#029 - Awari: Mainframe Mancala

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC type-in)

Genre: Board Game

Developer(s): Geoff Wyvill

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

Sorry that it's been a while since the last article. I haven't had the best of times since then, and I think I've experienced significant burn-out. I don't want to go into more detail than that, as I prefer to keep personal matters just that - personal. Just know that the blog has still been on my mind, but with all that's happened recently, I just haven't had the energy to work on it until now. I have a couple of weeks off of work, and some of that time and energy I'll direct towards getting back into the blog.

Now, on with the show.

It's fascinating how some of the world's most well-known and popular board games have ancient roots. Chess has been around for centuries, and Backgammon for millennia. Another ancient game still played today is Mancala. It's a board game with many, many regional variations played all across the world. One of the more modern variants is called Kalah. This version was created in the USA back in the 1950s.

If you've ever seen a game board like this, you've played Mancala. Source: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com

The basic objective of Mancala and all its variants is that two players compete on a special board to collect more stones (or seeds) than the other. Each player has six "houses" on their side of the board, which are circular indentations, with two larger elliptical indentations on the edges, called "stores". Players take turns "sowing" their stones into their houses and, based on the variant rules, players can capture their opponents stones. In Kalah specifically, a player can capture the stones in the house immediately opposite if their last stone is sown in an empty house. They also can get an extra move if the last stone lands in their store. The game ends when one player runs out of stones.

Why am I bringing all this up? And why am I talking about Kalah specifically? Well, that's what today's game is about. Awari is a digital, text-based implementation of the Kalah variant of Mancala. It's a bit odd that's it's named Awari, which is an alternative name for Oware, the variant played across Africa and the Caribbean, which has very different rules from Kalah. 101 BASIC Games ('78 edition) even describes Awari as "an ancient African game," despite using the Kalah rules. I did read up on those rules, but I'll be honest in saying that I really don't understand them at all. Oware is far more complex than Kalah. Perhaps just because I'm more of a visual/doing learner, simply reading the rules often doesn't get the point across to me. All that to say that I won't be explaining the rule differences between Kalah and Oware here because I don't understand them.

Technically, this isn't Awari, nor is it ancient (unless you think the 1950s are "ancient.")

Now, Kalah also made its way from the United States over to the United Kingdom, which is important because that's where Awari was created. It's the first British-made game that's appeared for quite some time, too. The most recent one on my Master List prior to Awari is a missing version of Bulls & Cows called Moo, from 1968. The last British game I actually wrote about is the second game ever made - OXO, from 1952! That was in only my second-ever article from March last year!

Awari's location can be further centred, courtesy of the information provided in 101 BASIC Computer Games. Bradford University is Awari's origin point, up north in Yorkshire, England. A single individual authored the game, that being Geoff Wyvill. Awari is the first of his games we've come across; he has a couple more games on my list, and even his brother, Brian, has one. Wyvill's information is surprisingly easy to come across online, as he's currently Professor Emeritus of the University of Otago's (that's in New Zealand, for those who don't know) School of Computing. During his time at Bradford, he earned a PhD in Artificial Intelligence, and also possesses a BA in Physics from Oxford. Wyvill notes on his self-maintained website that he completed his PhD in 1978, and - given his majoring in AI - it's likely that Awari, featuring a computer opponent, was developed as part of his studies.

Wyvill's attempt at explaining the rules, part 1.

I came at this game with a bit of trepidation, as I wasn't fully understanding how the game worked from the explanation given in 101 BASIC Games. Once I played a full round, though, the general game flow began to clear up for me. 

Part 2. I think my explanation is better. But I'm biased, after all.

It goes like this - you have the field set up as standard for Mancala and all its variants: 3 stones (apparently 4 is the standard, according to Wikipedia) in each of the 6 pits for each player. Each turn, the player will select which pit they want to sow from. The stones from that pit will then be sown, one stone per pit, in a counter-clockwise direction from the selected pit. The selected pit is left empty, a stone is not sown in it. If the last stone sown lands in the player's store (in-game called "home"), then they get another turn.

