Round and round and round we go

Round and round and round we go

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Circular board games. YES!! They are amazing, and I’ve talked a little bit about it during my Axia: The clone wars post a while back. Circular boards, without or without concentric circles, are visually appealing due to many factors – like varied paths of movement and multi-directional strategy. The mechanisms required to drive a circular game forward are fairly intuitive, and they provide a refreshing visually appeal. I’ve considered the circular board design for 3 games I’m working on so far: Axia, a castle defense game and a space travel game (the latter two have no name). In my post I talked about how circular board versions of existing games were created, giving the game a new lease on playability. Also some incredibly cool unique games were created, both of  which I’ve referenced below. Some of the more popular ones are Chess and Monopoly, but there are so many others.

circular boards

 

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Game variants

Here are some board games that have a circular board variant

Gravikord – Chess Variant

 

Hasbro – Monopoly Revolution

 

Quartro Gammon

 

Snakes and Ladders

 

Sisti – Circular Checkers

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Circular designs

And here are some games created with a circular board design

Circular Reasoning

 

Crokinole

 

Daedalus Sentence

 

Fidchell

 

Doctor Who – Battle to Save the Universe

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There are so many wonderful games out there but this short list was just for reference. The square board has alway been a staple in board game design, but the circular board has always brought a level of style and interest. What else could designers use? Triangular, Hexagonal, Elliptical? Triangles offer a great variety of movement, not to mention [simple_tooltip content=’def: An arrangement of shapes closely fitted together, especially of polygons in a repeated pattern without gaps or overlapping’]tessellation[/simple_tooltip]. Configurations with triangles can arrange into a myriad of polygonal board layouts.  I’m pretty sure any of those would definitely enhance the specific mechanisms of a game. Every board game designer should take into account the formatting and use of space of their boards. Now I’m off to find some Triangular board games… that are more than .