Tag Archives: board and card games

Personal Blog

Hopscotch, final version

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After 5 iterations, I got my hopscotch redesign to turn-inable quality (meaning that I ran out of time, there’s always “one more thing” you could have done).

Really, though, I’m proud of it, as my playtesters seemed to really enjoy themselves for this final go!

I am most amazed at how radically different this version turned out than my initial concept. I think it’s easy to assume that ideas are born in totality, but there’s quite a bit of teardown and reworking and…well…iterating involved in this sort of thing.

And so, I give you my ruleset and analysis for…

Musical Hopscotch

Personal Blog

Game Design and Hopscotch

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After a very relaxing break, and a very rewarding trip touring companies on the west coast, the semester has started and I am back in action!

My project group is awesome, I can tell, but I’m also taking Jesse’s Game Design class, which terrifies me. Usually, when I take a class or do something, I feel like I have some knack for it going in, but Game Design is something I have NO idea if I’ll be any good at or not. It’s a scary thing! The last time I took a step into something I had no idea about was when I took my first computer programming class at Centre…

…and then, of course, I ended up reveling in the challenge, majoring in it, and supposedly being rather good at it. So, who knows!

Anyway, our first assignment is to redesign hopscotch. No easy feat, let me tell you! We have to go through and document a particular process with this, and Jesse is all about establishing the problems that your design will attempt to solve. So, after playing a round of hopscotch with a classmate on a crudely made court of masking tape, here are some problems with hopscotch I’ve come up with:

1) It’s too easy
2) waiting to take turns is boring
3) if you fall behind early on, your only hope is that the other people will also screw up, otherwise you’re screwed
4) even if you all play a perfect game, whoever goes first will win
5) turns are self-contained, there’s no real interaction between players, they don’t affect each other
6) the more people play, the bigger the downtime-to-playtime gets, and the more boredom is able to flourish
7) punishments (losing turn if falling or stepping on lines) but not much in the way of rewards (you get to keep going, woo?)

I think I am most interested in solving problems 2 and 5, because I think they could be solved together. On to the brainstorming!

Any thoughts are welcome.

Personal Blog

Louisville Food Tour continues….

Mayan Cafe and Maido can be checked off my food tour list. Hooray!

And, in a shocking display of daring, at both places I tried something I DON’T NORMALLY GET!! (gasp!) At Maido I tried their udon soup, which was quite tasty, but the helping was huuuuuge. Granted, everything else I got was normal (miso soup, shrimp tempura, and one of about 4 sushi rolls that I repeatedly get), but the udon was different.

At the Mayan Cafe I got the Shrimp Invasion, which was deliciously tasty, and fried plantains of course. Though it was tasty, I will probably revert to my always getting the Uxmal Salmon, because it remains my favorite.

Now to approach the rest of the list…I would almost certainly have liquor store deli for lunch today, but I am carless, and thus stranded. I shall have to arrange otherwise.

In other news, the ballers played Apples to Apples last night, and it was predictably enjoyable. I’ve been sleeping and reading for leisure on my break days, and have begun poking at Actionscript 3 to prepare myself for the spring semester.

I’m trying not to work too hard, though.

Personal Blog

NYC part 3

So Matt and I were going to go to the aquarium yesterday, but instead we just sat home and played video games all day long. This is fine by me, as this vacation wasn’t so much of a “see New York” trip as a “visit my friends” trip, where the friends just happened to live in New York. We did have the obligatory New York style pizza for lunch, however.

That night I made stirfry for dinner and Carleton came over. We finished off the evening with a rousing game of Dominos. My family and family-friends are rigorous Dominos players in the game of Mexican Wild Train. It’s a very fun game with easy-to-explain rules, so I often spread it around where I can. I’m wondering why I haven’t introduced it to basketball yet.

Anyway, I also played a round earlier in the week, and it must be New York luck, or something, because I nearly won every hand! Last night’s game, however, Matt beat me just barely in the last hand. Beginner’s luck trumps New York luck.

Now to get ready to go to the airport and go home, where I will round off my spring break with WoW and laundry. See you Louisville folk soon!

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

2005 Review

Year-end Review:

I must admit, 2005 started off pretty grim. I was unhappy up north and disappointed in theatre as a whole. I was miserable doing something I loved. After juggling over whether to stick it through or call it quits, I decided that it was the best course of action to end things at Long Wharf and head back home to initiate plan B, which meant ceasing the dating of Carleton as well. It was a hard time.

There were some highlights to ease the rough edges, though. A visiting trip to New York, ending my internship on a decently-run play, and confirming my adventure to Japan that would happen later in the year. My birthday was a pleasant one with the Coffrins, through which I acquired my GameCube, which has been a wonderful addition to my console repertoire.

My sacrifice for Lent of 2005 was irrational fear. Every time I felt the fear creeping in, I pushed through it and did whatever was causing it. This led to several good things, one of which was visiting Steph, and thus strengthening a friendship. I am very happy to know Steph better, and I hope to continue the trend!

