I created some Green specials for Wodka last Summer themed around the idea of specials that were all negative in some way. For example, if you won a trick with the Green 8, the lead passes to the next player instead. This wasn't consistently applied throughout the set (and indeed people joked that the Green 6 - reverse the direction of play - has almost no impact on the game).
A fourth set of specials has now come to Wodka: the Blues. This now means we can have games in which every card has an effect... it's complete chaos, but I like it!
Here's what they look like:
As ever, we feature increasingly tenuous iconography.
My favourite new card is the Blue 7 (everyone discards a card). I'm really excited for the moment when both members of a team successfully complete a Grand Wodka with it, pulling off a comeback history has never seen. Let's hope I don't end up sabotaging my future teammates trying to make this a reality...
Halloween is almost upon us, and we have two special events in Wodka with which to celebrate.
The first Wodka tournament in September was a lot of fun, so we're running another one!
Date: 31st October 2020
Time: 18:00 GMT / 19:00 CET / 14:00 ET
Where: https://www.twitch.tv/wodkastrategy
On the 20th September 2020, the very first Wodka tournament will take place. This is seriously exciting news for the Wodka scene! If you like the game, add the date to your calendar and come watch the fun.
Date: 20th September 2020
Time: 18:00 BST / 19:00 CEST / 13:00 EDT
Where: https://www.twitch.tv/fireblt
In Wodka, there are 14 specials assigned to the red suit. There have been hundreds of games with the same assignments: the 4 always skips the next player, the J always counts as a pair J, and so on. It's fun, sure, but sometimes you need to mix things up a bit.
I am planning to add some more specials into the game at some point, and people have had some really good ideas which are on their way... However, the operative word is planning; most of the specials I want to add are going to take significant time to develop. So, until that point comes, I thought I'd implement an easy and silly stop-gap: shuffle mode.
There have been over 200 games of Wodka played on Kangaroo thus far, with hopefully many more to come. But where did Wodka come from?
Starting in July 2010, me and friends used to play a 4-player trick taking card game called Tichu. When explaining the concept to me, Tann called it "Asian bridge". The scoring of Tichu requires going through and counting cards in the tricks each player has won, which is fiddly and often irrelevant. Tann thought he could make some improvements on the design, and proposed some radical changes:
Wodka is a 4-player trick-taking card game played by two teams of two. It's now available to play on Kangaroo.
It can get a bit silly, here's the sort of confusing trick you can expect to see:
If you want to play, there is a Discord channel for finding games and chatting.
Kangaroo is my framework for creating multiplayer turn-based games. It's something I started work on a while ago, but the pandemic induced lockdown has driven a lot of progress on it recently.
It takes care of the lobby system, authentication, events and various other things in order to make creating a multiplayer game as easy as possible. One of the most important changes between Kangaroo and my other attempts at making multiplayer games is that players are able to reconnect if they drop out mid-game.