For taking stones, the way that works is that, if the last stone is sown in an empty pit, then it and all the stones from the pit opposite it are taken an placed in the player's home. Once a stone is in the player's home, it cannot be removed. This loop continues until one player has no more stones on their side of the board, and whoever has the most stones in their home at that stage wins. Part of the reason I write out an explanation is to try and explain the game to myself in a way that makes sense to me. Hopefully it also makes sense to you.

As for how you select a pit in game, this is rather simple. Each pit on your side is numbered from 1-6, in that order, just like on your keyboard. That actually makes it really easy to remember which pit is which.

No instructions. Figure it out yourself. Ouch.

I didn't record my first attempt at Awari, as I just wanted to get to grips with the rules before I had a proper go at it. Wyvill was quite merciless to the new player, bucking the usual trend and providing no in-game instructions. For a game like this, it could really use them, too. Somehow, despite having no idea what I was doing, I won this first attempt, 15-14. The only strategic idea I had was to get two moves at the start, and then I just winged it after that.

My thoughts regarding strategy after that were that it seemed to make sense to try and keep my number of stones per pit low, and to sow the pits closer to my home first, giving me options to take stones and react to whatever the computer does. I know there's a "mathematical best" way to win, like with Nim variants, but I preferred to remain unspoiled on that for now. I think it's more rewarding in most cases to figure out strategies on my own. Also like Nim, the player going first is at an advantage, and can be unbeatable if they know what they're doing.

Action shot. It's hard to do play-by-play commentary for Awari.

The second game was far more enjoying and satisfying, having had more clarity around my strategy. I found a useful ploy to build up to 3 stones in pit 5, all of which could be claimed in one turn thanks to how the game rules work. I used that several times through the game, and ended up winning the round 19-15, after several sharp swings and lead changes.

Victory. You can also sort-of-see my pit 5 strategy at work.

Apparently, according to Wyvill, the computer is designed to learn to play better as you go on. This does appear to be the case, as I played several games in a row to test, and that ended up with a 2-2 draw, with the computer beating me by 1 point, then soundly by 9, only for me to learn and come back to throttle him by 10 in the last game. All that's included in the video up top. I think near the end I realised that it's important to not only count your own moves, but what your opponent might do in response. Focusing on getting double moves and blocking let me have such a strong win in that last game.

And with that, let's move onto the scores.

Time Played: 20 minutes

Difficulty: 4 (Mild)

This is one of the simpler variants of Mancala, after all. The computer also evidently isn't too hard to beat, as I beat him having no earthly idea what I was doing. The computer does learn and get more difficult to beat with each passing game, though in my experience it didn't become overbearingly challenging.

Gameplay: 5

Awari is decent in the sense that it retains all the distinctives of Kalah. I wouldn't say it's a terribly in-depth game, but there's a small amount of strategic depth available. One has to consider not only their own moves, but their opponent's, and there's also limited opportunities to work both offensively and defensively, with the extra move being an incentive and a tool for further strategic play.

Controls: 6

It's set up quite nicely, having the pits' numbers lined up the same as a regular keyboard. Makes easy remembering which pit is which.

Visual: 2

I'll give Awari a point for having a fairly clear representation of a Mancala game board.

Functionality: 5

I didn't run into any technical issues.

Accessibility: 2

I must confess, I did procrastinate a little on playing Awari, as I felt confused and put off by the written explanations of the game rules. Didn't make a whole lot of sense, and made approaching the game challenging.

Fun Factor: 5

My subjective thoughts don't stray too far from the gameplay score on this one. I feel kind of indifferent about it, despite there being some strategic depth to enjoy. The computer's learning to play better is an incentive to keep trying, but it's limited in its appeal. I think in this case playing the real thing is preferred.

