Production

Graphics and ruleset are completed, so now we just have to create the high quality game pieces and board. We tested the game with people who had no concept of how to play and got some good suggestions on clarifications in the rules and tweaks to gameplay. Most notably, we created a personal bank for each player so they can reserve pieces to play later on in game. This helps players who have a lot of their pieces drawn at the beginning of the game not be at a disadvantage later on.

Personal Bank
On your turn, after drawing a piece and placing it in the community bank, you may choose to take a piece out of that bank and reserve it in your personal bank in front of you.

–The piece must be your color and cannot be larger than 4 blocks.
–You may only have a max of 2 pieces in your bank at any time.
–Special pieces cannot be reserved in your bank.

If you reserve a piece in your bank, you do not play a piece on the board that turn. If you want to play a piece from your bank, do not draw from the envelope on your turn. The game ends once all community bank pieces have been played, and at that point if you still have pieces in your bank, you are not allowed to play them.

Rules

systemFail
You are a hacker trying to remotely install a nasty worm virus on Jack Thompson’s computer so you can go down in history as being the most l33t hacker ever. However, other hackers are simultaneously trying to do the same thing! Overwrite their data by using your own blocks of code, or hijack your opponents’ data and wreak havoc with it. At the end, the hacker who has the most intact chunk of virus data wins the game!

Parts Included
87 colored pieces ◦ 6 special pieces ◦ Envelope ◦ Board ◦ Instructions

Objective
Overwrite opponents’ data and have the largest connected data block at the end of the game.

Setup
Each player chooses one color. Gather all of the pieces of each color, shuffle them and place them in the envelope. Put unused color pieces off to the side, out of play.

◦ 2-3 peole: 6×6 board, 1 set of special pieces (1 anti-virus, 1 encryption, 1 defrag)
◦ 4-5 people: 8×8 board, 2 sets of special pieces (2 anti-virus, 2 encryption, 2 defrag)
◦ 6 people: 10×10 board, 2 sets of special pieces

Randomly draw a piece out of the envelope – this color goes first (replace the piece in the envelope.) The player draws one piece out of the envelope at random and places it next to the board. Continuing clockwise, each player randomly draws a piece out of the envelope and places it by the first piece. This forms a community bank of pieces. The bank should be equal to the number of players.

On Your Turn
Randomly draw a piece out of the envelope and place it in the community bank. Select any of the pieces in the bank, whether it is your piece or an opponent’s piece, and play it on the board. Pieces must either touch or overlap other pieces, however overlapping is not allowed during the first phase of the game. Diagonals don’t count. Your turn is over once a piece has been laid down.

At the beginning of the game, the first piece played must be placed against one side of the board. Subsequent pieces cannot overlap one another until they touch the opposite side. After the two sides of the board have been connected, players are allowed to stack any pieces they wish, with a few exceptions.

Once all pieces have been drawn from the envelope and played, the player who has the largest connected chunk of blocks wins the game! Only pieces connected by faces count, diagonals do not.

Illegal Stacking
◦ Identical pieces cannot be stacked directly on top of each other so that the bottom piece is completely covered. However, an identical piece may partially cover the one below it.
◦ A piece may never be played so that it extends outside of the board boundary.
◦ Pieces cannot be stacked until two sides of the board have been connected by an initial layer of pieces.

Special Pieces
Special pieces do not have to be played on the turn they are drawn. They may reside in the community bank just like normal colored pieces.
◦ Anti-virus: place the anti-virus on the board and remove any pieces that it shares a side with. Only 1 piece of each color can be removed and it must be a top level piece, meaning it cannot be covered in any way (including the anti-virus piece itself). The anti-virus affects your own pieces as well, so be careful where you place it! The used anti-virus and the pieces it removes from the board are permanently put out of play.
◦ Encrypted data: once this piece has been placed on the board, no other pieces may overlap it in any way. Encrypted data cannot be manipulated by other special pieces.
◦ Defrag: choose one top level (completely uncovered) piece already played on the board and move it somewhere else. Defrag is removed from play once used.

Strategies
◦ Find ways to separate, cover or otherwise waste your opponent’s blocks.
◦ Different colors have different sets of pieces that will ultimately affect your playing style. Know what kinds of pieces you have available.

Pieces have connected opposite sides of the board

Blue wins with 9 connected blocks, even though purple has more on the board

Playtesting and Balancing

Today we tweaked color sets for better balance. Orange had two bigger pieces replaced, while green, blue and purple had smaller pieces switched out for greater variety. We decided on final sizes for the game board and worked on ideas for materials for the pieces. We’re having a playtest session on Saturday at Metro and hope to get a lot of random people to play it.

Beta Prototype Complete

Today we made custom sets for the six individual colors. The six colors share a standard set of nine pieces, and have a total of 30 blocks for their custom sets. Every color has a different way of splitting up the blocks, for example blue has 2 shapes made of 4 blocks, 2 made of 5 blocks and 2 6-blocks. Orange has 1 4-block, 3 6-blocks and 1 8-block. Purple has 1 shape each of 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8.

We powered down the anti-virus piece because it could decimate a player’s strategy in a single move. Before, the anti-virus could remove any top-level piece from the board (meaning any piece that was not overwritten/covered) that it shared sides with. It was unfair because players obviously have to place their pieces together to win, but the anti-virus took advantage of this and could take out several pieces of one color in one turn. Now it can only remove one top-level piece of each color that it shares sides with.

We created a beta prototype with all six sets of shapes and special pieces and plan to playtest it with as many people as possible. We have to determine what materials will be best for the board and pieces, and we’re also working on artwork and the rules.

Game concept finalized

After throwing around a lot of ideas during previous meetings, today our group came up with the core gameplay mechanics we want in our game. Players represent a worm infiltrating a computer registry, and lay down tetris-shaped blocks of data to overwrite competing worms. Players draw a new piece at the beginning of their turn and add it into a community bank of pieces. They choose one piece from the bank to lay down on the board and play continues to the next player. There are also special pieces such as anti-virus scans and encrypted data blocks that can be used to mess wih other players. Once all of the pieces have been placed on the board, whichever player has the largest “chunk” of data (has the most pieces touching, diagonals not included) wins the game!

We have created a working prototype and are beginning production on an alpha with a bigger board, larger variety of pieces, refined ruleset and artwork to make everything look pretty.