As the fall semester nears, the design team is organizing, and establishing our plan of action for this semester. First, we’ve got to welcome a newcomer to the team, Brian Derickson. In continuing with our tradition of engulfing our competitors, Brian was on the winning team last semester. They managed to lead the development of the human turtle strategy during the competition, and successfully navigated the hexagonal board, which those of us who designed that game still apologize for.

Returning to the development team include myself, Steven Wallace, Stephen Mues, and Kyle Steinert.

With so many strong developers returning, we’re focusing on providing the most interesting and enjoyable tournament to date. From our previous games we’ve been able to abstract out a (rough) framework for the AI competition, allowing us to focus more on the game mechanics. Because of this, we’ve decided to pursue a theme that is rather ambitious, and hopefully allows us to express lots of creativity in the resulting game. This theme is time travel.

Set the dials and get ready to travel.

While the game mechanics aren’t completely finalized (and we can’t exactly share details due to the nature of the competition), the competitors will have to travel through time to defeat their opponents. The goal of this is to allow for complex strategies, while maintaining a low entry barrier for competitors. I like to think we’ve learned from our previous mistakes (see hex grids), and can make a great game for our competitors.

We hope to see you this fall. To keep up-to-date on our latest news, follow us on twitter here.