Now that the first half a year of my time studying Game Design is over, I found it would be a good time to look back on the experience so far … and I realized that I had forgotten a major thing – the outcome of the first real challenge on the Game Design course. This does of course means that I’ll postpone the reflections, and instead present this lovely challenge instead. Priorities, you know.

The premise was rather simple: Within two days, we had to construct a drinking (yes, indeed) game, test it (no further details were given of the nature of that, but we did it the only right way – with beer) and present it for the rest of the class. Challenge accepted!

I find it quite amazing that I never thought about posting it until now, because it was (or rather: is) a very nice drinking game. It has certainly done its part in delivering as a proper drinking-game should. The only negative part you could say about it, is that it might be a bit tricky to find 9 cups and a coaster – but at the very least you do not need any cards or any number of dice.

Anyway, onward to the important part – the rules:

THE SETUP AND WHAT YOU NEED:

• 3 to 6 players (more or less is possible, but not recommended).
• 9 glasses for the board (5×5) placed in a square (3×3).
• A middle-marker (a coaster is perfect for the job), placed under the middle cup. This only serves to make it easy to see where the middle is.

The below drawing shows the outer square-positions with the x’s, the initial glass-positions with circles, and the coaster as the square.

Every participant buys an amount of beer (it doesn’t have to be beer, the crowd just have to buy the same kind of drink), best done in a pitcher or likewise. The glasses are then filled up to 2-3 fingers (or more, depending on how hardcore you’re playing). Shot-glasses are excellent at this, as they can limit the maximum contents, while removing the need to check your pouring.

A TURN IS PERFORMED AS:
The first player takes a filled glass and jumps (vertically/horizontally) over any amount of cups (similar to the game “Checkers”). The outcome depends on whether or not the glasses which has been jumped over is empty or full.

• Each jump is one cup maximum, but you can take several jumps in one turn.
• You can jump over both types of glasses in a given turn.
• You may not end up outside the 5×5 board.
• You may not jump over the same glass twice during a turn.
• You may not use the same glass, as the previous player used, to jump with.

The outcome of a given turn depends on the amount of each of either full or empty cups. If a glass is full the next player drinks it, else the current player fills it from his pitcher. If 3 or more empty glasses are filled during a turn, you can fill extra in filled glasses – if you jumped over any of those.

Another choice is, instead of moving a cup, is to move a filled glass from the outer circle to an empty spot in the inner circle. By doing that, the player must drink it, then fill it. This does NOT have to follow the jumping rules.

In case there’s no moves left, the given player drinks all full glasses, fills all of them, and reset the board to the starting position (The 3×3 square).

END OF THE ROUND:
When all players’ pitchers are empty, and there’s no more beer to fill in the glasses, the players will eventually end up having no more possible moves, and the board is reset to the original initial 3×3 view, with a new round of beer – if possible.

The game was created along with Julian Møller, Mads Johansen and Steen Nordsmark Pedersen. Looking forward to the next game, sooner rather than later.