Games

I like games. They are a big part of my research. I teach courses on them. I play them whenever I can. I also have tried my hand at designing them. I'm posting my finished designs here. If you get a chance to try one, please let me know what you think.

Play-Doh's Cave

Klaus Teuber, before gaining his fame for Settlers of Catan, won the prestigious German Spiele des Jahre (Game of the Year) in 1988 for his game Barbarossa. It is a really wonderful mold-breaking game (ha ha), that involves both sides of the brain. You make riddles out of clay and guess other people's riddles. And if you play in teams it can accommodate anywhere from 3 to 12 people.

Despite all of that praise, the game is just too clumsy for such a neat idea of making riddles in clay. Play-Doh's cave is a response to that. It throws away the board, drops the strange dwarf theme, and involves a drastic change to the scoring system to fix some strategic problems. Oh yeah, and a better name. I think the end result is a far more elegant version and what Barbarossa should've been from the beginning.