Concept:

• Players have to get to the shore without getting stung
• Stingrays are in the path of the players
• Stingrays are restricted to certain areas to allow for it to be possible for the players to pass

Object of the Game

In the midst of plenty of stingrays, the swimmer must make it to the shore without being stung by one of the rays. This is an interactive game and it is encouraged to have the stingrays work together in order to get rid of the swimmer and the swimmers work together to avoid the stingrays.

Players:

• Stingrays (there can be up to 6-10 stingrays)
• Swimmers – (must crawl) (there can be up to 5 swimmers)

Pieces:

• Bases – known as striking zones
• Partially see through blindfolds –
  • (A stingray’s eyes do not come in much use as they are on top of their heads, Instead they use sensors on their mouth to track any potential prey. The stingray player’s hands and feet are these sensors. Also, stingrays hide beneath the sand to hide from their prey. This is what inspired the blindfold and base idea. )

Rules/ How to Play:

1. Players involved with the game distribute themselves into two teams : swimmers and stingrays. There should be more stingrays than swimmers.
2. Stingrays distributes themselves around the playing area, forming individual ‘striking areas,’ in an order that is up to them (this will be your starting area but it can change). It is illegal to have the stingray players stand next to each other creating a wall like structure.
3. The “striking area” is however far the player can reach without taking their foot off the base and without touching another stingrays striking area.
4. At the start of the game, swimmers will begin approximately 10 feet before the stingray furthest away from shore or finish line.  
5. The swimmers and stingrays are allowed to communicate with one another, but keep in mind that this will direct attention to them and the opposite team can identify where they are or depict how they plan to eliminate other players.
6. Once the rays pick their “striking area” each ray will place their base. They must keep one foot on it at all times.
7. Stingrays are allowed to expand their arms and legs as far as they will go without removing their foot from their base.
8. The stingrays must turn towards the shore, facing away from the potential swimmers and place their blindfolds over their eyes.
9. Swimmers ‘swim’ to shore by crawling.
10. Players must avoid being contacted by stingrays.
11. If a swimmer is touched by a ray, then the swimmer will be “stung” and will be unable to move and must stay with the stingray that stung them throughout the rest of the game.
12. If a stingray catches someone they will have the ability to move 3 steps at any time of their choosing, in any direction of their choice unless another stingray is in reach.
13. Special ability or “medicine”: the swimmers have a chance to get “special medicine” located on the shore at the finish line to help save a swimmer that was stung. In order to save the stunned swimmer they must approach the swimmer after getting the shore and tag the swimmer that was stunned to release the swimmer from the stingray. The stingray who had captured the stunned swimmer cannot attack either swimmer.
14. The rest of the swimmers continue to move towards the shore and whoever gets across survives.
15. All swimmers must make it across to the shore in order to win. If all swimmers are captured, the stingrays win.
16. For the next round the roles are reversed (swimmers become stingrays and stingrays become swimmers however, there still must be 6-10 stingrays and only 5 swimmers meaning some people may have to be stingrays again).

This game is centered around the idea of the “obnoxious vegan” who is constantly only talking about veganism and trying to push their personal beliefs and practices onto everyone around them. The setting of the game is a party at which the group of people is approached by said vegan and have to engage in conversation. The game works a lot like Cards Against Humanity, in that each round someone is the vegan, in place of the card czar, and their job is to pick a vegan card at random with an annoying phrase that one might hear from an overbearing vegan in a group conversation. The rest of the players then play a card from their hand, all of which are responses to statements that might be made by a vegan and are often very sarcastic or aggressive. The vegan is then tasked with choosing who has the “best” response, which may vary based on their opinion, for example one might pic the rudest while another might pick the most logical, and the player of the card that is inevitably picked wins that round and “gets out of the conversation,” which is the overall goal of the game. The game plays very well and although it is very similar to Cards Against Humanity in function, the situations and responses are catered to a very different and specific topic so it feels much like a new game rather than a copy. My only suggestion is to perhaps make the responses more varied, as they are all somewhat mild and some could be more rude and humorous with others making more logical sense in order to allow for players to cater to what they think each “vegan” will choose, adding more strategy to the gameplay. There is also somewhat of a disconnect with the extra cards added in to allow for a player to sit out for a round, for example “phone call from mom, you are excused for this conversation.” This idea of cards with different purposes could be pushed and made into something more advantageous, as players already have the option to throw away bad cards they might not want to use if they want to sit out a round and these cards primary act as a throw away.

