Laal-Pili: Redesigning Tic Tac Toe
Redesign of Tic-Tac-Toe
The existing game of Tic-Tac-Toe accommodates 2 players and runs for a short time.
Each player chooses his/her mark (Knots/ Circles) and has to make a streak of 3 marks- horizontally/ vertically/ diagonally. The player who makes the streak first wins the round.
Once the pattern of the game is figured out, there is no excitement as the player who begins by placing his/her in the corner and makes the right moves later will always win! The Game lasts only for a minute and then if you have to restart or stop playing as it becomes boring.
As part of a module- Designing Games for Children conducted at IDC school of Design, our assignment was to redesign the game- Tic-Tac-Toe. We had the board game version of it and we started playing with the pieces.
We got our first breakthrough with an accident. All the pieces we were playing fell off the table and while picking them up each of us had a mix of both- knots and circles. We decided to play with them and slowly the game started emerging
Image credits: Amazon
Redesign v1
We made paper chits with different colours and put them in a box. The players picked 3 chits randomly without peeking and not showing their chits to other player. The benefit of having a mix of both pieces was that anybody could complete any streak and as the players didn't know what colour other player has, there was high unpredictability.
To make the game last longer, we added another trick. Once the streak is complete, the player takes those 3 marks off the board and plays another turn. This way, the game did not end as soon as someone made a streak but in fact, it cleared up space on the board so that more streaks can be made in the same round. The objective is not only to complete a streak of 3 but also obstruct others from completing by memorizing the earlier rounds and guessing the colour which the other player might have.
The two players play until there is no space on the board or one of them finishes their marks.
To test the game quickly we made tiny coins of acrylic and painted them in bright red and yellow keeping in mind that the game is for children. The size was kept small so that they can be easily held in a closed fist of a child. The secrecy brings more dynamism in the game as there is curiosity to know which colours the other player has!
Another breakthrough was the addition of a trump! A white coin that can be considered as red or white!
Redesign v2
After testing the first gameplay among ourselves, we realised that once a player finished up his/her coins there should be a second chance and so we introduced a reserve bag. At the beginning of the game, each player gets some fixed number of coins and some are kept in the reserve bag which can be picked one at a time when some player finishes up his/her coins. We scaled this up to include more players on a larger grid board and came up with a mechanism to calculate the number of coins in the game, how much to be distributed in the beginning.
We also thought about how the trump can be used to keep the chances of winning fairly equal for every player- not depending only upon the trump. The result was a Guideline document of how to play the game.
Playtesting
Laal-Pili has all the elements of gameness: Memory, Strategy, Chance and skill in varying proportions which made it fun to play and not boring even after playing a few rounds. Since, the model was scalable, it could be played by more than 2 players and the spectators also had fun watching the game. However, the only way to determine whether the game is successful or not is by testing it with children. We did a few playtesting sessions at Campus school in IIT Bombay and the response was good. The children from standard 5-6 could easily understand the game but standard 4 kids had difficulty understanding the game.
The reason might be the visualization ability that is required to play this game is not yet developed at a younger age. Though, there were exceptions too. Some kids from standard 4 also enjoyed playing the game.
Here is a video that shows how the game is played in a 3X3 grid board with 2 players.
The fun part is that you can play this game with whichever ingredients you've got. All you need is a grid and a two different kind of coins like some grain/ stones... Do try it out and let us know!
The fun part is that you can play this game with whichever ingredients you've got. All you need is a grid and a two different kind of coins like some grain/ stones... Do try it out and let us know!
