Experimental Playground

8-Bit Inc.

2012-01-01T04:11:00.000-08:00

In the 80’s, Tendino, a game company, created revolutionery game console called Tendino Entertainment System (TES). Your company 8-Bit Inc. is one of the many company trying to make the best game for the system and compete them in the Game Prix Award (GPA).

Designer's note: Since I saw and played the Game Dev Story I really wanted to make a boardgame that makes game. After month and months of forming ideas, creating prototype, testing, finally we've made a similar simulation but not as details as Game Dev Story hence the title 8-Bit Inc. because you are a manager of 8-Bit Inc. and you create a game just for the Tendino Entertainment System (TES). On the last playtesting we added the Game Prix Award so you would have a goal in the game.

HAPPY PLAYING AND HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE! 2012 WILL BE GOOD, GREAT AND FUN FOR EVERYONE :D

Download the game below

8-Bit Inc game tricoloured version

8-bit Inc game coloured version

Emergency Earth

2011-12-20T05:20:00.000-08:00

Earth was attacked before by aliens but never this big. Citizen of earth now depends on your team, the one and only Earth Defense Force (EDF), the one who saves earth an hour ago from zombie attack to once again defend earth from danger. Emergency Earth is a solo game in which you took in charge to defend earth from danger.

Designer note: This is one of the game promised from the previous post. Actually this game is done later after the one that we will to post in January 2012 (little spoiler, the game is about a game company making games!). Anyway, when Jason created this game it was an orc invading game similar in the line of Age of War -or is it. Later after some discussion we decided to make it alien invading earth, while the Earth Defense Force is actually army from the 50's.

Last but not least MERRY CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE! This would be our gift to every player and reader of this blog for Christmas :D

Download the game below

Emergency Earth

New games

2011-12-16T18:16:00.000-08:00

coming on DEC 2011 and JAN 2012

Horde of the Dead version 2

2011-12-02T19:17:00.001-08:00

You are Giraffe the hero of this game and you arrived in a small inn. Suddenly during the night something was attacking the inn. It’s a horde of ZOMBIE WARRIORS!!!. Nobody survive except you and the inn keeper’s daughter, Mari-chan. Survive the game until the timeline finishes.

In version 2:
The combat uses dice which introduce the element of random.
Reward system is changed for the better called combo gold.
The heroes now share their hit points.
The heroes also share action point to do their actions.
This time around the zombie is now a zombie warrior, they will attack the house if there is no hero present in the room they occupied.
and hopefully this one is more streamline than the previous one.

You can download the game below
Horde of the Dead version 2

Giant Battle

2011-11-22T02:08:00.001-08:00

In this age of power and greed, every faction in the world are battling it out to find out who is better king among all kings. Giant Battle is a 2 player game. In the game each player controls a faction which you used to kill leader of opposing faction to win the game. You need 3 six sided dice and a cutting tool to play the game.

Designer note: I really want the title to be 'Mini Battle' but my brother are against the title, hence the title 'Giant Battle'. The game is inspired by Summoner Wars. The cover is actually a copy of the Make You Fortress game (because I love Adventure Planning Service/Bouken!)

Download the game below
Giant Battle Colour Version
Giant Battle Black and White Version

The Mini Quest

2011-05-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

The Mini Quest is a simple fantasy adventure game for 2-3 players. Players take on a role of an adventurer roaming the island of Seapoot (See-Put) solving quest to unlock the secret to defeat THE BOSS!

Players will roam in a hex-based board. The board consisted of 3 different areas; Mountain, Forest and Desert. Each area will have its own line of monster that you will face. Players will battle the monsters to gain gold to buy some accessories - preparing for the Boss.

Download here
Download version 1.1 (fixed some of the rules)
Download version 1.2 (change the name of the Kalababos to Kalabakos, fixed the quest rules, movement phase and camping rules, fixed the market card prices)
Download Expansion #1 (print it on an A5)

Ninja vs Robot

2011-03-16T23:09:00.000-07:00

Ninja vs Robot is a fast playing solo game for ages 7+. Player take on a role of a ninja who is the only to witness the coming of the invader, the robots. The robots will do anything to destroy the castle. It is up to you now to race to the castle to alarm the king for the coming of the robots. Player will battle with all kinds of robots to reach the castle, so until you reach the castle winning a battle does not mean you win the game.

