Deconstruction of the The Way

Deconstruction of The Way

            For game design we had to play a print and play game. We then had to deconstruct it. The game I chose to play was called The Way. It was a fun and easy game to play, and only took a short amount of time to set up. This game only had about 2 pages of rules, and took less than 30 minutes to play.

           

•        The goal of the game is to make your way from your own start card to your midpoint card, and then back to your start card again, before the other player.

     

•         The core mechanic of the game is to rotate or replace the cards in a way that helps you get to your goal, and blocks your opponents way to the goal. You can do this simply by placing one of the cards you are given on top of another card that may be useful to your opponent, or by simply rotating one of the cards on the board. The core mechanic is pretty simple but it works well.

•             The space of this game is discrete, mostly because there are only five by five rows laid out. I don’t think it is really a continuous space because we don’t really care about the space within each grid. We care about the overall grid, so pretty much it’s 25 grid pieces that are closely connected to each other. Nothing continues out from the game either, it’s simply in a confined 2-dimensional place.

•             The objects in this game are the cards that are placed down, and the pieces you use to move around the board. The attribute of the card is the motion it can move in. The attribute of the pieces is the amount of moves it does and its direction of movement. The state if the cards attribute is 90 degrees, because that’s how much the cards can rotate. The state of the pieces movement is 1 to unknown. It just depends on how many lines are connected and how many you can cross till you get to a stopping point.

•        The operative actions in this game are moving your piece in any which way, and rotating the cards, and be able to place the cards. The resultant actions of your piece are, getting to the midpoint and back to the start again. The resultant actions of rotating the cards are being able to block your opponent, get to the finish faster, and winning.

•        The rules were simple and easy to follow. They included pictures of illegal and legal moves that the player can make, and has pictures showing what the different pieces are. The rules were also divided into small sub-sections, which was nice, and made it easier to follow.

•        This game is mostly skill, and the skill that they players learn is how to outsmart the opponent and how to make the best moves possible to get you to the midpoint and finish the fastest.

•        There is small role of chance in this game; the only real chance you have is how the cards are laid out, and whether or not they are in your favor. The other role of chance you might get is what cards you end up receiving, you could get lucky and end up with all good cards.

Overall I enjoyed this game and thought it was a good concept. It kept my interest the whole time and made you think, I also enjoyed that it wasn’t all chance, and it was mostly skill. I would definitely play this game again. Here is a link to the game so you can play yourself, http://www.bonegames.com/games/theway.html.