Iteration, implementation and creation - Battleships reborn

When reviewing or analysing a game, there are many questions you have to ask yourself, to truly capture the essence of the game this may be simple, or quite difficult. Below are some questions you might ask yourself to start to get to grips with what makes a game tick.

• What challengers do the players face, what actions do they take to overcome them?
• How do players affect each other?
• Is the game perceived by the players as fair?
• Is the game re-playable? if so why?
• What is the games intended audience?
• What is the "core" of the game, second by second minute by minute the things you do over and over that represent the fun part?

Let's start off by looking at these in relation to the game 'Battleships';

What challengers do the players face, what actions do they take to overcome them?

There are many different ways to approach what the players challenges are in this game, but I guess in pure simplicity it could be summed up as a nebulous challenge, a game of hit or miss once you've totally stripped it down. While there may be ways and tactics in which you search for ships, it none the less can end up coming down to either how well you know your player through multiple battles, or it can be something as simple as pure luck.

How do players affect each other?

They affect each other through randomly attacking squares on each others side of the battlefield, unknowing to the location of their opponents ship, once they find one they may still be in the dark on which direction the ship is facing.

Is the game perceived by the players as fair?

It has to be, there is no favouratism or handicaps either way, whether you have one ship or three left you both end up taking a turn, and taking a shot. I'd say the most you can go to making the game unfair in its original state is if you are up against someone with Amblyopia(lazy eye) or other factors that might alter a persons bodily functions, because one way you might try to catch your opponent off is by their body language. 

Is the game re-playable? if so why?

Yes, every game can end up playing out very differently, due to the freedom players have when placing their pieces, and players behavior.

What is the games intended audience?

It's hard to say really, the game due to its nature would seem intended for children, however at the same time you could argue the game requires some patience and is a time passer requiring little skill or knowledge to pick up. So it could be said that this games intended audience could either be children or more mature/elder people who aren't as bothered by straight up skill based competitive games, and simple wish to pass time.

What is the "core" of the game, second by second minute by minute the things you do over and over that represent the fun part?

In a very dumbed down and visually unnoticeable way, it's about the thrill; the excitement of whether you hit or miss. It's fun element comes from the cloak and dagger nature of the game, 'did I hit? Did I miss?' and when you find out you missed you become more determined to find a ship especially when you realise your opponent must be closing in on yours.


Our job was to take this well known game and iterate it, adapt it rule by rule into something new, testing it each iteration along the way to see if that element of 'fun' still remained or was improved upon.

We started off by throwing a couple of ideas around and then decided to begin by adding in a feature of retaliation, doing this would in essence make the game quicker, more interesting and would add more depth to play then what usually seems like a basic tennis rally. The idea was that different ships would be assigned gun blocks on them, when a ship gets hit, depending on how many guns are still operational on that ship, the ships weapons fire back the number of functional turrets left on the engaged ship. If the retaliation shots hit an opponents ship, after those shots are taken the other player would take their retaliation shots. In basis, there is a possibility (a very small one though) that the game could be over in a single turn.

So if for example player A took his shot, and it hit player B's 5 square ship, then player B will fire at 3 squares in retaliation due to the 5 square ship having 3 guns. However if the initial shot from player A hit one of player B's gun squares, then player B would only fire back 2 shots.

Following on from this iteration we then began to consider expanding on a few other elements of the game, for one thing grid size came into question, and the possibility of making it larger or smaller. Smaller might be more fast paced, however it might detract from the mystery of the game and your opponents actions. Making it larger however might extend the length of the game, making the possibility of boredom more likely to crop in, which you never want with a game.

One thing I considered was the inclusion of the devils object; DICE! I considered the inclusion of dice in a 'double or nothing' scenario, the idea for implementation I had was simple; if you hit a ship, you have the option to double up, by doing so you must obtain a 5 or a 6, doing so will give you a second follow up shot before retaliations can occur. The cost of this is however, that if you fail to obtain a 5 or a 6 then your first shot becomes null, and your opponents ship makes 'repairs', this means you have to waste your next turn attacking that square again. The good thing about this is it adds an interesting risk-reward element to the game.

A thought I liked was the idea of a 3 layer grid, with a new theme for space. The idea would require a lot of iterations to make sense with the inclusion of certain functions like special 3 layer piercing shots versus 1 layer 3 square shots. The game would become quite different in my opinion and would give more choice to the player.

The most interesting and hectic thought for iteration though would probably be movement, movement would make a game like Battleships quite ridiculous to play. It would probably remove a lot of tactical elements and make the game more luck ridden than dice could make sense of. For this reason, such an iteration would require some heavy thought to either grid size, or attack capabilities. Maybe players could be given an increased number of shots dependent on operation boats, however as realistic and straight forward as this may seem, if would more than likely deduct from the balance of the game, which could quite easily ruin the game completely for a lot of players.

All in all there're some interesting thoughts for consideration there. When you think about it it becomes quite intriguing how different a game as simple as Battleships could become without deducting from the basics of the game. But when we think about it; could we still believe a person if they walked up to us and said Company of Heroes was derived from Chess? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But once we begin to analyse a statement like that, it's interesting to see the comparisons we begin to make.