I started working on Charlie about a week ago. It's a completely new strategy game that I'm inventing rules for as I develop. It could perhaps be described as a mashup/twist of Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne type of games. It is turn-based and in a turn you basically can either: 1. Capture a free, turned tile 2. Build a road 3. Skip turn (to gain a hammer, up to a maximum of 3 hammers) 4. (Maybe do some form of attacks on opponent tiles) In the beginning only the center tile is turned. Each turn a new tile is turned until all are turned. The game ends when all free tiles have been captured. I'm also considering to make the starting tile turn in a random location to add more replay-value. The game is making good progress. Now all the tiles work correctly, are randomized and the game can be played. At the moment the strategic elements involved are that when you capture a tile, your neighboring tiles increase in value. Also the cost of tiles depends on their basevalue as follows: Value - Price 1 - 0 hammers 3 - 1 hammer 5 - 2 hammers 9 - 3 hammers I'm also adding the possibility of building roads from tile to tile. These roads can be connected so that when you are building a road you cannot cross the same tile twice. Also, naturally, the road must be continuous in that you always connect adjacent tiles. The maximum length of the road is not limited, nor is the minimum. I'm still considering different options for what the benefit of the road is, but most likely it would somehow increase the value of the connected squares. One cool option would be that all squares connected would get increase in value as follows: - Tile with maximum value gets its value increased by the count of the tiles connected - Other tiles get their value increase by half of the value of the maximum value tile This should make the high basevalue tiles more desirable and should balance the game. At the moment the game is for 2 players only, but I don't see a reason that it could not be extended to more players and larger grids (more tiles) if the basic gameplay proves to be fun. Let me know if you have ideas or are interested in somehow contributing to the game with either code, art, testing, marketing, so forth. I work on this about an 1-3 hours per day and am aiming for a release in late February. The basic idea is that the first iteration has a solid gameplay that is easy to learn and difficult to master. Then more add-ons can be developed to create more varied gameplay and complex mechanics, much like Carcassonne has done. Above all, the motivation is to create a fun game with boatloads of replay value and more than one winning strategy.
