Scramble (Board game)

Theme: Word based game that uses letters as a scoring system.

Primary Mechanic: Arranging the letters in the player’s rack to place on the board for the largest sum of points possible. This can be done by placing letter tiles on spaces for Double Letters (DL), Triple Letters(TL), Double Words (DW), and Triple Words (TW).

Supporting Mechanic(s): Players can Challenge each other if they believe a word is not real, in which case the opponent does not receive points if the word does not exist. Also, in some games players use a clock to determine how long a player has to make a move.

Dynamic: Combining the previous player’s words to make a new word that will give a large sum of points while preventing the next player from making a new word that will give lots of points

Goal(s): Be the player with the most points when the game ends.

Was it fun and briefly why/why not?: The game was fun, mostly because I had the chance to look up words I never knew existed. My opponent would play a word and I was certain it was wrong until we used a dictionary. Even if I am wrong about the authenticity of a word, I still appreciate learning a new word.

What is one thing you would change to increase the fun factor?: Sometimes I had to make decisions whether to use a DW or TL, which was an interesting element of strategy. I think this should be expanded into subtractive points, in which players can place words on TL, TW, DL, and DW spots and cause other player’s to lose points. Subtractive tiles would function the same as regular tiles, but would add a new sense of strategy. For example, is it smarter to add points to your score or cause an opponent to lose 20 points if he is 60 points ahead of you? Depending on what letter tiles are left or what special tiles are near this decision could be crucial.