Talk:Kaeru

Rules Questions

• Q: After the setup, do frogs ever land in the space between lilypads? - Cerulean 19:36, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

• A: No, they keep jumping on the waterlilies. I made them start there so that there wouldn't be a pile of frogs on one waterlily to begin the game, and not too much overlap with the starting frogs.

• Q: Can a frog jump fewer spaces than its pip count? Must it move its full distance? - Cerulean 19:36, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

• A: No, a frog always moves its full distance.

Thanks a lot for trying my game! As I said on the Icehouse list weeks ago, I wanted to try adding event cards in the stacks, to add some variation to the basic moves. As it is, I think a full game is too boring, with no real challenge. I didn't get to try this out, however, for lack of motivation and motivated partner. I tried using seven stacks instead of five, though, which didn't really improve the game (but it could be used to avoid the overlap in the beginning, with frogs starting on two adjacent waterlilies. The players would then choose which order they pile their frogs in). If you have any idea to improve this game, I welcome all contributions :)

The narrow decision tree is what gives Kaeru its lightness. At most I have three turn options, one for each frog. In my learning game, there were several times where both my opponent and I only had one move. Kaeru was on autopilot! Anything that would increase the number of turn options would add to the depth and weight of your design. (Compare Kaeru's three branch tree to that of Dectana, where you have dozens of possible turn options every time.) - Cerulean 17:39, 19 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice and giving me hope for Kaeru! I'll remember that and try to put it to good use (in Kaeru and future games). Then, allowing the frogs to move less than their pip count would be a good first step, I guess. It could also help to let them turn back and go the other way around... I'll try all that as soon as I can.

This might be what the Action Cards do. leave them shuffled in the deck, and when they appear, a fFrog may pick them up and keep it. It's like some sort of super-bug or something. =) The player may choose to hold on to the action cards as long as they want. The player may choose to play an action card to move in some non-standard way. Move Backwards, Move Partial, maybe there's other things to do. Perhap one special action card lets the fFrog jump to an exclusive 6th lily-pad in the middle, maybe. This way, the player might choose to use an action card now, or save it till later. That opens up more choices. Skotte 12:58, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

I like the current frightened prey and unknown tastes "variants" to the extent that I'd make them standard, and give "anticipated prey" and "obvious appetites" as variants, albeit perhaps "training" variants for beginning players.

I'm not so keen on the prospect of including the Action cards, or on the idea of partial moves. For varying frog direction, I like the idea that frogs keep going in their original direction (indicated by the pointing pyramid) unless/until they stack (whether they land or are landed on). When setting off from the upright position, they could then choose their direction of movement. (This would then provide a further incentive for landing on other frogs: an opportunity to change direction.)

Seven lily pads might be good, although it would slightly sacrifice one of the features I like: the relatively small footprint for an IceQuarius game. Also, the game seems to make more sense visually if the lily pad stacks are arranged radially around the shared goal, instead of the way they are shown in the infobox image. --Carthoris 18:03, 23 February 2012 (UTC)