Fire & Ice

[JacobFischer]

Two ancient magicians have been at war for centuries, but finally, at the dawn of a new millena, they may finally be able to defeat one another by summoning the most powerful elementals of the zodiac. One controls the element of fire, and other ice. But only one element can survive.

Summary

Two player, grid based, simultanous turn based game. Players either buy are start out with the same set of Elementals, which are the zodiac beasts. Each player is either fire or ice, but there is no functional difference outside of color.

Players take their turns and move their Elementals around, shooting elemental blasts at one another. The trick is Players can only path over tiles of their element. The Blasts they shoot change the tile it passes over to their element, so shooting blasts is needed for navigate, offence, defense, etc. Different Elementals have different stats and shoot 1-4 blasts at different speeds.

Elementals

There are 12 possible Elementals, but every game only a subset is available. They either buy them at the beginning, or are given an [identical] set.

They are based off the chinese zodiac:

• Dog: 4 moves, shots a Blast forward
• Boar: 2 moves, shots a Blast forward
• Rat: 3 moves, shots two Blasts forward (on top of one another)
• Ox: 2 moves in a single direction, shoots 3 slow Blasts forward like a shotgun
• Tiger: 4 moves, shots a very fast Blast forward
• Rabbit: 5 moves, shots a slow Blast
• Dragon: 3 moves, shots Blasts all around it, with the main direction being the fastest
• Snake: 2 moves, shots a single fast Blast
• Horse: 4 moves, shots a slow Blast forward and backward
• Sheep: 3 moves, cannot shoot, but cannot be killed
• Monkey: 3 moves, shots 2 Blasts forward and back
• Rooster: 2 moves, shots 3 slow Blasts in front and adjacents.

Victory Conditions

1. Destroy all the enemy Elementals
2. Else, control the most tiles with your element
3. Else, coin flip

Simultaneous Turns

Turns are simultaneous, which is not how we normally do games. However, due to how this game id designed, most of the edge cases for timing of actions does not matter. You cannot move onto enemy Tiles, so movement collisions will never happen. Blasts are spawned on the Elemental's location and travel in between turns so that is handled by the server. Really, the only hidden information is where the enemy is moving to and if they are shooting Blasts.

Analysis

There are two interesting mechanics going on here:

1. Simultaneous Turns: In between turns we resolve actions, and this means you have to better anticipate what they will do during a turn
2. Movement over your element: To move you have to attack. This is inspired from Inversus, and is an extremely compelling mechanic once you try it.

[JeffreyStrahm]

I assume the sheep will still die if on a enemy tile or how else can the enemy kill it?

[JacobFischer]

The Sheep, if it has that ability, would not count against/towards win conditions. It basically exists to block Blasts. A Scapegoat if you will.

[russleyshaw]

Idk about the rotating available units. Reminds me a lot of reef and people complained about how it made some units completely useless because we'd have to balance not just for one context (where all are available), but for much more (where in any given subset of units, none are OP)

For those looking at this game idea of Jacob's realize that his simultaneous turn based game is not typically what we do in MegaMinerAI because it usually makes things more difficult for us as developers and competitors writing AIs to program for; however he is introducing it as an actual mechanic in his game and handles the edge case "what happens when one unit moves on top of another unit"

[JacobFischer]

True on the balancing for multiple contexts. If that becomes an issue we can just add costs to the units and let them buy Elementals before the turns start. However I like restricting because it means if one unit is OP you can't rely on having it in every game.