The Oldest Board Game

Care to know what is the oldest board game still being played? The answer is quite an interesting game indeed.

One's first guess might be Senet, the Egyptian game. However, not only are the official rules for this game unknown, but it is not commonly played, nor is it a very popular or well known game. It is the oldest known board game, however.

The true answer is Go, which began in China over 25 centuries ago. Go is a game played with black and white colored stones on a 19 by 19 grid. The stones are placed on the points of the grid, rather than inside the spaces, like in Chess. Black always goes first, and the players take turns placing a single stone of their color anywhere on the board. The object is to capture or surround as much territory (area of the game board) as possible. Capturing an opponent's stones is done by completely surrounding them with your own stones.

Go is one of the most fascinating games that has ever been invented, and is very fun to play, even for beginners. There is a ranking system as well. It ranges from 30 kyu down to 1 kyu. A player with a rank of 20 kyu is a casual player or beginner, where a 10 kyu is an intermediate player. After attaining the rank of 1 kyu, a player steps up the the rank of 1 dan, and is considered a professional. At that point, the ranks go from 1 dan up to 9 dan. What I find most interesting about Go is that computers cannot be programmed intelligently enough to beat the pros, unlike Chess. Typical "gobots" will play at about the 15 kyu level, with some variation. Even fairly skilled amateurs have no trouble defeating the best computer programs.

Tower Defense (TD) Games

Another fascinating and very strategic type of game is the tower defense game, also known as TD. Tower defense games involve a number of available towers or turrets that the player can build, and a path that monsters (usually called creeps) follow to try and make it past your defenses. Building the towers in the right spots consists of most of the strategy, although each TD game may have unique elements that add other types of strategy to the mix (such as tower upgrades vs. building new towers, different types of upgrades, or technology trees). Some of the best games out of this series include:

Ant Buster
VR Defender
Flash Element TD (1 and 2)
Bloons TD (1, 2, and 3)
Temple Guardian
Gem Craft (highly recommended!)
Gem Craft chapter Zero (even better)
Garden Defense (commercial game from Game House, but worth buying)

RTS Games

Many people talk about and play "RTS" games. But what is an RTS game, you ask?

RTS stands for Real-Time Strategy. This includes games like Age of Empires, Red Alert, and Starcraft. The "real time" part means that the game is not played in turns, but rather moving around constantly on a battlefield, so you can attack as fast as possible, and your opponents can do the same. This is opposed to "turn-based" games (such as Fire Emblem and Advance Wars), which allow you and your opponents to take turns attacking so that things are more "fair"; however, some feel that real time games are more realistic and add an intuitive "on-the-fly" element to strategic gaming. Strategy games in general differ from puzzles or other similar games in that they require a lot of in-depth thinking about how the units or characters move about and what types of units they work better against. Before getting into RTS games, it is helpful to know what they are. If you like to think and plan attacks, then RTS games, or strategy games in general, are for you.

Nomic Games

For those of you who don't know, there is a type of game out there that is steadily increasing in popularity, called "nomic" games. Nomic games are games that involve changing the rules of the game as part of the game itself--that is, a game in which changing the rules is a move or action. Generally, nomic games tend to lead to evolving "dynasties" in which the rules remain relatively stable, and either someone wins, or the rules change drastically, preventing someone from winning, and in either case beginning a new dynasty. Sometimes nomic games can go on forever without anyone winning, and often continue seamlessly to a new dynasty when someone does win. There are even some nomic games played as blogs or by email. The general rules of a nomic game involve getting a "vote" to change the rules, players entering the game or dying (leaving), and the possibility to earn points towards winning the game, or ways to convert points into other substances. Now there's only one thing left to do--get out there and find one that you like! Or better yet, make your own.

Here are a couple of links to some good sites for getting into nomic games:

www.nomic.net
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~malcolmr/nomic/

Do you have a taste for nomic games? Try one out and see if you like it. It might just become your favorite game genre!

Green Lightning Software is currently developing an initial rule set for a nomic game called "Romic Computer Systems". When it is finished, I will post it here, so check back often.

Hyperblob

Green Lightning Software has just released a new game! It's a puzzle game involving a small white blob that must escape rooms by moving around and hitting objects within the room. It's completely free, so if you're into puzzle games, you might want to check it out by clicking here.

Welcome To Game World Avenue

Welcome, all, to the newest gaming blog on the net. Here at Game World Avenue, you can find all manner of new and fun games to play, from any genre you can imagine. Card games, PC games, and whatever else you might like, will all be here. It doesn't matter what you want. If you want game rules or game downloads, or even information about games, don't worry--we've got it all. Thanks to Green Lightning Software, there will be regular additions to this blog containing links, game rules, game downloads, and other info about gaming. So welcome, and do enjoy yourself while strolling down Game World Avenue.

Sincerely, Cybermouse