Difference between revision 8 and current revision
Summary: Change 'Bits Required' to 'Equipment Required' to match GameTemplate
No diff available.Players | 1-99 |
Length | 15 minutes and up |
Equipment Required | one piecepack per player, an opaque bag, and a smooth, flat surface |
Designer | RANDM Axes Games (RonHaleEvans and Marty Hale-Evans) |
Version | 0.3.0 |
Version Date | 2003-03-09 |
License | originally GNU Free Documentation License, re-licensed CC BY-SA |
Easy Slider is the first game in a new piecepack genre: the "B.Y.O.P.", or "Bring Your Own Piecepack" game. It can be played solitaire, or with as many players as there are piecepacks available. It can even be played over the phone or via online chat.
Players agree on how many rounds of the game they will play. (Three is a good number for beginners.) On each round, a Caller is chosen. (Callers need not rotate.) The Caller creates a random layout of tiles and randomly designates a strict order in which the tiles must be placed. All players then try to slide the tiles on their boards one at a time into the proper positions. The player who does so the fastest over the specified number of rounds is the winner.
Easy Slider is based on the 15 Puzzle and was entered in the third piecepack game design contest, ChangingLandscapes. Mike Schoessow, the judge of the contest, wrote in a followup message to his contest winner announcement on the piecepack list:
The suggestions of Mike and his playtesters were incorporated into the next version of the rules.
Easy Slider is close enough to the classic 15-tile sliding puzzles to be called an adaptation, and it is a fantastic one indeed. Its use of the Piecepack components (tiles slide, pawns mark rows and coins with their number side up mark columns) is as elegant as it gets, it guarantees a faster and cleaner random setup than the original puzzles (at some point you must be able to remember the moves to scramble a puzzle and simply do them back) and it also allows the game to be scaled down (or even up if you add expansions or use the Packtet). I estimate the level of difficulty of Easy Slider for one single Piecepack roughly as similar to a 15 puzzle - there's more tiles to sort, but the four zero tiles and the gap don't have to be placed in a particular order.
I haven't tried to play the game in a competitive way against other players, but I can imagine it being an easy one to adjust and tinker with (such as Take It Easy!). To be honest, I don't feel any urge to try either: the solitaire game is already enough for me to highlight Easy Slider as one of the best available Piecepack adaptations, and also one of the best solitaires that can be played with a Piecepack.
CategoryGame SpaceConfigurationPatternCategory MechanicSlidingTilesCategory MechanicRectangularBoardCategory MechanicConstructPatternCategory MechanicMultipleBoardsCategory MechanicRandomBoardCategory