The recent lack of new interesting videogames (at least for me, I hope) gave me a little more time to spend to the other side of gaming... that I don't know at all but still I've ever found interesting: tabletop games.

From the players and the makers point of view I think that tabletop games are now what videogames will probably be in the future. They are both interactive entertainment heavily based on cleverly crafted mechanics but, despite their analog limits, tabletop games have a long history behind. And we're not talking about the Space Invaders to Virtual Reality range of decades. We're talking about the thousand of years between the earliest Egyptian board games from 3500 BC and right now.

Board games like the Game of the Goose (1574) are so old and seminal that the original version and its creator identity has been lost in time and still anybody played at least a round on know its basic rules nowadays. Monopoly (1935) is even an adult game about buying and trading properties that we mostly played when we were kids.

Modern card games are part of the tabletop games family - and the only ones I know are the classic (and never played) Magic: The Gathering (1993) and the nice Android: Netrunner (2012) - but the Poker game (~1800) in US and the ubiquitous Scopa (~1700) here in Italy are still tabletop games, but knowing the rules and playing the game is so deeply interwined with our modern culture that are just called games by most of the people.

Yeah. Okay. Quit philosophizing.

What truly fascinates me are board games and how some compelling, engaging and clever gameplay mechanics are implemented with just cardboard, card decks and dices - and how these features are implemented in whole different ways from game to game. Let's take something common in many of them, like keeping the flow of time and how it's obtained in the few board games I own.

In Dragonquest (1985) the players have to explore a dungeon within a day and a sun-shaped piece is moved on a timeline from day to night every round. That's a quite obvious turn counter and turn-based strategy videogames works quite the same.

But in Mice & Mystics (2012), a story-based cooperative RPG, the flow of the time is decided by the attack or defense dice rolls of the enemies. So it randomly but inexorably flows every battle, so you've to manage the flow of time planning your moves in the most efficient way possible. In a quite stretched comparison, you've to apply quite the same strategies you use in the videogame Superhot (2013).

And in Welcome Back to the Dungeon (2016) the time is even still until all the players except one give up on exploring the dungeon the same players secretely filled with monsters. Awesome!

See? Board games are truly a whole world to explore.

Plot!

Tetrafighter is a (quite unoriginal) card game in which two players, red and blue, fight each other trying to own most of the cards on the table.
Every card has a different attack value on each side, explained by the crossing numbers on the top left of every card. Players alternately places one of the hand cards on the grid: when an opponent's adjacent card has a lower attack value on the matching side, the opponent card is considered owned.
Once the grid is filled the player who owns the most wins.
This version of the game supports game elements effects (on the top right of some cards) and randomly picks a difficulty level and a set of home rules every match. If you win, you can add one of the opponent cards to your own collection! Gotta catch... all the cards!

On the deck building screen use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving the cursor and move it out of the grid with for switching page. Press the B BUTTON for moving the card selector and the A BUTTON for swapping the cards from your collection to your next hand. Press the A BUTTON when the card selector is on the PLAY! card for starting a new match.
On the match screen use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving the cursor, the B BUTTON for moving the card selector and the A BUTTON to play a card.
On the reward screen use UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT for moving the cursor and the A BUTTON for selecting your new card. Select the SKIP card for giving up your reward!

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