Hello,

I would like to suggest two from the series of games, that used to be available on the old gaming platform of the communication app called ICQ, when it was in its best years. Later the app was bought by Russians and the game servers were shut down (not sure which happened first), so nowdays the app does not include these games anymore.

The first game is called slide-a-lama. It's a game for 2 players. It is played on a vertical board with the size of 5x5 blocks that contains blocks with various symbols.

At each turn, you get a block with a random symbol, which you need to put somewhere on the board - you can place the block into any row from either side, as well as to any column from the top, you cannot put anything from the bottom nor somewhere in the middle.

If there was any block at the place where you put yours, it's pushed further to the next slot and so on. If the row is full, the last block is pushed out of the vertical board and is thus removed. The same applies for the columns, just that the block at the bottom breaks instead. Also, in this game gravity works similarly as in connect 4, so if there are 2 blocks in a column and you decide to insert yours in that column from the top, it will fall to the 3rd row from the bottom.

Your goal is to have at least 3 of the same symbol next to each other in either one row or one column (diagonals do not count). Once that happens, these blocks explode and disappear from the board, making all the blocks above them to fall, and you get score points corresponding to the symbol. It's also possible to make combos - either if you do more than 3 symbols (usually 4, but even 5 may be possible), or if it happens that more than one row/column of 3 symbols happens at once, or later due to the shift of the falling blocks.

Then, after your turn it's the turn of your opponent, who can do exactly the same - either try to make 3 symbols himself, or prevent you from getting them in the next turn, which means you can see the upcoming 3 blocks for next turns, including the turn that's already happening, so while you are playing, you can see the block your opponent is going to get, as well as block you will get in the next turn, which allows some strategy. Also, unlike some other games, this game starts with full board with randomly generated blocks.

Scoring:
The basic score for making 3 blocks in one row/column:
Bell - 10 points
Banana - 20 points
Plum - 30 points
Pear - 40 points
Cherry - 70 points
Bar - 100 points
Seven - 150 points
Of course the symbols can be pretty much anything, as long as it's known in advance which symbols give which score.

Combos:
Making four of one symbol gives double of the score.
Making five gives triple of the score.
Making two times 3 symbols gives standard score for the first ones and double score for the second and so on.

If two different symbols appear to get 3 or more symbols at the same time, one of those explodes first, but I am not sure, what exactly determines, which ones will be first - it appears it might be the one located more to the top or left, which makes at least partially sense - if the bottom one was first, the combination above it could be destroyed.

There is no set score limit for winning. Instead, you need to achieve certain score difference between your score and the score of your opponent. In the original version there are 10 llamas, at the beginning each player has 5, but as the game advances, the llamas move to the player with higher score. It appears that you need to have more than ~ 300 score points difference to convince all the llamas to move to your team, but having exactly 300 points difference was not enough yet.

This should be all for the original version. There also used to be poker version, which used standard cards as blocks and scoring was based on achieving poker combinations in rows/columns, but I never really understood this one (maybe because I never understood poker), yet it might be interesting for some people.

The second game I'd like to suggest is called RPS - from Rock Paper Scissors, but it's not a simple boring game at all. This game is rather a bit similar to games like chess. It's also a game for 2 people and it's played on a board with 6 rows and 7 columns.

At the beginning, each player has two rows of characters (ninjas), so 14 + 14, while the middle two rows remain empty for now. At the beginning of the game, both players decide where to place two special characters - flag and trap. These 2 special characters are the only ones, which aren't able to move at all. The goal of the game is to get the opponent's flag while protecting yours, so this character should be placed carefully.

The remaining 12 ninjas then get either a rock, a paper or scissors. There are always 4 of each and they were distributed randomly, but there was also a button to redistribute these, until the results were satisfactory. And then it's time to begin the fun! You don't know which of your opponent's ninjas are which and the same applies for your opponent.

Each turn a player can move one of his ninjas (except for the 2 special ones) by one square in any direction (forth, back, left or right, diagonals are not possible). If there is an opponent's ninja at the desired square, the "weapons" are revealed, and the battle begins according to the rock-paper-scissors rule - scissors cut paper, paper wraps rock and throws it away and rock break the scissors. The defeated ninja then disappears, and if the attacker won, he moves to the square of the defeated ninja.

If two ninjas with the same weapon meet, both players need to select a new weapon until there is a winner. Also the winning ninja keeps the last weapon he used to beat the opponent's ninja, which is the only way a ninja can change his weapon during the game. Also, by default only the ninjas, who already used their weapons, have them visible to opponent, yet there was also an option to hide weapons after duels and then you had to remember.

Different actions are taken when you attack one of the two opponent's special characters (or vice versa). If you attack the ninja with the flag, you take the flag and win the round. On the other hand, if you attack the opponent's trap character, your ninja falls inside the trap. The trap is also the only character, which is never labeled as trap for your enemy, even if a ninja has already fell in, so you have to remember.

This is how the game works. And now it's up to you, which strategy you will choose. Will you use your trap to protect your flag? Or will you just use it as a decoy?

Both games also included quite some sound, as well as graphical effects, as can be found in many videos on youtube. The replica of slide-a-lama (only the version with fruits tho) is currently available online, yet it's not accessible for blind people, so I cannot play it with my blind friends. As for RPS, there currently doesn't appear to be any playable version (aside from some android apps full of adds) and I kind of miss this game, since it used to be fun.

I think it would be nice if one or both of these games could be introduced in the future, as they are interesting and fun to play, but of course it depends on the developer's preferences and time possibilities.

I really like that second game, that rock, paper, scissors game with a twist. By the sound of it, the game, although runs with simple rules, offers the players the freedom to be tactical in their play. It's quite fun and the game may give many variations, such as making the trap a bomb, thus killing all the characters around it, or redesigning the board with terrain features like no character with paper weapon can step on this square etc. I hope the playroom will consider to implement the game. I'll like to support this suggestion.

Hello,

The first game looks a lot like Magic Blocks. It looks interesting, but I don't understand well all the rules. If I decide to implement it, I will need to ask for details.

The ninja RPS game looks quite fun, too. I should note that idea somewhere. It makes me think about another game called Strategos that has also been proposed.

Thank you very much for these two propositions.

I did suggest stratego as a possible game a while ago. There are some similarities with the Ninja game such as hiding a flag and having bombs instead of a trap. My issue with stratego was that players needed to place their tokens at the start and with 40 tokens, that would take a lot of time unless the computer selected where the tokens were placed randomly if people wanted to do that. With the ninja game you would only need to change 2 tokens. People manage placing a few ships with battleships so it could work.