11/9 board games

This week in class, my group and I played a mining game made by Disney I believe (the name of it slips my memory). It took my group about half of our allotted time to play to figure it out. Basically, You have 2-4 players who have mine carts and trains. The trains are simply to track your points on a trail at the top of the board. The cart is your main player item. You spin a mountain that releases marbles three times, look at four of your 8 cards and decide what you want to do. There is water, ore, and gold marbles. You ca swap the gold or ore once you finish a lap of the main trail with your cart for either points on the board or for upgrades that help you score more points down the line. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins. I got second but could've perhaps won by the end of the game lol. Soren Johnson gave a talk where he argued board games are defined by their transparency. The game we played was fairly straight-forward, but alot of the cards had to be understood more in depth by re-reading the instructions because they were not labeled with specific instructions on them. Outside of that, the game was pretty straight forward and fun at the end. Johnson also argues that rules can be a language. I understood this as each game and its rules are in its own language for that game. For example, if the game is mythical, some cards might have fantasy-based playing cards that have to be read to understand, or just the rules/instructions of the game in general. Our game wasn't that crazy when it came to that idea, but alot of the cards were very specific. He also says board games have a very specific, transparent, and consistent grammar about them. Our game and its cards and rules were very specific to the mining theme of the 1800's. Each card made sense for the game and it was very specific.