WarMaze:

Warmaze is designed by Mackenzie Cameron and is an entry for the Thousand Year Game Design Challenge.

 

Premise: In the capricous labrynth of the Warmaze, lost princesses have been granted the chance for freedom. Only one princess may escape, and to this end they have each befriended a guardian, a predatory beast of the dark. To escape the princess must be the first to complete a spell, or simply be the last princess standing.

Setup: The game of Warmaze is played on a 10×10 grid for up to 4 players. Each player gets a predator piece, a princess piece, and four spell tokens of the same color.28 Wall tokens are placed on the board as shown. Colored stones, wooden pieces, or cardboard tiles work for pieces; I used coins for my first prototype. The youngest player goes first.

 

The Basics: On his or her turn, a player moves their pieces and uses them to push walls. The princess pieces must travel to each corner of the board and the predator pieces must devour other princesses.

Turn: On a player’s turn they activate both their predator and their princess once; the player may choose which piece to activate first. While active a predator may take 3 actions and a princess may take 2 actions. Pieces receive an additional action if they are activated next to their allied piece. Once the second piece has been activated, the first may no longer take actions for the remainder of the turn.

Actions:

                Move:  A piece may move to an adjacent empty square as an action. A predator may move onto the same square as an opposing princess, devouring her and removing her piece from the board. A player wins when they control the only princess on the board.

                Push: A piece may push a piece or wall token on an adjacent square. A piece may be pushed in any direction. When a princess piece pushes an object, it moves into an empty square adjacent to the object. When a predator pushes an object, it moves in a straight line in the direction pushed until it encounters a non-empty square or the edge of the board.

                Spellcraft: If a princess is on a nexus point (one of the four corners of the board, she may place a spell token on that corner. Players begin the game with a spell token on their corner of the board. A player wins when they have placed a spell on each corner of the board.

Victory: A player wins when all opposing princesses have been devoured, or when they have placed a spell token on every nexus point (each corner of the board).

Notes:

                Diagonal- Pieces may move diagonally, even if there are two diagonally adjacent wall tokens across the way. This rule includes objects that are pushed.

                Lone Predator- When a Predator has lost its princess, that player may no longer win, but may still activate their predator on their turn to either help other players or seek revenge.