Gold Influence

My practice at card games resulted in a card game I devised. The problem I have with poker is that there is too much luck involved. Thus I’ve made a deceptively complex psychological strategy game that could be described as a kind of betting chess. I’ve called it gold influence as the between the players they form a kind of economy where each card has a perceived value in chips, the amount you bait the other player with, influences the card they play, and thus you must use you influence to control the game.

 

For 2 players which take turns to be the dealer each round

Each player is dealt an entire suit and a joker

The cards values go lowest to highest  Joker, A,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,J,Q,K

Joker beats any of the picture cards King, Queen and Jack.

If two of the same card is played baits are returned.

Both players start with 20 chips each

Each round the dealer chooses a card and plays it face down and a bait to entice the other player to try and win it, this bait must be matched by the other player who plays his own card face up. 

The player can then decide to play the round or fold. Since the dealer knows both the cards, the player should try to work out if he should play or fold based on the dealer’s tells.

If the player folds, the played cards are discarded and put to the side face up and the bets are returned. The player pays a penalty to the dealer of 3 chips which doubles every time that player passes.

If he plays the dealer's card is revealed and the higher value card wins, the cards are discarded and put to the side face up.

You win when you amass all the chips.

BA1b Contextual studies How Life is Strange’s gameplay complement’s its story. - Ludonarrative Dissonance

Life is Strange’s gameplay is extremely simple, so simple that it becomes instinctual, I often found myself knocking things over and rewinding time without realising it like I actually could rewind time and had been practicing it for a while. Adrian Chmielarz a developer at The Astronauts states that in order for a game to foster emotional empathy the game should do these things:

‘a) Having at least two heroes in the story, thus making it clear that it is not about a single protagonist the player might want to immediately identify with;

b) Using a caretaker theme

c) Offering non-3D second person perspective;

d) Minimizing the cognitive load through simple mechanics and UI, and thus freeing up the mental space required for empathy to exist.’

Life is Strange does all of these things, Max and Chloe are the two heroes, A theme going through the game is using your powers to help people notably Kate. The games perspective is between second and third perspective, in a sense we are max, we make her decisions but we also see max. And as I have stated the gameplay is very simple consisting of rewinding time, making choices and exploring max’s world.

Interestingly Life is strange has reverse ludo-narrative dissonance or what I call narrative-ludo dissonance the story weakens the gameplay rather than the gameplay weakening the story. The final ending of the game is to erase all of the choices and gameplay we made, we were told our choices matter through the gameplay, but the story tell us they are not.