The premise was rather simple: Within two days, we had to construct a drinking (yes, indeed) game, test it (no further details were given of the nature of that, but we did it the only right way – with beer) and present it for the rest of the class. Challenge accepted!

I find it quite amazing that I never thought about posting it until now, because it was (or rather: is) a very nice drinking game. It has certainly done its part in delivering as a proper drinking-game should. The only negative part you could say about it, is that it might be a bit tricky to find 9 cups and a coaster – but at the very least you do not need any cards or any number of dice.

Anyway, onward to the important part – the rules:

THE SETUP AND WHAT YOU NEED:

• 3 to 6 players (more or less is possible, but not recommended).
• 9 glasses for the board (5×5) placed in a square (3×3).
• A middle-marker (a coaster is perfect for the job), placed under the middle cup. This only serves to make it easy to see where the middle is.

The below drawing shows the outer square-positions with the x’s, the initial glass-positions with circles, and the coaster as the square.

Every participant buys an amount of beer (it doesn’t have to be beer, the crowd just have to buy the same kind of drink), best done in a pitcher or likewise. The glasses are then filled up to 2-3 fingers (or more, depending on how hardcore you’re playing). Shot-glasses are excellent at this, as they can limit the maximum contents, while removing the need to check your pouring.

A TURN IS PERFORMED AS:
The first player takes a filled glass and jumps (vertically/horizontally) over any amount of cups (similar to the game “Checkers”). The outcome depends on whether or not the glasses which has been jumped over is empty or full.

• Each jump is one cup maximum, but you can take several jumps in one turn.
• You can jump over both types of glasses in a given turn.
• You may not end up outside the 5×5 board.
• You may not jump over the same glass twice during a turn.
• You may not use the same glass, as the previous player used, to jump with.

The outcome of a given turn depends on the amount of each of either full or empty cups. If a glass is full the next player drinks it, else the current player fills it from his pitcher. If 3 or more empty glasses are filled during a turn, you can fill extra in filled glasses – if you jumped over any of those.

Another choice is, instead of moving a cup, is to move a filled glass from the outer circle to an empty spot in the inner circle. By doing that, the player must drink it, then fill it. This does NOT have to follow the jumping rules.

In case there’s no moves left, the given player drinks all full glasses, fills all of them, and reset the board to the starting position (The 3×3 square).

END OF THE ROUND:
When all players’ pitchers are empty, and there’s no more beer to fill in the glasses, the players will eventually end up having no more possible moves, and the board is reset to the original initial 3×3 view, with a new round of beer – if possible.

The game was created along with Julian Møller, Mads Johansen and Steen Nordsmark Pedersen. Looking forward to the next game, sooner rather than later.

It started with the following link was thrown out at the internal Facebook-page for the Game students at ITU: http://videogamena.me/

As fate would have it, people started posting their favorite hilarious names. Lots of likes and – at least from my part – local giggles and burst-laughs was done. Then, it took a turn, when the idea of having a Game Jam was added, with making up a game based on what the generator spat out.

However, in the end, just when I tweeted the link, I figured a very simple – yet rather hilarious – game could be made from it. The rules are quite simple:

First, gather a few people that wants to play. Not too few, not too many (4-6 would probably be perfect).

The following is then needed:

• A device that can display the Video Game Name Generator.
• A block of paper and a writing device, per player.

A person activates the VGNG, and the resulting name is spoken to the crowd. Each player now has a maximum of 5 minutes to come up with the best game-idea, based purely on the name. The winner is judged by social voting amongst the players. Naturally, you’re not allowed to vote for your own game.

Looking forward to seeing if the idea actually holds. At the very least, I’m going to see what it’ll turn to!

Many moons have passed since the raiders went to war.
Onwards and upwards, bigger weapons than before.
Magmaw took cover, he shivered on patrol.
The arms race crazy, simply way out of control.

Then Nefarian threw them, his latest devices.
Twofoot went and got them, following the advice – ‘What the…?’
Their tails were split, and their energy lost.
How many more will this dreaded war cost?

Then came the enrage, and constructs tumbling down.
If the fire got to someone, you’d probably frown.
But the raiders battled on, through hunger and pain.
Living to fight, just to victor again.

And now it’s the curtain call, the final onslaught,
no better epic could you possibly have bought.
But spare a thought for Magmaw and with it his friends.
So fight with their honour, and fight until the end.

Granted, it’s probably a lot more fun if you have actually tried the encounter. It might also help to add that “Twofoot” was the primary person dealing with the parasites.

My example of showing this, is the game “Piranha”. I found it ages ago on one of those random Demo-discs, that had shareware versions of a few different games. I can’t even remember where I got the CD from – I just have it. And it is – most likely – only because of Piranha.

The Piranha title screen

The sad thing? There’s absolutely no sign the game ever actually existed. A search of “Piranha” gives… well, I guess you can figure that one out, if I say that the amount of helpful links is less than the number already mentioned in the sentence.

But, what is known besides that? In every game, there’s usually a readme-file, an “About Us”, or a way to buy the full game. Heck, even a year would suffice. None of those are present. Zip. Nada. The only real clues are whoever developed the game: “OMT” and “D-DESIGNS”, and the fact that the creation-date of most of the files are somewhere in 1995. Sadly enough – and even sadder, that it was also expected – those names did not yield any useful results either.

The only remaining hint was the fact that the high score list had two entries, upon installing the game: “Delsion – GFX” and “Dzen – Coder”. As expected, neither of those gave any useful search results.

… then again, why am I even doing those searches? While it would be great to be able to get the full version of the game, in some possible way, the point of it all remains: It’s sad to see such a promising game would be forgotten, even though it might never even made it to release.

Luckily, I already got the most important part. The thing that made the game so incredibly awesome. Simply listen to the below, which I just recently recorded and uploaded to YouTube – only because it’s that great.

That is how epic all game music should be. Fittingly enough, the only others I remember, on top of my head, that makes as good music, is Epic Megagames, with games like Tyrian, One Must Fall 2097 and Jazz Jackrabbit, specifically. Oh yeah, and the Tristram-theme of Diablo.

Now, however, the project has been handed in, and I have exam next Tuesday, which will – no doubt – be rather exciting. The project itself is about game balance in board-games, which included me and my “partner in crime” made our own game from scratch, and making A.I.’s that could challenge each other in it, in order to prove said balance – a thing I really enjoyed.

Looking back, that would mean that I’ve actively taken part in two games (the other being Gwardar in the summer – which I still plan to eventually make into a version that doesn’t require a terminal-window and a ZiLOG-board) over the past half year – and enjoyed every second of the brain-storming and development.

As a result, I underlined one of the big questions in life: “Where am I going?”, which I had known the answer for quite a while. It’s where my education is leading me, at the least. Perhaps that’s also what my creativity has been spend on since then, and to build a bit on that, I decided it was a good idea to write a 6-parter blog on how I find the process of creating a game. Yes, it’ll be very basic – and only cover small ideas like these. But with all things, we always start with the small things.

So with that, I hope I’ll be able to scrap off some creativity from somewhere, and get this 6-parter going – and leave you with what I plan on covering in the different chapters

1. Getting the idea and developing the backbone
2. Visual results and basic testing
3. First signs of a game, modifying the base idea
4. First rounds of balancing issues and bugfixes
5. Battling an AI and customization – …and killing more darlings
6. Final touches and looking back

Till next time – which is hopefully a period sharply lesser than another 90 days.