First Game Jam

Decided to participate the "Autumn Lisp Game Jam 2025" on itch.io. Probably wouldn't have done this if Ekaitz (Zarraga) didn't talk about it on Mastodon.

  • Used Fossil as my main version control software for the first time. vc-fossil for emacs is… not good (also VC in emacs is just clunky in general when compared with Magit).
  • Came up with an idea.

The idea

Have you heard of Quoridor? I have this very faint memory of watching some television programme on TVB introducing this game to the audience. Back then I thought this would be a great game to play with my friends, but unfortunately during my two decades of life in China two things have become very apparent: the fact that no retailer I've ever come across sells Quoridor (not even Taobao. Insane.), and the fact that I have barely any friends. All in all, I would like to make a similar game, but I can't just copy Quoridor.

And then while making my lunch one day I had this idea of butchering the "real-time" part of real-time strategy. Thus this abomination named "quasi-real-time strategy" is born. It is exactly what its name suggest: it's real-time as in you and your opponent make moves at the same time, but it's not really real-time because the moves won't register until a game tick (which has the length of seconds to give you some time for some planning) has passed.

The conclusion

  • The execution is bad. A few of the problems I've spotted almost immediately but didn't fix in the Game Jam version because I feel like that's not fair to other participants:
    • Somehow the shitty AI I made, which is based entirely on random numbers, is enough. In my opinion this is not a good sign: if a random choice maker works just as well as plan-forming human players, then there's not much strategy to speak of, is it?
    • The board is too small; should've either restrict the amount of moves available in each round or expand the board to a bigger size.
    • Walls becoming an alternative form of attack. This is very bad. I should've made it so that walls are just walls like in Quoridor.
      • Also they decay too quickly. This was originally designed to accomodate the small board size, turns out that wiped out most of the strategy Quoridor-like games can provide.
  • The idea of quasi-real-time can possibly be adapted to other genres, e.g. 2D RPG.
    • Imagine instead of the typical battle UI you actually fight the monsters on the very map you walk on and you'd have the options to come up with strategies that involves the environment you're in.
  • A lot of potential variations.
    • Even on the "quasi-real-time" idea itself, e.g.:
      • Variable round period lengths at different situations;
      • Making the time passes really slow instead of stopping the time entirely.

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Last update: 2025.11.11