Hello, my name is Nathan Hansen and I make fun for a living. I’m a Game Designer, Artist and Programmer living in Southern California. I have a passion for board and card games and as such most of my design work is in that area, but I also work as a programmer from time to time on a freelance basis.
My abstract strategy game Nex has been released as a free print and play game. It can be found at the Board Game Geek page for the game or at The Game Crafter page for the game where you can also purchase a copy if you want a higher quality version. The cost basically covers the print cost and not much else. I did have to leave some room in the cost in case their was a change in production cost. I’m okay with giving the game away, but I’m not okay with paying for people to play it :0)
If you want to buy a printed copy you can check it out at http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/nex
I've also attached a copy to this as well.
I’ve also released a game called The Racket through The Game Crafter. Its a mafia themed game. Basically the game boils down to getting as much territory as you can as fast as you can so you can get as much "respect" as you can. The winner is the first to get to 100 respect.
You can check it out at http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/the-racket
Comments
error?
Nathan..it says that The Racket takes 5 minutes to play...that doesnt seem right.
Nex Question
At first glance, Nex looks intriguing. The rules a very simple, but it appears to be strategically deep. It also looks like a simplified version (small board, fewer components) of Go... something which might be quite advantageous given Go's time commitment.
With a lot more spaces than pieces in a two player game, I was wondering:
Can you draw Nex? It seems to me that there may be some configurations on the board where both players have no reason to 'attack' so they simply repeat the same sequence of moves.
FYI, there's a typo: "Move one of your tokens to AN adjacent space..."
You are right that is a
You are right that is a error. I've changed it to 45 minutes, sorry for any confusion.
Yes it is possible to draw.
Yes it is possible to draw. I've only had that happen once while testing however. I considered adding a rule that forbids moving a piece back and forth in such a way that you can force a draw but decided against it. I'm not personally of the opinion that a game that can end in draw is inherently flawed, although I know some people do feel that way.
Draw Driven
Indeed, certain people find split victories, draws or mutual loss to be unacceptable outcomes for games. However, sometimes a draw is one of the best outcomes... after all, competition against someone else who is equally matched is oftentimes the most fulfilling.
My concern is not whether a draw is possible but whether a draw is likely given optimal play. Given the way that the rules for capture are structured, the second person (in a two player game) has no incentive to place his first piece adjacent to the pre-existing piece since his will be captured and he will lose. As a result, he will choose to place it in a position at least one away from the first player. The first player then has the option to either 'attack' it, in which case if he is adjacent, he will in turn lose, or expand his territory elsewhere or play in a defensive position next to his piece.
There is too much combinatorial explosion beyond this point to explain for sure, but my intuition tells me that unless you have overly aggressive (and foolish) people, you will end up with a defensive formation of pieces on the board that prohibit others from surrounding it (much like Go). If both players reach this state and they do not have any pieces left in reserve, then it seems very likely that you will reach a number of nash equilibria. (aka draw)
I suppose if you are playing
I suppose if you are playing a 2 player game with two players that are playing very defensively this can't be avoided, but again I've only had this happen once in play testing. I suppose if this is a problem you could implement a "house rule" saying that a piece can't move immediately back to a space it moved from the previous turn, or setting a limit to the number of times you can do so, but I don't think this is necessary personally.
Thank you for the comments. I'll be sure to do some testing where I try to force a draw to see how hard it is. If I find its to easy I'll implement a rule like I mentioned above.