#covirus

This is a really bad photo of the first test for the game. You may or may not be able to notice there are two examples of a double 1 dice throw. The top two lines are the result of two early double 6. Oh, and I won!

Have you consumed countless works of fiction depicting a massive disaster menacing all of humanity? Did you ever think you will ever live inside such a story? Isn’t all of this really weird to you?

Is the world ending? No? Yeah, but is society collapsing? What? Not more than usual? I see... But capitalism is definitely kicking the bucket right? Right? Oh... Well at least we have a virus spreading globally, so we are all isolated in our homes with nothing but our infinite minds and an infinite internet of things to do.

And sure, the pandemic is a sad, horrifying thing that is spreading suffering everywhere. The situation is dire for countless people and the more vulnerable among us are the ones that risk the most. We must all protect us and others, trust in the power of science and community and just get through it.

But we are humans! We adapt, we fight, we find solutions! And we laugh in the face of death, and find the ridiculous in the tragic. We make memes out of indescribable pain. We still listen to music when bombs fall on our cities. We make love in stolen moments during an uprising. And last but not least we make and play games.

So here is a little game I devised so that you, your grandparents and your kids can pass the time in this weird time we are all living in. Maybe in a month it will be entirely useless. Maybe it will take a year or more for a cure and the return to normalcy. In the meantime we can have some fun or at least waste some time together.

The game is called Covirus and is and forever will be free. After all we can all agree that nobody should pay anything for a cure to coronavirus when we will find it, so why should there be money in a single page of rules for a silly time-waster?

It’s also untested and brand new, but you can participate in its development by sending me feedback and suggestions. Please be kind, I never did anything like this and am very awkward with people. Let’s call the current version of the rules “Alpha 0.1″, then if there will be any improvements I will update this blog.

Without further ado, here are the rules:

1. Have fun together and safely! If you have reason to isolate yourself completely you can still play with others through a videocall or similar methods. Kinda like chess wonks exchanging messages with their moves and gloating underwhelmingly when they win.

2. You need:

A piece of paper, preferably of the squared kind. A whiteboard can do if you're willing to draw the playfield squares.

A couple of differently colored pencils, pens or markers. Pencils have an obvious advantage: you can erase mistakes.

A couple of six-sided dice. You can steal them from a monopoly box. Eat the rich! Or you can kinda make some folding and gluing paper or something. Or you can download a dice roller for roleplaying games. Whatever works for you!

A reason to be stuck playing this game instead of going out to eat pizza and hug someone cute. Like a pandemic. Or a family reunion. It's gonna be fine. No, You Are Wrong! ITSNOTONFIRE!!! ... Just play the game will ya?

3. It's a two player game and it's played on a 20 by 40 squares field. Player 1 starts from one of the shorter sides and Player 2 from the other.

4. Each player rolls a die to determine order of play. Whoever gets the highest number gets to start first (and be the virus) and the other player follows (and is the cure). Don't be mean to people that are the virus or have the virus. Just don't be mean generally. Really...

5. You play in turns and you throw the dice. The numbers that come out of the throw determine what you do according to the following list:

Any combination of non identical numbers gives you a shape to put somewhere on you side of the field. Let's say you roll a 4 and a 2? Draw in your color a 4 by 2 squares rectangle. If it is your first move it can go anywhere in the bottom line, if it's not it must be on the bottom line or adjacent to your other shapes. You can only draw on unoccupied squares.

If you roll a double 6 you get to fill an entire line with you color, even if you already filled some of those squares. You can only choose lines that already have some squares with your color and you can’t choose one that has squares with your adversary’s color. If no eligible lines are present you lose the turn!

If you roll a double 1 you fill a single unfilled square anywhere you want!

If you roll any other double number you don't get a rectangle. Multiply the two numbers together to get a number of contiguous squares to fill as you like! Obviously you still can only fill unoccupied squares.

You lose the turn every time you can’t follow the previous rules according to the dice you rolled.

6. You both take turns rolling dice and filling squares until there is no more space on the field and there are no more moves or it is clear that continuing will change nothing. Or you are freed from isolation and can return to your life.

7. The player that manages to fill the most lines completely wins!

8. That's it! Play again!

We’re done for now. Spread the game, don’t spread the virus and let me know your thought about this weird little child of mine I send out into the world.

With love and hope.       D.

Disclaimers:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/it/

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Italy License

That basically means I will not be mean to you if you share my work or make your derivative work from it while acknowledging mine, using the same license and not making any money off of it. Fair? Fair.