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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

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Anonymous

http://www.livewiregames.net/members/superish/quark.pdf

Ok boys here is the low down on this little number. It’s an abstract two player that right now is so meaty it could choke a pride of lions. I need to make it thinner and more relaxing to play. I have a few ideas how I could handle this but I want to here what you people have to say first. As my ideas involve knocking off a few play concepts that inspired me to invent it in the first place.

ps: sorry about the odd verbiage I just watched Dick Tracy and am now all hyped up on 20-30's organized crime and pulp fiction. What happened to fiction anyway? Can’t heroes just be guys in yellow trench coats that punch people and get the girl?

Johan
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Hello

I find the rules for easy to understand and an interesting idea´ for a tactical game.

Some small questions:
The win
When do you win? Is it immediately when the opponent does not have one quark in hop state and one in punch state?

How to play
I assume that you can move all in a push state or all in a hop state or one of each.

Suggestion of changes
I suggest that you must move one in a hop state and one in a push state. If you can't do that, you have lost the game. (Transforming is a move and changing pivot is a move).

// Johan

phpbbadmin
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My Thoughts

Tyler,

My first thoughts were "Wow, what a neat elegant little game!" Unfortunately, I think it's one of those games that unless you play it, you can't really offer any sort of criticism. At least for me anyway, I'm not very good about trying to play a game mentally in my head. I guess my point is you probably won't get a lot of useful feedback from anyone unless they've actually played the game. But again, it looks really cool and simple.

Just curious, what is your basis for 'using' all of each type versus just moving one piece altogether? Does this speed up the game quite a bit?

-Darke

Anonymous
game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

This looks like a very neat game, and I like the quark theme! I wonder, though, if it'd be possible to expand the types of quarks to reflect the number that is currently known about sub-atomic particles (6...up, down, top, bottom, strange, and charmed...and a nice little resource here). Each quark could have a particular move and capture mechanism...

...but I digress. First comment (and this is nit-picky, but a comment nonetheless): I think the rules could use some polish. There were numerous sentence fragments and what appeared to be interrupted thoughts which made it a little more difficult to understand what you were trying to get across. Maybe teach the game to someone else and have them write the rules as they understand them? That way you can get an inkling if any of the rules are a little confusing or easily misunderstood.

Moving on, in your "How To Play" section you say:

Quote:

Players take turns by moving all their quarks that
are in the push state once or by moving all their
quarks that are in the push state. Or by moving
one quark in the push and one quark in the hop
state.

The first sentence is unclear. Do you move all your push quarks once or do you move all your push quarks? The second "sentence" is a fragment and should be combined with the first (clarified) sentence with a comma.

I'm guessing that when you move a quark, you can do one of three things: pivot, move, or transform, is that correct? You should probably say so explicitly in the rules. Very good description of each of the moves. VERY good illustrations!

I appreciate the structure in which you organized your rules. I always prefer to learn a game by knowing "how do I win" first and then "how do I accomplish that" later. That way, as I read the rules, I can see how the rule relates to and formulate strategies towards the victory conditions.

Insanely simple rules, yet I suspect complex strategy...excellent characteristics of a good, abstract strategy game. I like it!

Other comments:

Have you considered letting the players set up their quarks as they see fit?

Have you considered putting "terrain" on the playing field? Say, spaces that cannot be pushed and cannot be hopped over (if you push against a blocking terrain, either no quarks move or the last quark in line gets squished into oblivion)? Maybe some blocking terrain can actually get pushed around the board such that you can have some terrain that can be hopped but not pushed and other terrain that can be pushed but not hopped.

Did you have way too many spare Risk pieces floating around? :wink:

A hop quark can onlu hop over another piece, right? And in the process, it destroys that piece? How about if hop quarks can hop over (one) blank space, but then their move ends?

You should probably also specify that a push quark can only push other quarks if they are adjacent and in the direction that it may otherwise move (aligned with its axis). Your illustration shows that, but the rules should make it explicitly clear.

Looks like a neat game! If I give it a playtest I'll let you know how it goes!

nosissies
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Nice game, I think this really has some potential. It feels familiar but adds a unique twist to the "genre."

Firstly, I would humbly suggest just using tokens for the playing pieces with labels on either side. They would probably be easier to distinguish sitting on the table. Also, less prone to falling over and getting jumbled. Remember that the game will be played in 3 dimensions, so the distinction between push and hop might be difficult to see when viewing the board from an angle rather than as an overhead orthographic projection.

I'll also reiterate the neccesity of playtesting before I make my next comment.

I'm having a hard time discerning the effect of "moving" a potentially large number of quarks each turn rather than just one or two. It seems that the board could get really chaotic when, each turn, a large number of pieces change position, orientation, etc. Adding this much chaos to the board could also increase the likelihood of analyis paralyis as each player must now evaluate the large number of changes which just occurred and then make a similarly large number of changes themselves.

At the same time, this should be minimized as play progresses and pieces are eliminated from the board.

And meanwhile, this chaos/unpredictability may capture the theme quite nicely.

After my point/counterpoint, my suggestion is first to playtest, and if it turns out that there is too much chaos, or too much analysis paralysis then I would tend to lean towards enforcing a "two move per turn" or some such constraint. This would allow for a pretty decent variety of moves without making the players' decision tree so large that they cannot really make good decisions.

That's all I've got for now, I may chime in again later if I come up with something else.

Good luck!

peace,
Tom

Brykovian
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Nice game, Tyler ... I agree with both Darkhorse's comment about having to actually play it in order to see how it "feels" and with MikeDew's detailed comments about the rules -- it took me a couple of reads (and a couple of translation into what I though you meant to say) to get it down.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say you need to lighten it up ... seems a simple game that fans of abstract 2-player games wouldn't hesitate to try out. The only suggestion I would give is to try it with just allowing each player a single move per turn, causing turns to pass more quickly, keeping both players "involved". Otherwise, I can see the strategy-building possbilities of allowing all pieces of the same "type" to be moved in a turn ... guess it depends on if the game wants to give "strategy-building" or "player involvement" more weight.

