Porti
A downloadable gateway
Two travellers are stuck in the Halls of Walls! Luckily both travellers know the secrets of Gatemaking; this craft will surely be the key to their escape, but there's a snag – only one of them can ever leave the Halls...
This is a 2-player abstract boardgame about trying to place gates on the board to get to the goal before your opponent while also trying to trap them. The gameplay is indirect in a novel way and the rules are ultimately quite simple even if the rules PDF gets a bit wordy. The PDF explains the rules and provides illustrations for how to play and setup the game.
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Development log
- 1.0b8 days ago
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
I want to confirm one thing. For the situation of the second photo on this web page. If red player take the next move and place a general gate on the up site of blue player's space, is that red player win the game because blue player would step into red player's space?(blue->up->left up->down->down)
Just want to make sure I read the rule right.
Oh that looks cool, I need to give it a spin
I don't know if I'll ever be able to find someone to play this with me, but I can still think about this.
1. Is a player able to reclaim gates they have placed down? Seems like a fascinating imbalance if so.
2. The facing disambiguation is interesting, but is there a way to prevent infinite loops? Literally speaking, the rules don't stop a token from moving back and forth between two cells forever, which is silly, so are tokens prevented from revisiting cells?
3. The "no single portalling" system is a bit weird on its own. Maybe it could be justified as going through a door on its own sends you into the next room too fast? Another things that could be tested is making the placement legal but actually traversing that door impossible. Dunno how well that would work, my mind is reeling.
One suggestion: Read the rule again, you misunderstand some. All three point is including in the pdf.
The third point isn't really a question at all, it's a hypothetical, and I doubt the first question is specifically addressed. That leaves the second question, which I could have missed, but that leaves me with another question: if it's so obvious, why didn't you just explain yourself?
Sorry I haven't directly answer the question. Because English is not my first language. So I'm afraid I read it wrong. And I also not good at explain it to other people.
Now you ask, I could provide my understanding. Maybe not correct, read it with the rule pdf.
1. Yes but not exactly right. Gates only reclaim by use. When the gate got use it go to their place. Color one return to the corresponding player with same color. Neutral gate return to share pool and moved player can reclaim to own 4 Neutral gate.
2. It won't be infinite loops. Because the gate use once then it will go out of the board, so player can't pass through it twice. So no loop.
3. The "no single portalling" is to prevent player to just use the gate to move one step again and again, because one step move reduces the strategy of the game. This game is not like most game to think about your next step. You need to think about multi steps and build the road to the target, and you can only place the last gate in front of you. And you also need to prevent other player used your road(because gate only used once, if other player use it, you lose your road). For example you use the red player, just want to make a two step move, you place the first gate, the blue player can use a blue gate to block your road. That is the strategy point. If allow one step move, player can use always move one step, other player make no strategy to prevent it.
Ohhh, because each gate gets removed as you travel through it, you can never travel through the same gate twice. Thanks!
I still think that gates automatically going to the player of the same color is weird. Could a player end up with too many neutral gates and not be able to pick up those gates? Is it impossible to pick up a gate of the opposite color?
This is a really nice abstract game, well done 👍🏼
Can you provide a second PDF for printing the illustrated game board that’s seen in the pictures? Or add it to the rules at the end I suppose. It seems to be hand drawn, but could probably be scanned?
Also, is there any significance to the yellow hex cells or are they just colored to look nice?
Thanks! I could scan the board, yeah; it's indeed hand-drawn. The yellow cells are just decorative, only the player starting cells and the "midway goal" green cell are meaningfully different from other cells.
What happened to the Elder Dance game?
The rules led to *very* stalemate-y games in a way I didn't realize, and I took it off Itch until I figure out a suitable rules adjustment. I'll put it back in once that happens :)
Oh ok
Persnickity wording question: "On their turn, each player may only place exactly 1 Gate." -- the rest of the rules lead me to believe that really, players *must* place exactly 1 Gate on their turn.
Other than that, this sounds very interesting. It seems as if the main win condition is the least likely to actually cause the game to end, but of course I haven't actually played it yet :)
Oh right, good point! The idea is that you must place one gate per turn. I'll adjust the wording