Talk:Chain Reaction

Of particular interest to me, though I am sure there are plenty of other points to consider, are:

1) Placement of new black holes: The design process for the game started out with an intention to let the board change during play by using the 'little black squares' you can get with the Looney Labs Volcano board (I have a 6x6 one). As ever, the game took on a life of its own, and this addition of new black holes is all that is left of that intention. It seems to be necessary to make it easier to capture particles towards the end of the game, when many of the heavyweight (i.e. 3-pip) particles have been captured, so it is harder to cause atoms to decay. But I would like your opinions as to how well that works, whether the point they cut in is about right, and so on.

2) Particle ejection: I have played with various mechanics for this, before I ended up with the current arrangement where the player selects the destination of the first ejected particle, and the rest follow in clockwise order. I want the particles to go to as many of the adjacent atoms as possible, so more fixed arrangements where each particle type go in a specific direction seemed not to work. I toyed with the player having to roll a die to show where the ejected particles would go, and with fixing a starting direction for the turn as a whole so the first ejected particle always goes in that direction. So I guess I would like feedback on whether I have made it too easy to drive where the ejected particles go, and thus to get the one(s) you want onto black hole squares. If so, suggestions for improvements would be welcome.

I also considered allowing some ejections to be on the diagonal, but failed to come up with a working method.

3) Wrap-around board: I did go through an iteration where particles ejected off the board were put back in the pool for new particles for later turns. This made the game last longer, and made the ability to be able to start a chain reaction (and to not leave such a possibility for the next player) critical, so I think that I had to drop it. I have also considered making such particles remain in the cell they started from. Are you comfortable with the wrap-around?

4) Scoring is a direct copy of Volcano - which seems to work to me. Do you think I should have done something different? ((And if so, what?)).

5) Game end Game end is the simple "when the particles run out", though this tends to make the last few moves rather anti-climatic, especially when all the players' carefully hoarded 3-pip particles have been used up. Do you think that I need to find another game end condition (perhaps, again, similar to volcano)?

Your thoughts are welcome.