Collapsi Devlog - Day 2: Wrapping and Portals!

Collapsi is an abstract strategy maze game in which players are trying to be the last one able to move their pawn.  Every time a player moves, the tile they began their turn on "caves in".  As soon as a player is unable to make a legal move on their turn, the game ends.  The player who was able to complete a turn last wins.

I was unable to play with an opponent tonight, but I still played through a couple games on my own.

Played: 5x5 grid, A-6 + Joker, one token, wrap around allowed, aces are portals
Played: 5x5 grid, A-6 + two jokers, two tokens (remove on of the 6’s), wrap around allowed, aces are portals

Wrap around - moving from one side of the grid to the other by exiting all the way left, right, up, or down and re-entering on the opposite side of the board in the same row or column (think Mario Bros or Pac-Man)

Ace-portals - aces are portals that lead to other aces, moving from one ace to another counts as a movement, if you land on an ace you stay on that card, if there is only one ace the portal does nothing, aces cave in if used as a starting space at the beginning of a player's turn

5x5 with wrap around and ace-portals was pretty fun!  It will be nice to try it with a real opponent.  It definitely extended gameplay a little bit and gave players more “outs”.  The aces were a little glommed together in the grid, so they did not come into play very often.  That is just the nature of procedural generation - sometimes the board won't be ideal.  I want to keep that element though because the board will be different every single game.  No solving this game!  

I decided to try the same rules on a 5x5 grid, but this time I removed one of the 6's and replaced it with a second joker.  I also added a second pawn so each player has their own piece to control.  The win condition was still the same: be the last player to complete a legal move.

This was very interesting!  I tried my hardest to win as each player, and Player 2 came out on top.  As player 1, I lingered on the higher number cards too late into the game.  I was on a 6 when that left me with nothing but bad options.  This made the game less tactical and more strategic than the one pawn game because I was not so dependent on what my opponent did in order to plan ahead.  

• Try 5x5 and 7x7 with wrapping around, two pawns, two starting spaces, and ace-portals with an opponent
• Also try replacing the three remaining 6’s with Kings
  • When a king is revealed during setup, it immediately becomes a caved-in space