Experimental Game Design

clee28

Poker for Kids

by | Oct 23, 2024 | ,

Materials:

  1. Two Decks of Uno Cards
    1. Keep the first one normal and take all action cards out of the second deck
      1. The first deck will from here on out be the “normal” deck
      2. The second deck will be the “family” deck
  2. Friends
  3. Poker Chips (If gambling, not recommended)

 

Rules:

  1. Played from 2-8 Players
  2. Know the rules of Texas Holdem, the only difference is the uno cards have action
  3. Take all skip cards out of the normal deck they have no value in this game
  4. The game begins like normal Texas Holdem, whoever the dealer is, will deal two cards to everyone from the normal deck
  5. After looking at there cards players may have a few options
    1. If they have a +2 they play it and draw two cards from the family deck
    2. If they have a +4 they play it and draw four cards from the deck
      1. It can then be kept and used as a wild (see below)
    3. If they have a reverse they may choose to switch hands with one other player after everyone has played their action cards
    4. If they have a wild, they may draw one card and keep the wild
      1. The wild card can now be played in conjunction with any card in order to change its color to whatever the player would like
      2. It can only be used on the cards in their hand
    5. If they have none of these cards they may keep their hand and play as normal
    6. Any cards action cards discarded should go into a discard pile specifically for the normal deck
  6. PLAYERS MAY HAVE NO MORE THAN 5 CARDS AT A TIME
    1. If a player ends up with 6 or more cards they must discard a card of their choosing into a discard pile for the deck that they got it from
  7. Then the first round of betting occurs
  8. From here on out the hand is played exactly like omaha poker except with 5 cards instead of 4

 

Artist Statement

 

When I debuted this game idea in class I said I chose it because poker is one of my favorite games and by all means this is true, but I also wanted to make something complicated. The game I made is fun by all means but there is no real reason to play it. People do not typically play a game like poker for the sake of enjoyment but usually because they enjoy the thrill of winning money. If you take the monetary aspect out of it the game itself is not fun because each hand loses all value. People do not want to play a game that takes poker and makes it more complicated because there is no point to that while betting. That is why when I played with my friends we tried playing with and without betting. While we thought the action card aspect made the game unnecessarily complicated while gambling, when playing without money we actually enjoyed it more than we would traditional poker. You see when playing poker without money there is no real skill involved because there is no way to keep score, however when playing with the uno cards, there is skill depending on your use of action cards to make hands and deciding what cards to keep and which to drop. I will say while it is better than classic poker without gambling in general we all enjoyed classic poker with gambling more. 

I did think it was interesting to combine two things that would not typically go together. Poker is typically seen as a game for adults. In most states including Massachusetts you have to be 21 to even step foot inside of a casino. Uno however, while being enjoyed by people of all ages, is typically regarded and marketed as a kids game. Putting the two juxtaposing games together felt like something Dada might do. Similar to taking the Mona Lisa and drawing a mustache on it, I took a serious game like poker and added a color and a childish aspect to it. 

This game involved rounds and rounds of play testing and I do not think it is possible to make it better than either of the originals however it is enjoyable nonetheless, so why I failed I do not regret the idea.

To Jason

by | Sep 27, 2024 |

Score

Find A Piece of Papyrus and a Quill with ink

Using the Quill and ink make 25 dots on the paper

Number the dots randomly 1-25

In order connect the dots starting with 1

Ask a Friend If They Like it

If No:

Rip up the Papyrus

If yes:

Wait until their birthday, frame it, wrap it, and gift it to them

Original Score

There is actually very little reason to mention my original score as it had nothing to do with my final score but I thought it was also a good idea. The idea behind it was that very basic instructions would tell you how to play a certain chord on the guitar. The reason I liked this idea so much was because if I wanted to I could continue to make the score go further and further and get harder and harder by introducing new chords and strumming patterns. In short it would have become a very basic instruction guide on how to play the guitar. I scrapped this because no matter how specific and basic I got with the instructions to the score I was somewhat worried that without someone showing you how to play an instrument through a video or in person it can be hard. I figured without some sort of model there was a good chance that in practice the score did not succeed.

Final Score

This score was designed with Yoko Ono in mind. I liked the somewhat sadistic way she had extremely negative outcomes in many of her scores, however some of them were just too depressing for me (I have no desire to have the reader shoot through 100 panes of glass and send a map of each pane once a day to someone who hurt them). So I gave it a dual ending where my score can end positively or negatively. She also gave me the idea to use random objects in my piece which is why I specifically used the papyrus and quill instead of pen and paper, just to make it more fun. However I had two other sources of inspiration. It was my roommate’s birthday over the weekend. While we never do anything big for each other we always get each other small gifts (take them out to dinner, golfing, etc.). This year we did end up going golfing, but I thought that it would be interesting to dedicate this artwork to finding his next birthday gift. This leads me to my second source of inspiration. Connect the dots is a trivial and simplistic way of drawing. It is something that preschool children enjoy because turning a seemingly random pattern of dots into a picture is cool at that age. Last week I saw one of these books at CVS and I thought what if you take a seemingly random series of dots and turn it into something even more sporadic and crazy. Combining this and my minimal desire to go out and buy birthday gifts for people and you get my score. Originally called “Bad Friend” has now been retitled “To Jason.”