Red Rover is a game in which the objective is to end the game with the largest of two teams. The core mechanics are running and protecting oneself against he runner. The game begins with at least six people, out of which two even teams are formed that face each other on opposite sides of the playing area. The members of each team hold hands or link arms, forming a chain of players. The first team is then tasked with choosing an opponent who will attempt to break their team’s chain, chanting the phrase, “Red Rover, Red Rover, send -insert chosen player’s name- on over.” The chosen player from the opposite team then runs toward one of the links in the chain in attempt to break it. If the runner succeeds in the breaking of his or her opponents’ chain, he or she is then allowed to choose one of the separated players to bring back to their own team on the other side of the playing area. This action is then repeated by the opposite team, and is repeated back and forth until one team’s chain includes all of the players but the one left alone on the opposite side, in which case the team containing all of the players is the winning team. The core mechanic of running is reflected in my group’s game, in which one team is attempting to run to the opposite side of the playing area without being caught by any stingrays. The end goal itself is very similar, as those caught by stingrays become stingrays, making their group larger, and the goal of the swimmers is to all make it across safely.

Our initial game topic idea was the ocean, a topic that is very broad and served mainly as a stepping off point and setting in which our actual game could take place. After discussing with another group in class we came across the idea of stingrays in the ocean and how coming across one at your feet while wading around is not an ideal situation. Stingrays are able to easily camouflage themselves by burying their bodies underneath the sand around them. While this is helpful to the stingray as a form of protection against any possible predators in the area, it makes them much more easy to accidentally step on while in the shallow waters of the ocean shore. Knowing this can make wading into the water a much more cautious task, and this is the basic premise of the antagonist/ protagonist relationship of our game, in which the protagonist(s) will be the beach-goer attempting to get to the shore after a swim or surf, and the antagonist(s) will be the stingray either buried or swimming about blocking the path of the player. Although stingrays are harmless when they don’t feel threatened, and their stings are not incredibly dangerous unless to the chest, encountering one and possibly getting stung is not something many wish to happen, especially when unexpected. Up to over one thousand non fatal stingray attacks occur every year in just the waters surrounding the United States, giving civilians reason to be cautious around the creatures and while making their way into the ocean. Though the injuries from stingray stings that are to areas other than the chest, typically to the foot or leg as a result of a hidden stingray being stepped on and feeling threatened, are not life threatening or very serious injuries, the experience is still very painful and not one that you would want to encounter.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/67758/10-stunning-facts-about-stingrays

http://scienceline.org/2006/09/ask-grant-irwin/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3735412/

When I was very young my dad built a play set that included a swing set for my younger sister and I in our backyard. Somehow from us messing around playing outside and on the swing set so often we developed a game we called “kick swing.” The game could have two or three players and would start with either just me or with my sister and I each on one of the swings and my dad standing in front of us, about ten to fifteen feet away, as our opponent. When the game began my sister and I would begin to swing, attempting to get as much momentum as possible. My dad would then grab a large bouncy ball and throw the ball toward one of us as we were swinging, aiming at our feet and timing the throw so that it would make contact when we were moving forward. There were two ways of scoring a throw, the first being that if he missed the feet of the intended kicker he would then have to retrieve the ball and start again from the beginning and would lose a point, the second being that the kicker who missed the ball would lose a point, making the game more difficult as we as kickers were not responsible for the timing and angle of the throw. When the bouncy ball was aimed and timed correctly one of us on the swings would be able to kick the ball with as much force and momentum as we could. Our goal was to kick the ball with enough force and momentum to launch the ball into the woods behind my dad, and in doing so the kicker would then earn a point and my sister and I would be entertained as my dad was forced to run into the woods to retrieve the flying ball. At this point in the game my dad’s goal however was to catch the ball or at least knock it out of the way somehow as it flew toward the woods, earning himself a point by keeping one of us from reaching our goal. Depending on how competitive we were feeling that day, the game would either be played with my sister and I on a team or each of us competing separately, and in either scenario we would take turns in order kicking the ball toward the woods, assuming we were playing with three players rather than with only my dad and I or only my dad and my sister. When my sister and I chose to play against each other rather than on a team we would change the point system, and each of us would be allowed an extra point for getting the ball farther or higher than the other in a set of turns. The strategy involved on my dad’s side of the game consisted of strategically aiming and angling the ball in a way that would make it difficult for either my sister or me to kick the ball both high enough to go over his head and far enough to make it past him and into the woods behind the yard. He would also have to position himself after throwing the ball in the way that best improved his chances or being able to block the flying ball from disappearing into the woods. On my sister’s and my side of the game we had to try to obtain and hold the highest amount of momentum and speed to put as much force as possible into the kicking or the ball in order to launch it as far and as high as possible, while attempting to remain in the optimal position for kicking the ball in order to not miss the kick.

