Turtle Wushu: It felt like I’d played it before. I mean I could same about Johannes Sebastian Joust, but that game has unique elements that makes it a “new game.” Turtle Wushu felt like a low-tech Joust, and it’s hurt for that. In Turtle Wushu you’re the judge, the jury, and the executioner. Too much responsibility on your hand makes it more about the turtle than the people around you. Joust is never about the controller: I have a firm grip on it and I trust my sense of motion, so I only look at the faces of those around me and enjoy the social interaction that arises.
Unwanted Entities: As a game it was broken. We managed to rig the system to run back and forth and score points quickly. We lost because we didn’t play defensively, but our strategy + waiting in order to play more responsively/defensively would have been an easy win (we lost by 10 points, which is the smallest amount of points you can score). The game had a “surprise ending” that this game was actually about gentrification and moving the “unwanted entities” out of one neighborhood an into another. This was something I guess early on, so it had no real shock value or moral implications, but rather I was running around with sticks and placing them in chalk squares.
Mont Trottoir: How to win — start the game first, and use your avalanche second. Also I have to mention this, I was on a team with Paolo and some girl, and the girl on our team had no idea how to take big steps. This is important when you can only take two steps per turn. The game was fun and “it was a close win” but there was realistically no way for us to win. The “game master” was strict on some rules and really lax on others, making it frustrating when you don’t know which way he’ll lean. Playing cards while hopping around in a turn-based mountain climbing game was weird, it felt like that part of the game could have been better devised. Like what if each person on the expedition had real items they had to carry in a backpack, and each item represented an action you could take. Having a slightly larger commitment to the gameplay at hand would help with the mountain climbing illusion.
