Category:Minigame

From The Tic-Tac-Totality

A minigame, in the context of The Tic-Tac-Totality, is a game that is played as a segment of a game of Tic-Tac-Totum. Minigames are:

• For 2 players, as Tic-Tac-Totum itself is a 2-player game, and tieless, as Tic-Tac-Totum does not allow for ties.

• Self-contained: A minigame requires nothing other than a clear flat surface and any of the following pieces:

• 52 white, 30 blue, and 30 red chips.

• 5 white, red, blue, green, and black dice.

• The Turkey and Chicken bags.

The Duck bag and remaining chips are reserved for the game of Tic-Tac-Totum itself. Pen and paper can be allowed, but cannot be required.

• Quick: For experienced players, a minigame should last somewhere between 2 and 8 minutes; setup should not take more than 90 seconds.

• Non-Trivial: A minigame must involve some non-trivial choices; it cannot be all chance, and it cannot be solvable, at least without an intense and sustained effort. While chanceless games are allowed, designers should beware the salient pitfalls: analysis paralysis, increased solvability, etc.

• Distinct: While spin-offs from, responses to, and variants of existing minigames (or, for that matter, outside games) are encouraged, minigames should not be fungible—i.e., a minigame's appeal should not be identical to that of another minigame. Note that one game being isomorphic to another doesn't necessarily make it fungible, though it certainly doesn't help.

• Straightforward and elegant: A good minigame tends to exemplify a single idea, or two convergent ideas; bells and whistles can always be saved for the game's Non-Totum variant. Elegance is difficult to define, but lack of it tends to involve ambiguous rules, fiddly exceptions, muddled goals, and convoluted mapping of the logic of the game to its spatial representation.

• Consistent: All minigames are based in the same "operating system," and so, while genuine novelty is encouraged, consistency between minigames should be an equally strong design consideration. This applies to both the rules themselves and the writing of them; the use of previous minigame pages as templates is encouraged.

The Original Canon, which is a good set of games to start with:

• 12!
• Bonk
• Columns
• Cudgel
• Five Square
• Hex
• Pig
• Swine
• Small Stakes