My copy of Deflexion arrived yerterday, and I managed one game with my daughter before we left for Fry’s to replace a dead case fan in my machine that was causing overheating issues.
So, computer is now fixed, which means I can post about the boardgame. 🙂
Deflexion has a lot in common with those shareware and web games like Reflections and Aargon. Like these, it uses lasers and mirrors. The difference is that the lasers and mirrors are real.
It’s a two player game; you take turns rotating pieces 90 degrees or moving them one square. You have one-sided mirrors, two-sided mirrors, and blocks that don’t have mirrors. You also have a Pharaoh. After each turn, you must fire your laser; any piece that stops the laser beam (as opposed to reflecting it) is removed from the board. Should your Pharaoh get hit, you lose.
The one game I played was interesting; it’s easy to lose sight of what possible paths your opponent might set up, whilst you pay attention to your own strategy. After all, a simple rotation or moving a piece over one square can result in a vastly different path for the laser, and all pieces can move to all eight adjacent squares.
I’ll have to play a bunch more to see how deep the play can get, but it was definitely fun and challenging. The only limiting factor I can see right off the bat is that a fixed set of starting positions means that opening moves are likely to be very similar in every match. The designers seem to have tried to compensate for this by providing a few alternate starting configurations, and they seem to be releasing more on their website.
I may try out a “house rule” set that allows players to take turns placing the pieces on the board for the initial config. I can picture this resulting in games getting resolved before the first move is made, though…
Anyway, the price is a bit steep for a board game (no doubt because of the lasers) and I wouldn’t want it out in a house with very young children (since the mirrors might break if thrown or chewed, and the lasers can damage your eyes), but it’s worth checking out.
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Reminds me of Chess. In chess, its generally a bad idea to start with a singular approach. It’s generally better to set up your pieces in a way as to provide multiple ways of defeating your opponent, while simultaneously preventing your opponent from placing his pieces in an advantageous configuration. This creates the concepts of material, space, and mobility. I’ve found these concepts apply to many games. If you’ve ever played the old game Bridge-It, these concepts are invaluable.
Also, your comment on the fixed starting positions resulting in few opening move combinations reminds me of Chess. Many, many, games of Chess start with a variation on the Ruy Lopez opening, but this doesn’t keep Chessmasters from writing entire books (and large ones) about all the possible opening moves and their variations. Chess games are actually classified by their opening moves and variations.
If Reflexion is indeed similar to Chess, I would argue the gameplay can go pretty deep. After all, strict limitations (rules) are often a good way to foster creativity.
Well, I don’t know that it’s as deep as chess. I guess we could think about it a bit. Approaching it from a grammar standpoint:
There’s fewer token types (one-sided mirror, two-sided mirror, block, and Pharaoh).
There number of verbs is interesting, because each piece has a facing. But for two of the pieces, the facing is irrelevant (blocks and the Pharaoh). In addition, the two-sided mirror can do a “swap move” that other pieces cannot. That brings it to 2 moves for the 1-sided mirror, 3 for the two-sided mirror, and only 1 each for the other two pieces. That’s 6 total, which is close to what chess has (chess has six piece types, but affords a few extra things that apply only in certain circumstances), like en passant and castling).
Pieces project force only in terms of affecting the topology, not in terms of physical action, unlike chess. Because of this, the vectors of force are fixed, unlike chess where each piece can generally project force in multiple directions at once. This is a significent simplification: it’s as if the 1 sided mirror acted like a chess pawn. The two-sided mirror isn’t directly comparable to a chess piece.
Because all the pieces share the same grid movement, the overall topology of the space is significantly simpler than chess, which has multiple different movement patterns, including teleportation in the case of the knight. There’s a territory restriction in Deflexion, though — each side as a “home row” where the other side cannot enter (though the laser can be projected there).
We could probably arrive at the “depth” (how many gameplay atoms deep a given decision chain goes) and “breadth” (how many chocies are offered simultaneously at the top level) metrics for it, but I suspect the result will be that Deflexion has less “area” than chess does.
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I haven’t played, but I watched some people playing at the store for a bit.
I thought a neat add might be to combine it with one of those “mister” fountains to lay a constant low-level fog in the thing to illuminate (well, refract really) the laser’s path and make it visible.
Too many years playing FPS games I guess 🙂
Heh, I thought the exact same thing. I was taken in by the usual thing with lasers, which is that they are always depicted with solid beams, of course. So when we started up the game and I couldn’t see the lines of fire, I was momentarily taken aback until my brain woke up.
What a wonderful excuse for you and the kids to take up smoking. Perhaps the tobacco companies should sponsor the game 🙂
Do you know this old (1987) Spectrum game, called Deflektor? It one of the most original games I’ve ever played. Follow the link if you want to find more info, emulations and even remakes.
Don’t forget to listen to the music.