The Path

The Path

 The Functional apace in this game is the 25 tiles you see in the picture above. These tiles create a 5 by 5 grid (of the ones with just lines) with the triangle and circle tiles (start and finish) at opposite sides fo the game board. These tiles are all all 2 dimensional continuous spaces in which a token can be placed, and they each have a nested path within them that the token is specifically placed on as well. 

You do not place anything on a "vertex" or "line" of this grid, just within the boundaries of the face of the tile can anything be placed. 

The sub paths (and the tiles they are on) can be translated across the board to "swap" the tile, or rotated to create a continuous path of wither color from one corner of the board to the other. The position of the tiles, and the rotation of them is the core mechanic in the game.The boundaries would be the 5 by 5 square, and the start and finish tiles, the player's token cannot venture outside of the tile space , and the shape of the board must remain consistant when swapping tiles across it. 

The actual objects in the game are your starter token (the dice in the picture) some kind of counter (two per player), and I even consider the game board to be an object. The Dice/player tokens have a move attribute where as long as a continuous path of it's color exists, the token may travel as far down that path as possible. The two other states could be the starting(within the tile with a circle) , and middle/turning back positions (when it is in the tile with a triangle). The token cannot be taken/moved/ influenced by anyone, and it's movement is only measured by the orientation of the tiles. As for counters, they mark only two tiles that you have swapped, and remain unlovable until the beginning of you next turn. I believe the tiles are vital objects, because even though they are the game board, they have to be constantly modified to create a path and complete the game, and are only frozen if your token is on it, or a counter is placed on it after a swap/translation. 

The only state that your opponent is aware of is the board's tiles and their orientation/freezes from a counter, and the location of your token on the game board. All other information like which move you plan to make is known only by each individual player. In this way it is much like chess, because revealing your intensions to the other player would cause you to loose the game.  

The operative actions in this game are : translation, rotation, move, and freeze. To reiterate, you can move your token, swap pieces on the board to create a path, rotate tiles (with or without your token in it), and freeze tiles from being used for one turn. In my experience playing this game, the resulting actions are dependent on the emotions of the players. If two players are agressive they can try to purposely freeze a needed tile for their opponent, but in my case, our resultant actions were parallel. We were more concerned with our pieces to waste a turn just to spite each other. In this game, I have found the minimalism to be refreshing. Even though you do not have many actions, it is easy to emerge yourself within the strategy of the game, rather than the game have a narrative. The fact that is it one strategy vs. another makes the game much more personal because there is a sense of pride on the line, and loosing that is powerful enough to make sure you see this game through to the end. 

The Goal of the game is to make it from the circle (of your color) to the triangle (of your color) and back to the circle. There is no points, or bonuses, it it just a simple race puzzle game. This is posible because the game board is small, where it becomes complicated is where there is a frozen tile from you opponent that you currently need to complete your path. 

Not only are the rules conveniently printable in small cards, they have no holes I can see that would cause for either a temporary or permanent house rule. This is only possible because of the simplicity of the game. There are three different ways to play the game, you can put the tiles face down, randomly

place the tiles face up, or you can strategically place the tiles face up to form the board, but the decision of the start has to be agreed upon by the two players. So far the rules have been solid, and well written. 

The skill required to play this game is all about thinking ahead and being able to use your imagination to visualize the general direction you would like to pursue.

Chance is not a heavy factor in the game. You lay down the initial tiles in a random order, so you could get lucky and a path could quite literally appear in front of you, but seeing as you can rotate tiles and move them, then no matter how random the game board is, it feels like the player has the most control in this game, and very little is left to chance.   

I really enjoyed this game! Even though there was not a lot of hype/energy created from playing it, I still got a good since of satisfaction and happiness from it. It was a good challenge, and I can say that in this case it was all we needed to have a good time.