Trip&Traps

Overview

Trip&Traps (Trip-and-Traps) is a turn-based board game mixing bluff and strategy. Rules are simple but finding the best strategy to win can be very tricky!

Players can play against different level of AI or against real players connected to the game through the network.

Actions are made through simple mouse interactions. 

Note 1: For some reason, the browser version tends to significantly decrease the graphics quality. For a better experience, I encourage people to download an  executable version of the game.

Note 2: Players should carefully remember their password when logging in to play against humans since there is currently no automatic method to recover lost passwords. In any cases, for people who do not want to be identified or are not interested in keeping game statistics, there is an option to let them play as guests. 

Game Principle

The game features a merciless confrontation between two clans in the land of the rising sun. The players control pieces evolving on a board made of hexagonal tiles. The goal: safely bring back its most valuable characters at its camp before they are captured by the opponent. To this end, players will have to assess the characters behind the opponent's pieces whose identity is kept secret at the beginning of the game.

Rules

A detailed description of the rules is accessible by selecting the 'Rules' button directly from the main menu or, during the game, from the option panel at the top left corner of the screen. 

Future Developments

The game should be perfectly playable as it is. However, it is a first released version and I would obviously love to improve various aspects of the game if I have more time in the future. I detail below some of the extensions I have in mind.

Graphics and Sound Effects

The graphics and sound effects are currently relatively basics and I wish I could improve these aspects as well as let the player customise them according to their taste.

Player Features

I would love to offer new features such as a tutorial to learn the rules, a mechanism to store and replay the games' history, a game editor to build a given board configuration, etc.

Networking

A login system is proposed to allow players to record statistics about their past games. These infos are currently very basic. In the future, I would like to provide additional informations. The lobby interface is also still simple and I would like to propose more advanced options for players to help them connect with other players.

AI

There are currently three AI levels, players can play against. Even the best AI is moderately strong although it should be a bit challenging for a beginner. I am currently working on  more sophisticated  AI but it takes some time... As a side note, I believe this game which relies on partial information could be a great benchmark for evaluating AI based on Machine Learning methods.

Author's note

I am a big fan of board games and I invented some of them myself. Trip&Traps is one of these games I started to design years ago. Since I really enjoyed its mechanism, I thought it would be great to build a digital version of the game to help sharing it and  here we are! This is my first digital game, so please, be indulgent ;). In any cases, I would love to have your feedback about both the game mechanics and its digital implementation, but more important, I really hope you'll enjoy it!