Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
R. C. Bell divides ancient games into six categories: race games,
war games, positional games, mancala games (also known as sowing or
count-and-capture games), dice games, and domino games. For our pur-
poses, his categories will suffice as a starting point for understanding
some common types
of games.
Race Games
These are usually systems highly influenced by luck that usually feature
some kind of circular track that players must race around to win. The
tracks most frequently have a circle-and-cross formation, allowing for
shortcuts.
Two major features of ancient games are reinvention and evolution.
Almost every game has another, earlier game that laid the groundwork
for it. This is so clearly the case that if we were to find an utterly unique
game somewhere, it would be reasonable to say that we simply have not
yet found its predecessor.
One popular example of a race game—and a good case study for evo-
lution—is the modern-day
Sorry!.
This game is actually a modern version
of an 1896 game called
Ludo
, which is based heavily on the much older
Indian game of pachisi,
which has itself been reinvented as
Parcheesi
However, it really doesn't end there; there are many earlier race games
that clearly influenced pachisi.
Pachisi
Ludo
Figure 13.
Early race games.
