Flatdog Scuffle
A downloadable scuffle
As we know, a flatdog needs its exercise. However, this time the Walkie Team has run into a conundrum – another flatdog, also on a walk! A flatdog would be a very good prize to bring back home, and thus both Walkie Teams prepare for a scuffle to capture the other team's flatdogs or get knocked down in the process.
This is a 2-player abstract boardgame where you try to either pin down opposing units of one type, or capture those of another. Both players have one or two Flatdogs under their control, which are very strong but can become captured very easily, making the gameplay fast-paced and tense. The PDF explains the rules and provides illustrations for how to setup the game.
Download
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Development log
- Version 1.2.Dec 24, 2023
- Version 1.1Dec 18, 2023
Comments
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Played through this and had some thoughts!
- We assumed that moves are mandatory, but seems ambiguous. Created some interesting situations at the end game where you didn't want to move a walker but had to.
- Flatdog squishing mechanics seemed pretty unclear, and we ended up going with "If piece is in-between flatdog and something else it gets squished". Could be nice to have some pictures to get the idea across as we kept running into corner cases
We also had a last minute upset that involved hopping in between flatdogs for the win. Feels like this has a lot of depth to the strategy that we haven't even touched on :)
Thanks a lot! Yeah, I considered adding illustrations but wanted to get the rulebook out fast. I'll update it with your feedback. For the things you mentioned:
- You're supposed to have to make exactly 2 moves, but of course a piece can move back and forth if one needs to stall.
- You treated the Flatdog squishing as intended; if there's any obstacle behind the pushed unit, it gets squished.
When you mention the upset, do you mean moving directly from one Flatdog to another? As in, did you feel that being able to jump Flatdogs would improve the game despite not being permitted by the rules atm?
Ah, actually we did interpret that walkers could hop directly from flatdog to flatdog, but the rules seem clear that you can't on second glance. I'm not sure if that addition would change things much, but it made one of our games very dramatic!
After testing it a bit, being able to jump between the dogs seemed like at least it wouldn't cause problems, so I'll update the rules to allow it. Thank you very much for the feedback! :)
"You're supposed to have to make exactly 2 moves, but of course a piece can move back and forth if one needs to stall."
I think the rules state that "the same unit may not take 2 moves in a single turn". I have been playing a bit, and I personally find that the game is more dynamic when you ignore this rule. What was the logic behind it if I may ask?
Also I'm curious, what happens when a player is out of legal moves? Is there some stalemate mechanism? Two possible scenarii where this would happen:
(my personal opinion is that a stalemate mechanism could be fun, it would allow players to still keep hope of potentially drawing a losing game)
Would love to have evaluation engines (like Stockfish) for these types of games, it would make it much easier to balance the game, and make sure there are no forced wins from any starting position.