The emotional blow of coming home from Connecticut was softened by welcoming arms of friends and family. The spring months were rough, though. I was job-hunting in addition to freelance web work, and anyone who’s ever been in the jobhunting phase knows how it can run you into the ground. I recall healing sleep at Brendan and Maria’s for not being able to sleep at my own home.

But there were plenty of good times to balance it all out. Playing Nobilis was a wonderful creative outlet. I got to foster mom two wonderfully loveable ratties. I started working with Will on ARG! Productions stuff. I strengthened small acquaintenceships into blossoming friendships, and got over timid fears to turn people into huggable buddies: Wheeler, Will, Ian, Yale.

The year swelled up to a high point with three events: Acquiring a job, going to visit Andrew in Japan, and moving out of the house into my own place. The Japan trip is like a dream now, and I still haven’t gotten all the pictures up from it. It was a magical place.

More lows and highs. Fish, my beloved pet, passed on that summer. On the other hand, there was much to be done with animating and learning and working on the JamJams trailer. Ken was back and Wheeler got to visit. Having an income through a job I enjoyed was a tremendous relief, but at the same time the mysterious illness crept in and took its toll on me.

Adventuring to Atlanta to play with new friends, discovering my knack for cooking, Tuesday night basketball, visits from D Flo–all wonderful. Weird emotional burdens, the loss of Mr. Laguna—not so much.

The year ended off in the best possible way. Christmastime was refreshing, especially among friends. New Year’s itself was a positive time–I got to spend time with the people I love the most, and we rang in the new year with Guillotine, The Great Dalmuti, Donkey Konga, Mario Party, and Munchkin. I am so very blessed to have such wonderful people in my life.

It has been up and down, yes? But I try so very hard to be grateful for the wonderful things I have. There continues to be things inside of me that I have to work out, but perhaps this year I will stop being a dragon who thinks she is a rabbit, because the rabbit hole is too small.

Year of the dog, that’s my year!

Personal Blog

Geek Update

This is a brief update from Japan aimed at the Tuesday Night Ballers. Today, Andrew and I visited a friend of his who lives in (I kid you not) Nishi Fuji Hashi Bashi Machi. This friend–Mark-Edmond by name–enjoys the boardgames, just like us! We played some games that I highly recommend we adopt for Basketball.

The first game is Citadels: a sneaky bluffing card game that was quite fun. The only drawback is the game pieces to represent gold coins look dead up like butterscotch candies, and thus frequently end up in Lisa’s mouth.

The second is Perfect Timing: super fun game that plays off the fundamental human desire to play with stopwatches. There are 4 possible playing entities (meaning 4 people or 4 teams).

The third game we did not get around to playing, but Andrew’s friend say we MUST PLAY, is Carcassonne. It apparently is similar to Settlers of Catan, but is different, and can take a lengthy time to play.

Mark-Edmond says “Stupid Andrew won both games”

Okay kiddies, I will be back in the States Monday night, after which I will update with detailed logs from my journey, and photos. See you kiddie winkies later!

Games and Game Development, Personal Blog

The End!

Whoosh! I let a lot happen with no entries. Here we go…

Finals went well. Senior week was relatively good (a lot of packing and playing of video games). A lot of bonding happened. Jeff taught me to drive a stick (which is good, since I’ll be helping with the driving to Massachusetts, it’ll be good to know how x_x). For the first time since high school, we broke out the old Magic cards (D Flo and , after killing me and Brendan off, spent like 2 more hours trying to kill each other).

While Wednesday and Thursday were full of cheer and play and video games, Friday was a bit intense in the wrong way. The night was highlighted by the completion of our year long proclamation of “Dude! We should hook up two x-boxes!” I totally won. Anyway, that was the fun part. The un-fun part was that every sliver of residual drama leftover and building up throughout the entire year EXPLODED. Drama here, drama there, venting here, crying there, misery and ranting and purging, you know…it probably would have been less dramatic if not for the addition of alcohol to the whole formula. Feh, no good.

Saturday, I frantically gathered the last of my belongings, went home, spent like 3 collective hours with my family, came back to school, took one more “confidence drive” on the stick shift, bought a cake, sat down to spend some time with my friends before they graduate…and realized it was frickin midnight! Tomorrow will be madness, with graduation (I have to be a Junior Marshall, which, unfortunately, does not involve guns, a star, not even a cowboy hat). Jeff wants to leave for Massachusetts right after commencement, so no summer break for Lisa.

Long story short, I’ll be noticeably absent from the internet for the summer. If anyone’s trying to email me at my aol address, I’ve blocked it from email (to cut back on the spam for the summer), so mail me instead at my wertle.com address. I was intent on doing one more website update before I left, but that didn’t happen. Alas! Well, there will always be the library. I imagine it will be slightly difficult to cram all of my normal internet chores into 15 minutes, but I’ll manage. I’ll at the very least try and update this one.

I hope everyone has a lovely summer! I’d like to reflect on the year, what I’ve learned, experiences that have been important to me, life lessons and all that, but I don’t have time. Never enough time!!!!!!!!