自制游戏(1)

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Home-made games Your turn

For several hours of escape, invent a board game On a distant planet, a rocket crashes.

The surviving astronauts-a medic, miner, soldier, scavenger, scientist and engineer- had been on a mission to collect rare minerals and other resources. Now they have to co-operate to rebuild their craft and dig up as many precious rocks as they can shift, all before their dwindling oxygen supplies expire.

They also have to cope with landslides, tunnel collapses and attacks from helicopter-like birds, wolf creatures and herds of space-mammoths. Life is not easy for characters on Planet Ozerdale.

But at least they have plenty of opportunity for heroics and energetic outdoor activity, and are able to spend time with a reasonably large social group. For your correspondent's 14-year-old son, stuck in lockdown with his brother and their parents, the outer-space scenario was alluring.

He dreamed up the intergalactic mission a few days after his school closed. Inventing-and typing up-the rules for a home-made game, debating strategy for confronting aliens and working out how to fly away to freedom have offered several welcome hours of diversion.

Designing your own board game lets you combine the most enjoyable elements of other people's. The best involve both luck and strategy.

Intricate and complex battles between armies, as in "Diplomacy", "Risk" or "Axis and Allies", tend to be openended and last many hours. A hard time limit, represented by the disappearing oxygen, is preferable.