Bontãgo

One of the IGF entries, J-Blow mentioned this one in an earlier thread and I just got around to trying it. Great physics based strategy game. 3 parts Jenga to 1 part Go. It’s terrific.

http://www.allwest.com/~sanderso/

/mc

WOW! And it’s free ?

Hm… After a few days of frequent play we seem to have discovered a serious degenerate strategy of simply building one supertower in your home area. We thought maybe the special “gift” items would help to counter this, but so far that hasn’t been the case. Are we missing something or is this game broken?

Anyone else playing this?

/mc

I don’t think it was me who mentioned this. Unless it was my evil twin or something. I have not seen the game yet (but it looks interesting; I will check it out).

My mistake, it was the guy named Jonathan who isn’t you. (http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6070&highlight=bontago)

It does seem like something you would mention though, you have to admit.

/mc

Yeah, I can see the confusion!

I played this game and – well, it is very polished for where it came from, and that’s cool. I do think it could use some augmented game design though. It does seem like the best strategy is to pile stuff straight up in a tower. There’s nothing really preventing you from doing that, as long as you lower the blocks as far down as you can each time, so that the physics doesn’t upset you too hard. If you make a mistake, you just push as far forward in your own region as you can and start over.

I would guess that they designed in a tradeoff point, at which you’d rather go outward than upward, but it’s not steep enough to be obvious. (And Monty says he tried the build-straight-up thing multiplayer, in which case maybe there isn’t a tradeoff at all.)

Though I haven’t played much 2-player, so maybe this tactic falls apart under pressure. But, it certainly seems like there’s not much reason to move laterally on the playfield – you just always want to keep going straight toward the center. They have those bonus doohickeys that drop, but I never picked one up, because with the amount of effort it takes to get them, I could basically be just-about-winning anyway.

I would be interested in seeing a version of this game where the size/shape of the blocks mattered more, or where the position on the disc mattered more.

Like, what if it gave you “cap” pieces that you can’t stack onto, like domes or pyramids or something, but that radiate more? And maybe it gave you a 3-piece inventory so that you have some choices to make.

In general though, considering it was done by students, it’s good. Better than any game I ever did in school.