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Entanglement

Page history last edited by AB 14 years, 9 months ago

Entanglement 

by Alain Bellon

(a strategy game for 2-4 players)

 

In the World of Ñot (ny-oh-t) communications enterprises battle to establish networks across the lands. Competition is so fierce that if a company stagnates, their competitors take an insurmountable lead and corner the market. Build your net and never stop!

 

A game in progress. If it's red's turn, blue just lost!

 

Requirements 

1 piece of paper 

Writing instruments (pen, pencil, crayons), one per player, plus one more to draw the board (optional). 

 

Setup 

Draw a large curvy line, like a doodle, using all of the page. Make sure it loops and crosses over itself many times (say 30 crossings for a 2 player game). Draw it lightly or in a color not used by the players. 

Each line crossing is a node. Each player chooses a node near their side, on the outer perimeter of the curve as their starting point.

 

Rules 

Players take turns to move from one node to another, one at a time, along the line segment that connects them. The player MARKS the line segment as part of her net by drawing over it with her marker color. 

Players may move to ANY CONTIGUOUS node as long as they move along an UNMARKED line segment. 

 

Winning 

A player is eliminated if he/she cannot move to another node through an unmarked line segment. 

The last player standing is the winner. 

The last player does not have to make a move if all other players have been eliminated. 

 

Advanced Edition 

Each player has 2 Split actions. (Write down the numbers 1,2 on the paper) 

If a player calls up “Split” during his turn, he picks any node in his net and moves from there.

Mark the used splits by crossing over the numbers.

Comments (15)

Leana Galiel said

at 4:58 pm on Jun 30, 2009

I like how you took a bit of a different approach then most. You have no physical finish line, but a completely looping path. I see from your example that players may cross paths and go to the same node. Does anything happen if players go to the same node?

AB said

at 5:04 pm on Jun 30, 2009

Hehe, thanks. I don't know it just popped into my head and the idea looked like fun.

You may land on any node, as long as you use an unmarked line segment to get there.

David Lawson said

at 6:38 pm on Jun 30, 2009

Points for originality, ease of play, and good metaphor/story. This game seems quite fun. I like the Split action wrinkle in the rules.

Daver said

at 7:23 pm on Jun 30, 2009

Pretty neat... and I like that the game only requires items that are readily available . I just might end up playing this one day.

AB said

at 7:41 pm on Jun 30, 2009

Thank you guys. I really focused on simplicity, but without neglect for the strategic considerations.

In the graphical example, if it's Red's turn, she will take one of the upward paths, and then blue is done. If blue takes the upward path, red counters by coming back down, both players would be trapped but unfortunately it would be blue's turn to move and he can't. If blue tries a downward path after red's first move, then blue is trapped inside the inner circuit, and red has a lot more nodes to operate. So the battle will take longer but it's red's game.

If from the graphic, Blue plays next, then blue can manage to get out and it's anyone's game.

Dan Carreker (NarrativeDesigns.com) said

at 7:49 pm on Jun 30, 2009

Nice game. Reminds me of the race bikes from TRON, only with curves...If I'd thought of this 20 years ago, I might have saved a lot of quarters ;)

AB said

at 7:53 pm on Jun 30, 2009

Yeah!!! Tron bikes came to mind when I was thinking about it.

jason@greenodesign.com said

at 7:57 pm on Jun 30, 2009

"Nice game. Reminds me of the race bikes from TRON, only with curves...If I'd thought of this 20 years ago, I might have saved a lot of quarters ;)"

-Exactly what I was thinking, just played that old TRON standup a couple of weekends ago at Funspot in NH!

ishalev@gmail.com said

at 11:12 pm on Jun 30, 2009

I was confused for a bit because I didn't get that you had to make a move from the node you had arrived at on the previous turn. A fun variant might be that you can move from any node you've previously reached. That would make the game into a more Go-like area-control game, but then it wouldn't really fit the rules of this challenge!

Rohit Crasta said

at 4:52 pm on Jul 1, 2009

Great design, I love how its so simple yet different each time. My friend and I both wanted to draw the curvy doodle, since the game is based entirely around it, so we had an interesting solution.

Each taking a pen in hand, we started at the same point, joining our pens together, then broke from the point in opposite directions, proceeding to furiously draw the curvy doodle all over the paper. After some time we meet again, connecting the two ends and creating a single doodle as if one person had setup the game.

If you try this, remember that the starting and meeting points aren't actually nodes.

Dave Seidner said

at 5:30 pm on Jul 1, 2009

This is fantastic. Very original. I'm definitely going to try this. Simple, strategic and seems fun. The advanced version should add a nice variant if the basic version starts to get old. Well done!

Dan Kelly said

at 8:29 pm on Jul 1, 2009

Very original, and easy to get playing. I'll definitely give this a try.

Rohit suggestion was a good one for both to draw the board... but perhaps both players lines start and end at the same place, in the center of the board...

AB said

at 9:29 pm on Jul 1, 2009

Wow, I am flattered. Thank you all for your comments.

The suggestion for drawing the initial path simultaneously is fantastic.

I would love to hear what you guys think after playing the game a few times. I wish I was back in school to play with a friend nearby during class ;)

mike.reddy@... said

at 1:35 am on Jul 2, 2009

Fantastic, although asa programmer I'd interpret Split to mean either: forking from where you were (Optionallyneeding two lines drawn per turn afterwards) or choosing a node previously captured but again using two lines per turn (the end one and the new branch) until one process was blocked. Splitting could then be done whenever you only had one process running, maybe. Or you could split again! The downside of splitting is slower wider spreads that could be cut off by opponent. However, I like your idea more. Much simpler! Especially, the random board. This is my favourite, so far!

mrkhmusic said

at 2:11 am on Jul 2, 2009

Now I know what my son and I will be doing if church gets boring this sunday! Great job!

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