Modification of Five Card Draw:

• same rules of five card draw
• draw five cards
• get one chance to replace the desired number of cards
• after that your hand is final

*rule change*

• rather than a specific hand such as the highest pair or a flush winning, the total of the player’s cards added together determines the winner
• aces are worth one, jacks are worth eleven, queens are worth twelve, kings are worth thirteen
• same game, different strategy/ results
• still involves risk because you could draw a card lower than what was in your previous hand or miss out on an opportunity to get a higher card by not taking a chance

games101_gamemod_quicktime_lowerres-1ckfkya

The first puzzle game I played for comparison was Old Box on addictinggames.com. In this particular game all of the levels are played within boxes, and within boxes in boxes, the goal being to find a knife in each level in order to cut open the next box to continue on with the game. The game increases in difficulty as the levels progress, adding obstacles between you and the knife such as locked boxes that require finding other objects such as screws, bolts, and gears, to unlock the knife. As you progress new obstacles are added to the same basic functions, such as changing the hue and brightness of a box to match a desired color and unlock an item, spinning a wheel and stopping it in time to allow for it to land on your desired object, finding hidden numbers to enter into a calculator, moving around light bulbs to generate power, and clicking through combinations of doorways to find hidden rooms.

My second game was What’s Inside the Box, also on addictinggames.com. In this game levels are unlocked by solving a variety of different types of puzzles. The types of puzzles include: arranging sliding boxes to reveal a pattern or shape, turning dials to make a boxed- in shape, lighting up hidden lights under moving panels, spelling out words that correlate with the level, completing circles of lights according to specific orders and patterns, and pointing dials in specific directions indicated by letters (N, E, S, W).

In my opinion “What’s Inside the Box” is a better representation of puzzle games than “Old Box” is. In “Old Box” there were puzzles that needed to be solved in order to continue on with the progression of levels in the game, however they often were all the same with a couple of random tasks like the wheel spinning and color picking that were thrown in and only seen once as an added form of variety between the levels. There were often levels in which your only goal would be to repeat the same action of going into a box, retrieving an item, going back out, putting it into a machine to get another item, and repeating in order to finally unlock a box. Aside from those couple different tasks seen once or twice, the tasks were all the same and the game overall was very mindless and at times tedious due to the lack of variety. “What’s Inside the Box” however was consistent enough with its main puzzle themes, connecting them all in a way that made the game very unified, while not being to uninteresting. The levels themselves were also much more challenging both due to the variety of the types of puzzles and the variety in the way that one would go about solving the puzzles due to the multitude of the types of patterns involved in the puzzles. Overall “What’s Inside the Box” was simply much more engaging and required a lot more work to figure out clues and patterns which was much more enjoyable in comparison to the mindless clicking and repetition of “Old Box”.

