How to play Ka'a 

Thank you for the kind words :)

Let me know if you post it, I’d love to check it out. Thanks for your comment.

I know your pain. I have so many abandoned abstract games that are almost there but not quite. My rule of thumb for naming any abstract is that it must be a one-syllable word. Thanks for the kind words.

@@offearthgames I gave it some thought and I thought I should share the concept and maybe some people will get enjoyment from it, think of a way to make it better or help them with the process of making their own games. I decided to call the game Plot (though I was also thinking of styling it as Plought to make it more unique). Rules: 1. Plot is a two-player game played on an 8x8 board with no corners. 2. Both players have 7 regular pieces and 1 special piece. 3. Each player takes turns placing pieces on the board. 4. You can't place your own pieces orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to each other. 5. If you place a piece adjacent to any opponent pieces, those pieces will go back to the opponent's pile. 6. Any piece removed from the board will be replaced by a wall tile, which can never be removed. 7. Placing a special piece will remove any piece adjacent to it and the pieces will return to their respective owners. 8. Once placed, special pieces behave like regular pieces. 9. The goal is to always make a move. If you have no possible legal moves left or you run out of pieces, you lose. The problems I found with it are that it generally seems to favour the player that goes second and "not losing" is less satisfying than a game where you do something to win. I've tried adding some sort of scoring system to help make winning more satisfying, but I couldn't think of a scoring system that benefited good strategy while also not being needlessly complicated. There's also the fact that I don't really play that many abstract strategy games and I'm not very good at them either. I'm mostly interested in video games and wanted to make an abstract strategy game because it doesn't require programming and emphasizes game design fundamentals more.

@@NIMPAK1 For some reason this comment only appears on my personal account so I'm just now reading your reply. I really like this game. In fact, I'm going to sit down and give this a go this weekend. Simple but sounds fun. The solutions to the problems you mentioned will present themselves through playtesting. Don't give up on this!

This is my current rule set: 1. Plot is a two-player game played on an 8x8 board with no corners, giving you a total of 60 spaces. 2. Each player has 8 pieces. 3. Each player takes turns placing pieces on the board. 4. You can't place your own pieces orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to each other. 5. If you place a piece adjacent to any opponent pieces, those pieces will go back to the opponent's pile. 6. Any piece removed from the board will be replaced by a wall tile, which can never be removed. 7. You're unable to skip a turn if you have an available move. 8. If a player can't make a move, they lose their turn. 9. Once neither player can make a move, the game ends. 10. The game can also end after an x number of turns agreed on by both players. 11. Whoever has the most pieces on their opponent's half of the board is the winner. I'll leave it right here for the time being, unless I discover something really broken.

Thanks for your interest that means a lot. Let me know what you think! In regards to your comment, you are correct the board is accidentally asymmetric. This was just a goof on my part. I didn’t realize haha. I address this around 14:20. The pnp files on boardgamegeek have been fixed.

Correct!

I've implemented a rule where the first player can only perform one action on their turn. I might implement a second rule that states promoting can NOT be performed on a player’s first turn. Moving and hitting the ball are advantageous because they bring you closer to the opponent’s end zone. Promoting costs an entire turn and the stone loops can be easily blocked if the opponent is well positioned. The alternate goals force players to focus on positioning and look for weaknesses. I don't see promoting as overpowered or a wise first move. I'd love to hear counterarguments. The first player gets an advantage of getting the ball moving in the right direction first and the second player gets the advantage of being able to take two actions. I’m still not convinced promoting is better than just taking a normal turn. Let me know if I didn’t entirely answer your question.

Thanks!

@@offearthgames Thank you! I'd happily buy this game. And if you could think of a way to make it work with more than two players, that would be totally awesome.

@@willhelpforfree It'll be up on thegamecrafter.com soon!

Yes, the rules will be uploaded soon. I'm also working on a redesign of the board right now will all original art. For now, this video should explain everything you need to play the game. Thanks for your interest and support!

Thanks for the kind words! More abstracts on the way and a card game next week :)

Great idea! I’m going to playtest the varied scoring. I’ll get back to you on how it goes. Thanks for the comment. Stayed tuned for more abstracts. I’ve got a new one coming out some time soon. I’d love to hear more about Olmecas.

Awesome! I realize it might not work as well unless there were more spaces beneath the initial goal line that were harder to get to similar to the rings on the side of the board. Could be different shade of color per score perhaps. Would love to tell more about Olmecas, though it is a medium to heavy euro and would be a bit much to divulge here😊

Curious how you went about making the components? They look fantastic btw. Look forward to seeing what else you come up with. Also would be down for a collab on anything if interested.

Send me an email! offearthgames@gmail.com

The asymmetry is a goof! I address it in the video. Going to prob redo this video later on. PnP files and a rules document will be uploaded soon to BGG.

Wow, thank you for saying so! Also, I’ll think about implementing your suggestions for future iterations of the game.

Restrictive! 4 x 4 hex grid. Download the game in the files section by going to the link in the description. Thanks for your interest!

sorry i see you have mentioned that ~ 14 minutes , what is the correct thing then 7 hexagon or 5 ?

Hey you can find the final version of the board here: boardgamegeek.com/filepage/254911/ka-board-pnp

@@offearthgames Thanks a lot

I’m sorry, I’m having trouble visualizing what you mean. Can you explain in more detail?

@@offearthgames So right now the more players around the ball the more spaces it can move. I was thinking if you had one player touch and move the ball one space and ends next to another of your player it can move one more space. I would probably be best to make passing an action as well. Hope that is clearerererrr. Great game btw

Haha yeah sorry about that. The pnp board on boardgamegeek.com is the correct board.

@@offearthgames I was thinking it was a balancing thing and the one with more on was always starting.

@ Interesting idea. To address balancing I was thinking about limiting the first player to only one action on their first turn.

I like this. I may make this change.

As of the current rules that is legal. Therefore don’t let yourself get into that kind of a situation. Thanks for your comment :)