For my critical play, I chose to play Battle With Cubes!, created by Weiwei Hsu, a 4 player party game in which two teams compete to be the first one to build a 3 by 3 cube out of smaller cubes. This game is an intense tabletop game with a low barrier of entry, allowing players of many ages and limited experience with game strategy and mechanics to get involved. The key premise is that on each team, one player is blindfolded and the other player cannot touch the cubes. This forces a dynamic in which the players have to communicate to enable each other to accomplish a shared goal. Broadly speaking, this is the same dynamic present in my team’s game, Meltdown, in which two players each have limited information and limited controls and are trying to solve a puzzle.
Battle With Cubes!, however, is asymmetric. One player can see everything and do nothing, while the other player has complete control but cannot see. In Meltdown, each player has partial control and partial information. This creates a more reciprocal dynamic, in which each player asks and answers questions. For example, in our prototype, players can only see the state of their own controls, and they could only interact with their controls depending on the state of the other player’s controls. This forced them to engage with each other with exchanges like: “I need you to have a star, do you have a star?” “No, I can’t get a star unless you move your slider!”
[a picture of two control panels. Each player can only see and control one]
On the other hand, Battle With Cubes doesn’t encourage exchanges like that. When I was blindfolded, I hardly spoke. On occasion, I would ask for clarification about what my guide meant. At most, I would ask for specific information instead of waiting for Amy to offer it, like when I was stacking layers, I would ask her, “Am I too far to the left or right?” When we switched roles, Amy was very quiet (except for laughter or accusations that the other team was cheating) while I proactively offered all the information I could.
[Amy holding up two cubes. I told her the color of each cube without her asking]
Another way in which our games differ is the strictness of the rules. Battle With Cubes has only one rule: you may not knock over the other person’s cube tower. This means that it is completely open to devious strategies or house rules. In our first round, where I was blindfolded, I played the game very respectfully; if I had a cube that the other team needed, I would place it in the center of the table. However, in the second round, Amy started using sly tactics. She would hoard enemy cubes on her side of the table. Realizing this, Pannisy, on the other team, hid cubes on her chair and behind her water bottle. This forced me to guide Amy to recover the cubes by asking her to stand up and follow my voice around the table and to the other side where she could get her cubes back. To prevent this, Pannisy literally held Amy’s arm to prevent her from getting to the chair!
[a drama in three parts: 4 cubes, necessary to reach our goal, are trapped on a chair across the table (left). Amy bravely following the sound of my voice as I guide her towards the needed cubes (center). Conflict! Pannisy intercepts Amy on her journey, holding her back (right)]
This element of open-endedness in game design expands the magic circle and opens up an infinite number of possible actions to players. This is one benefit of tabletop games, where the rules and procedures are not enforced by technology. Another example of this is Catan; I love Catan because I can make endless modifications to the rules. If I want to build roads through the center of a hex, I can. Tabletop games with loosely defined, player-enforced systems enable remixing and reimagining.
On the other hand, our prototype has very explicit rules: “you may only flip the star if the other player has the spiral”. In our final version, this rule will be enforced by software, eliminating the ability to reimagine the task. Even in the paper version, the rules are formulated very explicitly, limiting the ability to reinterpret them.
An inability to remix a game can limit its replayability. With the infinite possibility space of Battle With Cubes!, player are unlikely to get bored of it, as long as they’re open to imagining new strategies. In Meltdown, players may feel that once they’ve mastered a few challenges, the game has nothing new to teach them, and they have no reason to return to it.