The game uses a simple rules to let player to be easily immerse into the Robot invading twisted oriental world. Player will attack using a unique dice mechanic that will enable player to make combos to destroy an army of robots. The game also uses a Ninja Point system that lets player to change the battle into their own style.

You only need 2 six sided-dice and a cutting tool.

Download the game here

Escape of the Dead

2010-11-18T02:03:00.000-08:00

You are a survivor of a zombie apocalypse and you're stuck on a house with a useless car and hordes of zombies attacking from the lawn. But wait, you found a tool enough to fix the car to escape the hordes of zombies. ARE YOU READY FOR IT?

In the game you are trying to fix the car while defending yourself against hordes of zombies. You're given 4 Action dice per turn, distribute between 3 sections of the game (either by shooting zombie, fixing the barricade and/or fixing the car). Roll for success on each section. Any zombie that survived will attack the barricade. When you successfully killed 10 zombies you will be rewarded with power-up. You lose when your barricade is down (i.e barricade's hp equals zero). You win when the car is fixed 100%.

You need 4 six sided-dice, a pencil and an eraser for book keeping.

Download the game here
EOTD version 1.00
EOTD version 1.02

UPDATE!
Escape of the dead now comes in another language thanks to Miquel Jornet

Download the game in español and català
Español
Català
This is one made by Jason Sondoh and illustrate by Robertson Sondoh Jr

Horde of the Dead

2010-11-10T04:35:00.000-08:00

You are Giraffe the hero of this game and you arrived in a small inn. Suddenly during the night something was attacking the inn. It’s a horde of ZOMBIES!!!. Nobody survive except you and the inn keeper’s daughter, Mari-chan. Survive the game in 3 nights without anyone dying.

This game is inspired by the genre tower of defense, where a horde of zombie, comes and attack the inn wave by wave. You job is to control Giraffe, Mari-chan and occasionally Dogmeat by moving them through the inn, defending against the zombies, set barricade, buy stuff to upgrade and protecting Mari-chan while surviving yourself.

You need at least 1 six sided-die (the more the faster the game goes), 4 counters(different kind or colour) in which 1 of them represent zombie (which you need at least 7), a pencil and an eraser to jot down equipment, hp, bp and so on.

Download the game here
Download version 1.1 here

NOTE: You can also play the version 2 of the game below
Horde of the Dead version 2

Village Run

2010-11-05T21:29:00.000-07:00

Banana village is having its annual run and there is a new challenger competing in town. And that challenger is YOU. But you are not the only one who hunger for the run's cup.

Village Run is a 2 or more player game where each player is runner competing for the village run's cup. Players will smartly manage their speed during the game using a new and unique game engine designed for the game to become the run's champion.

All you need to play:
* 1 six sided die
* 2 tokens for each player (1 for the runner and 1 for speed token)
* and the FREE and PRINTABLE Board(including therules).

Download the game here

This is one made by Jason Sondoh and illustrate by Robertson Sondoh Jr

True Soccer Hero

2009-12-28T17:43:00.000-08:00

True Soccer Hero is a two-player fantasy soccer board game of clever management of players on the field, tight score difference, and an always fun easy-to-teach game of soccer. Managers(the players) must carefully plan their tactic on getting pass through the defence and eventually score a goal. The game take about 15+ minutes of intense and exciting game soccer.

True Soccer Hero is a print-and-play game in which managers taking turns roll the dice and based on the given result managers make a clever strategy that can get pass through the opposition goal line.

All you need to play True Soccer Hero is:

1d6 (or 1 die)
The game components
The rule book
The board which is the field

This is one made by Jason Sondoh and illustrate by Robertson Sondoh Jr

Twenty One Turn Hero

2009-11-04T04:13:00.000-08:00

The world is in turmoil! THE SORCERER discovered a 21 turn spell that will destroy the world! YOU as a hero need to defeat the sorcerer! Good luck hero!

