Christmas card games

I’m not going to write much about Christmas this year. Last year I wrote several posts about Christmas, including pictures of our tree, but this year I will write, at best, little glimpses into our activities.

My parents, a friend and I played some games of cards after Christmas lunch yesterday. First we played a game of Ups and Downs, which I won. Then we played a game of Oh Hell, which I also won. Then we played half a game of Donkey, which I certainly wouldn’t have lost (two players had lost four hands each when the game was terminated, whereas I had only lost one).

I have extensively edited the descriptions of the above games on this blog, which can be found by following the above links. If you’ve read my descriptions before, you’ll now find them clearer and more correct, and if not, there is no better time for you to do so.

The scores for yesterday’s game of Oh Hell follow. There is a paragraph giving the total number of bids for each hand, and then for each player, a paragraph of their bids and scores.

Online experiential software

Today’s theme: recommendations of websites where you can download software to satisfy your intellectual curiosity and imagination, and let you experience some aspect of reality.

Elemental

Recently, I invented a new solitaire card game, which I have named “Elemental”. I’ve uploaded the rules in .pdf format, and I’ve also created a slideshow-like tutorial for people who prefer a gentler, slower explanation.

[Update: In October (whilst on a houseboat) I invented an improved version of the game. The official rules have now been updated to cover both the original and revised versions, but the tutorial still describes only the original.]

Favourite eighties computer game

Eighties computer game nostalgia. Let’s have some.

You can find lots of old games at the Home of the Underdogs. To play them, you will generally need a copy of DOSBox, which I have recommended before.

For people who hoard old games

Here are some add-ons that I created (in all cases more than a decade ago) for old DOS games. Feel free to do with them whatever you will.

• If anyone still has a copy of the original 1992 version of The Incredible Machine by Sierra, then Two Up, Two Down is a freeform machine I once designed for it. I don’t know whether old machines are compatible with more recent versions of the game, as I haven’t had any version of the game on my computer for years.
• If you’ve got Stunts by Broderbund, here’s a fast track (you’ll want to use the fastest car available, especially for the … uh … big jump) and a complete track (by which I mean every obstacle available in the game is represented).
• If you’ve got Doom II by ID Software, here is a seven-level WAD file designed in the nineties by a friend and me (see the end of this post for some playing tips).

Counterweight

Some of my previous posts (notably this one and this one) have mentioned card games that I invented. I’d now like to talk more about my two-player game Counterweight.

I got the idea for Counterweight while browsing fishing games such as Chinese Ten on pagat.com and pondering whether they could be crossed with Ups and Downs. The heritage of both games can be seen in Counterweight, but the former only dimly: Chinese Ten is not a parent of Counterweight so much as a … baby-sitter or something, I suppose. It helped to spark off the idea, but made little direct contribution. The rules of Counterweight are mostly not drawn from any prior source.

Dumbo’s Chess

Among the various things in the book, “The Coodabeen Champions take a Good Hard Look at Australia” (Copyright 1992 Coodabeen Champions Pty Ltd, published Penguin Australia) are the rules for a game called Dumbo’s Chess.

DUMBO’S CHESS

(two players)

Equipment: 1 cheapo plastic chess set + 1 ping pong ball

The chess set is placed in the middle of a room, set up as for a normal game. The two players stand on opposite sides of the room and throw the ping pong ball at the chess board. The first player to have all their pieces knocked over loses.

Note that unlike regular chess, you have to knock down all the other player’s pieces, not just the king.

I have played this game in Real Life, but the most memorable tournament took place via email with Marian Rosenberg in 1998.

(I’ve had the transcript on my website for some years, but getting a blog is like getting a new chest of drawers - sometimes it’s nice to be able to redistribute things into it.)

Messing about in QBASIC

Remember QBASIC, the Microsoft BASIC interpreter bundled with DOS back before Win95? I’ve still got it on my WinXP machine, having copied it over from previous computers. It only takes up about 300K, occasionally comes in useful, and lets me keep some old stuff that I wrote before I started university.

I’d like to share two of my old QBASIC programs now: a short one and a long one.

Suitmatch

In an earlier post, I made the following comments about Suitmatch, a card game I once invented.

I was quite young when I invented Suitmatch, and (although I think the underlying concept is sound), I would advise that anyone wishing to give it a go should bear in mind that it was invented by a child (teenager, really, but the point stands).

I am now going to elaborate on those comments.

Playing card websites

Remember the domino game Peaks & Pits which I invented and blogged about in October?

Well, it’s now been added to the index of invented games on John McLeod’s website. The one-sentence blurbs that John writes for each game are, I think, always excellent; his summary of Peaks and Pits reads: ‘A domino game by Adrian Morgan in which players aim to make “slopes” - playing tiles so that the numbers progress either upwards or downwards - changes of direction are penalised‘.