-Bryk

Anonymous
game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Thanks for all your comments. I appreciate your feed back. I send games in here because they are the ones I think need the most help so feel free to criticize any part of the rules.

nosissies said

Quote:
After my point/counterpoint, my suggestion is first to playtest, and if it turns out that there is too much chaos, or too much analysis paralysis then I would tend to lean towards enforcing a "two move per turn" or some such constraint. This would allow for a pretty decent variety of moves without making the players' decision tree so large that they cannot really make good decisions.

This is exactly what happens (I have had a few playtests before). And the turn structure will be changing.
But I was reluctant to do this because of how quark started. See I wanted a game where players could change their pieces from one behaving one way to behaving another, they would gain a benefit from having more pieces in one state (moving all of them) but would also make themselves more venerable to losing. But I guess this game has grown to have enough choices and decisions to where it doesn’t need that. So I just need to drown my baby puppies and kill that idea for this game and use it somewhere else

Said by Johan

Quote:
I suggest that you must move one in a hop state and one in a push state. If you can't do that, you have lost the game. (Transforming is a move and changing pivot is a move).

This is probably what I will change it to, and will give the game a feeling of team work and balance between the two states. Thanks

I will be cleaning up the rules like you guys have suggested.

Quote:
have you considered putting "terrain" on the playing field? Say, spaces that cannot be pushed and cannot be hopped over

This looks like a good idea but I have tried to change the board before and it's really interesting how it changes the game. See a quark in the center is venerable to a hop but can’t really be affected by a push, but a quark on the edge is venerable to a push but not to a hop. So if you change the board it unbalances the pieces. I have tried making it skinner or wider. And the wider the board the stronger the hop, with the skinner the push was stronger. I have tried removing the center hex but that really hurt the hop.

Thanks again and keep the critique and ideas coming. I will likely be posting some revised rule latter today if I get around to it.

Anonymous
game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Tyler,

First off: Nice idea. I like the concept and its simple rules.

The only major addition I can see adding is a "no repeat the same board position clause for x turns". Chess would suffer a fate of repetition if it weren't for that rule. I can see someone figuring out a defensive strategy in the corner using one of each and the board positions simply repeating.

Otherwise, playtest, playtest, playtest...and let us know how it goes.

Chance

emxibus
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Loved the one page rules. It was nice to see pictures, it really helped me to visualize what was going on. I kept hearing "Tron" sounds in my head as I read. I think I'm going to try to playtest this one so that I can be a better feel for game play. Any updates on your game? It's been awhile since the last post.

Question: On a turn can each quark (in one state) pivot, move, transform, and eliminate?

sedjtroll
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Let me start by saying that I really like the sound of this game. I don't know what you mean by 'too meaty' or 'needs to be thinner'- but I agree with all the sentiments mentioned already...

Rules need to be cleaned up (you've got the word "push" where you meant to say "hop" in one place so, taken literally, you don't get to move your Hop state quarks on your turn!).

Turns should consist of 1 move only. Or I liked the idea of moving 1 piece of each state.

Game end- Johan's sounded good... if you can't move one of each piece then you lose. You should probably disallow the 2 moves being the same piece (flipping, moving, or rotating back and forth)

Why not use a Hexagon shaped board? With a bigger board this could easily be playable with 3 players. Using a 4hex/side hexagon (one size up from a Settlers island) you could put three players in alternating corners with your same initial setup.

I like your idea that having more of a type gives you a benefit (more moves per turn) but makes you more vulnerable (not 'venerable' ;)). But I think the bad outweighs the good there. Maybe there's some other benefit to having a lot of Hops (for example)... but probably better to simply decide your move based on board position.

Regarding starting position... why not have an even number of Push and Hop state pieces? Like switch the middle Hop piece to a push piece in your setup diagram.

I like it.

- Seth

Aerjen
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Hi there,

first of all, my compliments on your (in my point of view) nice and light game. As most comments I were going to suggest have already been given, I'll just add one question. It seemed to me this wasn't covered by the rules. Or maybe I just misunderstood, in which case your rules aren't completely foolproof *wink*

Just wondering... If you choose to move one quark in hop state and one in push, can you first transform a quark from hop to push(or visa versa) and then move it?

Trickydicky
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

I really like your game idea. I like having a number of two player games in my closet, because it seems so hard to get 5 or 6 people to agree on playing any strategy game.

I like the idea of only allowing two moves per turn, one of each piece.
The only thing in your rules that confused me was the transformation process. Is it considered a move action? If so, does that mean that if you move/transform one hop to a push, that that counts as your move for your hop pieces that turn? If so, I think I would only transform as a last resort? If that is what you want then good, otherwise perhaps you could have two moves one for each type, and 1 transformation. Those three actions could be carried out in any order. For example you could transform a hop to a push, move that push and then move a hop.

My wife and I will have to try this one out. I think she would like it.

sedjtroll
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game #30 Quark By Tyler Tinsley

Trickydicky wrote:
perhaps you could have two moves one for each type, and 1 transformation. Those three actions could be carried out in any order. For example you could transform a hop to a push, move that push and then move a hop.

That's a really interesting idea. Also the rule could be that you MUST do one of each. So you must Move a Hop, Move a Push, and Transform a Quark.

You may or may not want to disallow the same piece to move more than once, although it might be neat to be able to move as a push, transform that quark, then use it to hop... maybe too degenerate though. I think the 2 pieces moved should have to be different, but maybe the piece you transform could be one of them.

- Seth

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