This is a game for single player where you becomes the unfortunate hero that need to defeat the sorcerer that wants to destroy the world with his 21 turn spell!

download the game here

Battle Mechanica Update (8/8/09)

2009-08-07T18:37:00.000-07:00

After months of hiatus, I've finally managed to playtest an early draft of Battle Mechanica with a couple of friends, one of them the great rob-jr himself. This version had minimal rules and was played with only two factions, each with a small number of units. We used Mage Knight minis to represent the units and a map from a D&D campaign. Of course, the size of the bases of the minis were too big for D&D battlemaps, so we had to improvise a bit on that one. It went pretty well though, and the playtest allowed me to spot the flaws in the game.

First, and most importantly, was the target roll. In layman's term, a target roll is the number that the player must get (or exceed) when rolling a dice in order to claim a success. The target roll was originally 6, but after last nights playtest, I found that the magic number is 5.

Second, the grid's square should be bigger so that it could accomodate more that one figure. I noticed that if the figure's base (such as that of a mounted unit with a base of 1" by 2") is bigger than the size of the square, it's difficult to position that figure to attack an enemy that is situated diagonally. This is not really a big issue, but this is just some of the problem that comes with using a square grid map.

Third, the number of figures per unit. I had initially set each unit to 10 men (with the exception of certain units, such as the solitary Commander and a 6-men cavalry squadron). I'm still trying to figure out the proper size for a unit, and I'm also wondering whether I should try an unconventional approach to unit composition (like that of a mix-matched band à la D&D adventuring party).

Fourth, line-of-sight. Should I allow figures to shoot through members of the same unit (like in Warhammer: 40K) or should I strictly follow rules of line-of-sight (no obstacles from shooter to target)? I find that it's much more fun with former, and works well if I opt to go for the "unconventional approach to unit composition").

Fifth, the wargame's direction itself. Should I make this boardgame lean more towards conventional wargame, or should I make it totally outrageous? There a tons of war boardgames out there, and most of them took the traditional route for war boardgames (most of them simulated historical battles), but I think that if I really wanna make this game stand out, I should turn 180° and create something totally out of the norm. I think I'll do that.

That's all for now. Time to make a revision of this game and playtest it again next month. You can read about a review of the playtest here or, if you haven't, check out rob-jr's latest creation, The Nasi Lemak Stand.

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

The Nasi Lemak Stand

2009-06-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

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)

2009-02-17T06:36:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-25T07:11:00.000-08:00

We at Experimental Playground would like to wish all our readers

Happy Chinese New Year!

The Raider Attack Banana Village Minigame

2008-12-27T17:26:00.000-08:00

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!

2008-12-25T05:43:00.000-08:00

We at Experimental Playground would like to wish all our readers

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Battle Mechanica Update (17/12/08)

2008-12-17T13:10:00.000-08:00

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:

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.
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.
Rounds and Phases have been simplified. Each Round consists of 3 Phases: the Check phase, the Reinforce phase and the Activate phase.
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).
The Hit Zone system has been removed. It's no longer needed since a unit will only consist of a single miniature.
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:

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

2008-10-25T17:35:00.000-07:00

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.

Battle Mechanica Update (22/10/08)

2008-10-22T02:57:00.000-07:00

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 have a small but important update. Battle Mechanica will make a big change of direction: Battle Mechanica will now be a tile-based boardgame/wargame. It will be less like Warhammer: 40K and more towards Heroes of Might & Magic.

Why change?
Warhammer: 40K (and similar games like Warmachines and Confrontations) requires a level of complexity to make the game playable AND balanced at the same time. Ultimately, its the notion of managing dozens of tokens, paper models or miniatures that will bog down the design.

The new design will take a simpler approach, mechanics wise. Battle Mechanica will move more towards being a boardgame, while maintaining that wargame feel that one would get when playing the games mentioned in the previous paragraph. It will also make the design easier (compared to the previous design) which would allow me to move on to other projects faster. Lastly, it makes the game stay true to the credo of Experimental Playground: being simple to learn yet fun to play.

