The Nasi Lemak Stand

Its recess time at Adam High School. Apparently, some student doesn’t really like the school canteen’s food. So, instead of buying them there, they go outside of school and buy uncle Gram’s delicious nasi lemak (na-see le-mak, Malay delicacy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasi_lemak) which is located right outside of the school compound, and it is very popular with uncle Gram special topping (i.e the extra egg, beef and squid). This is where the game comes in. You are to play as uncle Gram and collect as many points as possible before recess time is over, remember the faster you serve your customer, the more point you get. Oh yeah it’s a solo game.



you can download the game rules here!
and the board game and counter here!

Battle Mechanica Update (2/17/09)

This is just a progress update for Battle Mechanica. Please bear in mind that this is a Work In Progress (WIP), which means that the game is incomplete and is subject to change at any time by the designer.

I've pondered long and hard on this issue and I've finally decided which grid system Battle Mechanica will use: square grid. Despite the flexibility of the hex grid, I found that the square grid was far simpler to incorporate into the game. Simplicity of design won over simulation of realism.

So why Square Grid? Well, the reason why I chose to use hex grid in the first place was because it models diagonal movements nicely. But I found that hex grid doesn't work well on rectangular boards, since it's difficult to make all the hexes on the edges equidistant with their opposite counterparts. That was the only real issue for me.

Square grid solves this problem, and a whole lot more than I care to admit. It may not model diagonal movements well but it is simpler to implement and easier explain to would-be players.




Battle Mechanicum by Daniel Marcus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Happy Chinese New Year from Experimental Playground

We at Experimental Playground would like to wish all our readers

Happy Chinese New Year!

The Raider Attack Banana Village Minigame

The Raiders are attacking Banana village again! This time the villager are not going to hold back!

This is a game for 2 players where one player control the Raiders while the other controls the villagers. Villagers set traps and save routes, while Raiders maneuver through the map, both players collect points according to their strategy and player with the highest points is the winner.



download the game, print and play!

Merry Christmas from Experimental Playground!

We at Experimental Playground would like to wish all our readers

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Battle Mechanica Update (17/12/08)

This is just a progress update for Battle Mechanica. Please bear in mind that this is a Work In Progress (WIP), which means that the game is incomplete and is subject to change at any time by the designer.

After a long period of meditation and soul-searching, I'm back. I've also brought some updates for Battle Mechanica. The rules was almost a complete overhaul, but the major changes were necessary in order to make this game both easier to design and play.

I won't go into lengthy detail on the changes. Instead, I'll just briefly highlight on what are the major changes.

List of major changes:

1. The battleground is now tile-based. This is one of the biggest changes to the system. The game no longer needs rulers and templates. Instead, the hex-tile system will take care of all the measuring.
   
2. The attributes in Unit Profiles has been changed. The new set of attributes are: Hand-to-hand Combat, Ranged Attack, Strength, Control, Movement, Special Ability, Experience Level.
   
3. Rounds and Phases have been simplified. Each Round consists of 3 Phases: the Check phase, the Reinforce phase and the Activate phase.
   
4. Units are now represented by a single miniature to indicate the unit's type, and Strength counters to represent the unit's strength (just like a traditional board wargame).
   
5. The Hit Zone system has been removed. It's no longer needed since a unit will only consist of a single miniature.
   
6. The combat system has been simplified. It still uses attribute comparison, but the combat now is much simpler to play.
   

Additionally, the game will also introduce new features listed below:

List of planned features:

1. Simulate fog-of-war effects.
   
2. Implementation of reserved points that players can use to create game-changing effects.
   
3. Create game-affecting traits for terrains (for example, swamp slows down movement).
   
4. Create factions for the game
   
5. Create basic units for playtesting.
   

That's all for this post. I'm hoping to finish the basic ruleset of this game by the end of this year. In the mean time, if you missed ClickStartPlay.com's HobbyCon 2008, go here to see a coverage of the event.

Battle Mechanicum by Daniel Marcus is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Hobbycon Minigame Flyer

more minigame yay! this time around im twiddling around with hobbycon theme on how to make a minigame out of hobbycon minigame flyer using only availability around us (i.e coins, paper, etc). there is 3 attempt at making it, each improve one another until finally i get this one

the first: theme is actually a war game. about a bear fighting with some other mascot on whose going to be the hobbycon mascot this year. uses six sided die, and very random at it. wasn't that fun at all.
the second: change to competition event, using coins substitute to dice to generate number and uses action point to boost stats. resolution task is flip coin + action point vs difficulty of the event. turn out its kinda ugly and very very predictable. it has character generation which make setup long.
the third:the one you saw, it still a competition, instead of character generation, each player start with 10 effort points, which have different uses on each competition. each event has different style of play unlike the previous one where you only look at difficulty level. uses finger to generate numbers.

without further ado, here is hobbycon minigame flyer (download and print)


go to this page to download, click full view.