intimidating. But, that may be better answered by a graphic designer, than either you or me.

The clarification is helpful.

What I am suggesting is not your exact design but a modifications of it. Though, much less of an adjustment than the modifications that I suggested for Sumof2 or Damkolo. In those situations, I suggested a different game. In this case, I'm suggesting a few rules changes that I think will make your game a better game.

So, keeping that in mind, I believe that your idea for adjusting the number of tokens and size of the board for the experience of the player is brilliant. But, you are going to need a standard number and size for people who first read the rules.

My suggestion is that you use 40 tokens and 8 rows. But, that's just my inclination to adjust downward for desired play time, average player skill and interaction between words which are less than maximum size. However, playtesting could make 50 tokens / 10 rows a better number... that's up for adjustment.

My second suggestion is to impose a limit on the words. If you cannot spell the whole word in the space, you cannot use it. If a word has already been used, you cannot use it.

My third suggestion is to change the victory conditions and 'shooting' element of the game. Instead of what you have written, I suggest that you only remove a piece from the board when a new word overlaps it and that you return the original piece to its owner. Otherwise, you don't do anything with a piece. Along with this rule, I suggest that the player who wins is the player who first places all 40 tokens on the board. Over the course of the game, tokens may be placed and removed many times, but since all tokens which are 'shot' are returned to the player's hand (pool), the game only ends once a player no longer has any tokens in his hand (pool).

My inclination is that all these suggestions will improve your design. However, I am open to idea that they will not. What do you think?

The graphic layout, logo and presentation would all be well handled by the publisher. So, as long as you feel comfortable with letting them have that role, you're golden.

And, I do like the design. It's unique (as far as I know).