I'll give more update on the new tile-based design in my next post.

Battle Mechanica Progress Update (6th Oct 2008)

2008-10-05T03:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Another small update. I've added a "General Rules" section to the rulebook, which contains brief information of the following:

How distances are measured
Unit formations, Unit Types and Characters
Unit movements
Model's field-of-vision and how to check a its line-of-sight
Model profiles
A brief overview of the game's flow of play
Made some changes to the types of Ranged Attacks:
Changed 'Burst' to 'Directed Burst', which is a fan-shaped area-based ranged attack, like flamethrowers.

I'm working on the Turns and Phases next, and after that I'll be working on the rules for Movement. Before then, check out this post from Life In Borneo about the recent bloggers gathering in North Borneo, or visit the forum that I frequent to, ClickStartPlay.com. I go by the handle shiVER.

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

Battle Mechanica Progress Update (29/09/08)

2008-09-28T10:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Hello again, everyone. Just doing a small update. This game has undergone constant rules re-writing since my first post in November, though nothing significant. Anyways, here is the update on this game.

Combat still uses simple attribute comparison, but now a new system is added to resolve Combat faster: The Hit Zone system. The Hit Zone is a universal system that determines how many casualties can be inflicted on a unit. Simply put, if an enemy unit is within your unit's Hit Zone, then they can become the target of its attack. But it goes both ways - if your unit is within enemy unit Hit Zone, then it can become the target of their attack.
Added three types of range attack: Missile (direct long-range attack), Barrage (indirect long-range attack) and Burst (variable-range area attack). Burst can also be combined with either Missile or Barrage.
Melee Combat is now known as Hand-to-Hand Combat. Just reflecting my preference, that's all. Nothing significant.
Added to the core rules on how to determine Casualties, which rely on the Hit Zone system.

That's all for now. I'll post more info next week. In the meanwhile, you might want to checkout my digg profile and see the stuff that I dugg recently. Or follow me on Twitter and tweet "Hi" to me.

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

True Hero minigame

2008-09-17T20:07:00.000-07:00

this is somewhat a version of mini gamebook that i wanted to make, it supposed to fit an A4 paper, complete with rules and the entries. i did this game way back last year 2007 for the TDD comic book. i dont know if anyone played it, but i did get my objective of doing a 1 page diceless gamebook.

in this game you're a hero and your job is to find a lot of experience point running through an unknown dungeon. that is pretty much everything.

to play the game, download the game HERE and print in on an A4 paper. read the rules and start playing!

good luck hero!

Battle Mechanica - Overview of the Game, Part 1

2008-09-14T22:44:00.000-07:00

*Note: I have changed the name of this game to Battle Mechanica, since the name Battlefield has been extensively trademarked and copyrighted by EA.*

This post is a continuation from my previous post here. In this post, I shall present an overview of play in Battle Mechanica. Please bear in mind that this is a Work-In-Progress, which means that the game is still incomplete and is subject to change at any time by the designer.

UNIT PROFILE
All units have a profile that represent their abilities in this game. Below is an example of a unit's Attributes, with a brief explaination on each:

Combat
The unit's fighting ability in both ranged and hand-to-hand combat, as well as defending themselves in said situation.

Resilience
The unit's hardiness, which determines the unit's ability to withstand injuries.

Control
The unit's ability to think on its feet. It is the sum of their intelligence, wits, psychological well-being, leadership quality and discipline as a single unit.

Movement
The unit's movement in inches.

Special Ability
The unit's special ability, such as Flight and Cavalry Charge. If they have any special equipment (magic weapons for instance), it is counted as Special Ability as well.

Experience
The unit's combat experience. The more experience the unit has, the stronger they are.

Stay tune for Part 2 of this article. In the meanwhile, check out Lee Hng's JEP1 and Rob-Jr's Dwarf Tactics, two other experimental tabletop games currently in development. Please leave some comments while you're there!

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