BS is a card game, of which the core mechanic is the quick placement of cards onto a pile in the center of its players. The goal of the game is to get rid of all of your cards. The full deck is dealt out evenly amongst however many players there are, which from the start can make the goal of the game much easier or harder to reach. The player with the ace of spades typically starts, placing this card in the center of the circle of players. The next player, going around the circle in order, must place down twos, the nest threes, the next fours, and so on and so forth. The player can set down one or more of their designated card but must announce the amount of cards they are laying down along with their number as they do so. This is to ensure that all players can fully assess what is happening, and provides an opportunity for a slip up on the part of the card holder, as they could accidentally say the wrong card type or number and give away the truth. This brings me to another core concept of the game, lying. Because there are only so many of each type of card, and because passing or skipping one’s turn is not allowed, the wild card in this game is the allowance of all players at any time to completely lie about what they are in fact putting down. For example, if it were my turn to place down eights, and I had none, I could put down a four and a queen and say “two eights.” Similarly, if I did happen to have an eight, but I wanted to get rid of as many cards as I could, as that is the object of the game, I could put down said eight along with a three and a six, claiming that I was putting down three eights. In the time between the point at which my card(s) touch(es) the pile and the point at which the next player’s card(s) touch(es) the pile, any player is allowed to call my bluff and shout “bs.” My cards would then be revealed, and because I lied I would have to collect all of the cards in the pile and add them to my deck, putting me at a disadvantage. However if in the same situation I had not lied, and instead put down my single eight, the player who attempted to call my bluff would be proven wrong and they would be forced to collect all of the cards in the pile. In order to give the players an option to assess their opponents’ decisions, if a player has lied about their hand, they must say “peanut butter” once the next player has laid their card down, marking the first player safe from being called out. Therefore, players have the opportunity to guess the probability of each of their opponents’ turns being truthful or lies. Because it is highly likely that each player will be forced to lie at some point in time, given the card count, especially if there are more players, and because the object is to get rid of cards quickly, it is more probable that a player will lie, giving their opponents a sense of security in calling them out, however as the game progresses and it becomes more likely that players are lying, it also becomes much riskier to call someone out as the punishment is a large pile and the rest of the players often have an increasingly low amount of cards. Though the core mechanic of this game is the simple placing down of cards, the strategy and decision-making behind each player’s placements and the actions toward other players make this a high risk and often very complex game.

Pokemon Duel is a new app focusing on the world of Pokemon set up much like a board game, with the objective being to get to a specified space, or “goal,” on your opponent’s side of the board. While navigating your way across the board to the goal you must also be aware of all of your opponent’s pieces, or “figures,” as your opponent is also trying to get to a goal on your side of the board. Each player’s figures start out on what is referred to as the bench. From the bench they can move forward across the board, and depending on the type of Pokemon some are able to move farther and more freely than others at any given time. While moving across the board you are not able to jump over other pieces or take their place when they are blocking your path, but if you wish then you can battle them. Batting works by spinning a wheel to determine both players’ moves, and the player with the most powerful move wins and sends the other figure to the Pokemon center. Once in the Pokemon center a figure may not be used in the game and can only be released when two other Pokemon are bumped to the center, at which point the center is full and the first Pokemon to be knocked off is sent back to the bench to begin again. In addition to the attack moves on the wheel, during battles players have the opportunity to spin a miss, in which case they will lose no matter what the other opponent’s spin was, unless it was also a miss. There is also the opportunity to spin a block move, which will render their opponent’s attack ineffective. However, these options are smaller than the attack moves on the wheel and are less likely to be spun. If you surround you opponent’s figure on all sides with your own, they are automatically knocked to the Pokemon center without the need for a battle. This is the most effective way to beat more powerful Pokemon. In order to further your chances of winning duels, you can unlock power cards by playing more often, which make the Pokemon chosen much more powerful, often for the remainder of the duel. By winning duels time boosters can be obtained which contain more Pokemon to add to your collection, though you can only hold three of the same type of Pokemon in your deck at once. However, these boosters have time limits on them which prohibit them from being unlocked right away. In addition to time boosters there are locked boosters, which are unlocked with collected key fragments that can be earned by participating in duels, regardless of winning or losing. These locked boosters often contain rare metals that when fused with a Pokemon will award it a lot more exp and increase its chances in battles. The overall goal of the game is to win as many duels and level up as many times as you can to become the highest level player, collecting rarer and more powerful Pokemon along the way.