Subulata online

[Cwali]

Since a few days you can play Subulata on computer too, against other players. At www.jijbent.nl .

It's a Dutch games-site with many players. More than 600 Subulata-matches are already played, ca. 1000 matches are in progress now. At the moment player Black won a bit more often than player White (not significant). 4% ended with equal points.

The site is in Dutch language. But I think it works well without understanding all text. "Wachtkamer" is waiting room, there you can choose an opponent. "Toernooien" is tournaments, but you must have played 3 matches before you can participate in tournaments.
It's a free site to play games, but for 'higher' numbers of matches/moves it's 10,- per year or so. So readers here can complain that I'm making advertisement here. ;)

For this turn-based site I made a shorter Subulata-version. 7 against 7 pawns (1-7), you choose which 2 spaces stay empty on your start-tile. It doesn't change the game much. Different matches still develop in very different ways, sometimes defensive play is good, sometimes offensive, sometimes it is a 'battle', sometimes using quick routes is the key. It's ca. 25 moves per player, 39 moves is the highest I've seen.
By the way, the 7-against-7 version, or 6-against-6 I like in the boardgame self too.

Have fun with Subulata! You will see that it is not a combi of Halma and Geister, what I red last year. I would think that the originality of this game (the principe of the board spaces that determine the possible moves, instead of differenses in the figures/pawns (Chess for example) or relative positions of the pawns (Halma for example)) would be the first convincing aspect to players who don't know much of the game yet. Maybe there are more games where the spaces determine how far a player figure can move? I don't know such a game. To do this in a game with very few and easy rules (which can give it a feeling like classic games like Schach or Dame) in combination with a few modern aspects like the secret values for the endscore and the graphics of the tiles is special, I dare to say.

The other Cwali-2-player-game StreetSoccer you can still play on littlegolem.net and brettspielwelt.de. Also a game that did already excist according to some first reactions I got when I released StreetSoccer. Only 70.000 matches or so are played online now. Sorry, I'm a bit irritated by some 'strange' comments I see about Cwali-games by German reviewers. ;)

Grusse,
Corné

[Carsten Wesel | FAIRspielt.de]

Cwali schrieb:

> Sorry, I'm a bit irritated by some
> 'strange' comments I see about Cwali-games by German
> reviewers. ;)

Like this one? http://www.fairspielt.de/Spiele/zoosim.php

Gruß Carsten (der Subulata allerdings noch nie gespielt hat)

[Michael Weber]

No, like this one:

http://www.reich-der-spiele.de/kritiken/Subulata.php

Corne kann nicht nachvollziehen, warum u. a. ich Subulata nicht innovativ und gut finde.

Michael

[Roman Pelek]

Hi Corné,

>You will see that it is not a combi of Halma and Geister, what I red last year. I would think that the originality of this game (the principe of the board spaces that determine the possible moves, instead of differenses in the figures/pawns (Chess for example) or relative positions of the pawns (Halma for example)) would be the first convincing aspect to players who don't know much of the game yet. Maybe there are more games where the spaces determine how far a player figure can move? I don't know such a game.<

To put it first: I personally think Subulata combines common mechanics in an easy and entertaining way, which makes this game both enjoyable and a good clean design, though I wouldn't call it extraordinary. Nevertheless I wouldn't consider any [i]single[/i] element in the game special when looked at it as an isolated thing.

But back to the point why I respond to your posting: There are many games out there where the space of your pawn determines your movement. The basis for the Subulata movement is - in my opinion - essentially rooted in war games, or to speak in general: in any game in which moving pawns encounter different territory. Normally, authors are commonly modelling those natural aspects by determining movement by the territory that [i]you move into[/i], sometimes more complicated by both the space you move from as well as the space you move to. Your variation is, according to the theme, to do so by letting the space you "jump" from determine the distance. This surely is nice and fits well with the theme, but regarding it as an isolated element of the game this definitely isn't a revolution.

>To do this in a game with very few and easy rules (which can give it a feeling like classic games like Schach or Dame) in combination with a few modern aspects like the secret values for the endscore and the graphics of the tiles is special, I dare to say.<

As always a game is more than the sum of its parts, so I wouldn't doubt that. But I also wouldn't consider parallels to classic games as a drawback, but as a proof of good game design. I don't agree with Michael concerning the issue that a tendency to classic games played during childhood means you haven't taken part in the recent development of games.

The only thing we really have done in the recent past concerning game design is to clothe game mechanics in a "world", a theme. Furthermore, we supported the trend to mould strategic as well as luck games into something we now call "family games" or "tactical games", although the roots for it already existed a long time ago (e.g. Backgammon). And, surely, we expanded 2-player games to larger groups, bringing us the kingmaker problem, which initiated the need to keep game informations secret and to apply some interaction in form of auctions or negotiations, or maybe bluff. The latter have nevertheless always be present in human society when addressing a group of interests larger than two.

In my opinion, good game design essentially doesn't differ very much from a few thousand years ago. As well as we don't know of many games from 2000 years before, few will do so of our games 2000 years in the future, most of our efforts will vanish and do not stand the test of time. The rest of it are classics, which will essentially always be based on most simplicity and greatest variety this simplicity allows. Just take the recent game of the year "Ticket to ride" - reduced to its basics it is a classical "travelling salesmen"-problem garnished by hidden target cards to both avoid kingmaker problems as well as to create suspense by uncertainty of the oppenents opportunities and score. "Einfach Genial", the "Spiel der Spiele" in Austria, is "just" a good and entertaining Domino-variant. Yet both of them are deeply rooted in truly classical game design. These games aren't "new", but the absence of need to be "new" and to rely on the basics is just what makes them good.

All in all: I mostly agree with both of you yet think that some important details slipped out of the discussion ;-)

Bye,
Roman

[Cwali]

Michael Weber schrieb:
>
> Corne kann nicht nachvollziehen, warum u. a. ich Subulata
> nicht innovativ und gut finde.

Hi,

I wrote you that I like to read comments on my games, even when the writer didn't like the game. So on "gut" or "nicht gut" I didn't comment.
But I really don't understand that especially this game is desribed as "nicht innovative". At the other hand, it's nice when comments are surprising. ;)

Grusse,
Corné

[Cwali]

Hoi Roman,

Thanks for your comments.

About similar princips to move player figures: Now I did think about which games I played in my childhood and one game was Shogun (there are more games with this name). A game with magnets under the board which changed the numbers on the 'pawns'. The numbers determined the length you had to move when you choose to move this pawn. The magnet under the new space changed the number on your pawn again. (A kind of randomness made by the magnets, but after some matches you can remember which pawns had which numbers on which fields.) You had to capture your opponent's king, like in Chess. I really liked it when I was 10 or so. I made drawings of all endgame-situations in a notebook. I don't have the game or the notebook anymore and without this forum-thread I may never have thought about it again. :) But maybe that was an inspiration source.


> These games aren't
> "new", but the absence of need to be "new" and to rely on the
> basics is just what makes them good.

I didn't mean that "new" is better or not. But I think that Subulata is 'relativily original' and am surprised when I see mentioned that Subulata is seen as not so original.


Groeten,
Corné

[Roman Pelek]

Hello Corné,

Cwali schrieb:

> > These games aren't
> > "new", but the absence of need to be "new" and to rely on the
> > basics is just what makes them good.
>
> I didn't mean that "new" is better or not. But I think that
> Subulata is 'relativily original' and am surprised when I see
> mentioned that Subulata is seen as not so original.

And all I wanted to express is that an author shouldn't worry too much about originality. Worrying too much about it kills it ;-)

Ciao,
Roman

[Cwali]

I should not worry at all. ;)