Sabotage
Description
Sabotage is a modification of the popular solitary card game, Pyramids. In this modification, you play against an opponent and try to take the center card before your opponent by blocking their moves and clearing your half.
This game was created for my 2008 game design class, Poetics of Gameplay, taught by Heather Kelley, as an assignment to modify a card game.
This game is meant for 2 players. It was created as a collaboration with Liz Liu.
Design/Concept
Sabotage took the game Pyramids and modded it to a completely different experience. You still are attempting to clear a pyramid to reach the top card, but now, you have an opponent to consider. Each time your opponent opens a facedown card, he can place a card on your pyramid making it harder for your to clear yours. The same works when you open a card as well.
While it seems like such gameplay could easily unbalance the game, the randomization of the cards in the draw pile made it so it was easy for someone losing to quickly regain ground and retaliate on his or her opponent.
The concept behind the game looked to the competitive relationship of trying to get ahead. In order to reach "the top" of the tower, you have to make your opponent go lower. Regardless of whether you are sympathetic to your opponent, you have to lay down that card, but whether you lay that card in a disadvantageous place or relatively harmless place on the opponent's pyramid is up to you. What I observed in playtests was that people would, towards the beginning of the game, place cards in harmless places, but as both sides got closer to the center, the players were far more willing to put their opponent at a disadvantage to win.