Tallying up the numbers gives Awari a total of 25. It's a higher E-tier finish, which I think is adequately representative of my thoughts. It's a decent go at making a digital version of a classic board game for the time. "For the time" being the key phrase there. It's still very, very primitive and limited in what it can offer. For reference, as of this article Awari is in 19th spot on the Tier List.

Next time we take to the skies and help with the war effort by blowing stuff up. Sounds like good fun!

Question of the day: Here's something fun for this article. Do you have a version of this game where you live? Have you played it? If so, let us know in the comments how it differs from what I played here.

Don't forget - if you enjoy my blog, be sure to leave a comment and follow so you don't miss any updates!

#028 - Acey Deucy, or Whatever You Want to Call It

Release Date: July 1973

Platform: Mainframe (BASIC type-in)

Genre: Card Game

Developer(s): Bill Palmby

Publisher(s): Digital Equipment Corporation

We're back to the simple text games after foraying into some more complex ideas in Drag and Taxman. Also a good way for me to get back into the swing of blog writing.

First thing when dealing with Acey Deucy (also spelled Acey Deucey) is defining which Acey Deucy we're talking about. There's two different games that share the name - one is a variant of the board game Backgammon, the other is a card game. This game is based on the card game, which is also commonly called In-Between. It also has a host of other names, including but not limited to Between the Sheets, Maverick and Red Dog. Why it has so many names - many of which make little sense - is beyond me.

The rules at least make the names In-Between and Between the Sheets self-evident. The dealer will deal players a hand of two cards, left face up. The dealer will then give a third card. Players can choose to place a bet if they believe that the third card will be in between the first two cards. If it's in between, they win. If it isn't, they lose. Simple, eh? However, if the third card is the same as one of the first two, then the player loses double their bet. These are the basic rules - there are others, but I won't go into them now.

The cards are ordered in rank, with 2 being the lowest, and Ace being the highest. This is apparently where the name Acey Deucy comes in, as receiving a hand of A-2 is the best possible hand. The only way to lose with this hand is if the third card is another Ace or 2.

Our computer implementation of Acey Deucy for this article comes from Bill Palmby, a high school student who attended the Adlai E. Stevenson High School in Prairie View, Illinois. There's another Acey Deucey (spelled that way) from 1973, from Andrea Barsh and Duff Kirkland, which was written for one of the UNIVAC systems. Unsurprisingly, due to its platform, that one is lost to us. Palmby's is not, however, as it was written in BASIC, and included in David Ahl's 101 BASIC Computer Games. Palmby's game doesn't have a release date online, but July 1973 makes the most sense, as that's when the first edition of Ahl's book released. 

Acey Deucy from the Microcomputer edition of the book.

As for Palmby himself, unfortunately there is no information about him I could find anywhere. This is his only game credit according to MobyGames, and searching for him online only leads to the game he authored, or other people sharing his name.

The only question left to ask now is how Palmby went about putting this card game into digitised form. A helpful reader noted on my article on War that that game didn't translate all the rules of the card game over, which is why I went over the proper rules of Acey Deucy at the start of the article. I want to make sure I know what the card game is supposed to be before looking at a video game interpretation of it.

Amusingly, the first thing I noticed was that the game title is misspelled. It says Acey-Ducey. Whoops. Not off to a great start, there. The original edition of 101 BASIC Games also makes this error.

It's the only typo, at least.

Anyway, the game is as I suspected it might be - a pared back interpretation of the card game, with most of the rules not implemented. The rules present are only the most basic of Acey Deucy: if the third card is in between the two in your had, you win; if it's the same as one of the cards or not in between, you lose. You don't lose double your bet if it's the same. Other nuances, like what happens if you're handed two aces, are not included, either. That's a rule where the two aces are split into two different hands, with extra cards drawn to make them up, and you choose which hand to bet on. I don't think Palmby's game can have two of the same card appear.

This is the game. All of it.

I played for about three minutes all up, according to my OBS timer. This is one of those games that can almost be boiled down to being an RNG simulator, along with the likes of War and Slots. At least this, unlike War, has some player agency, as you can choose whether to bet on your hand or not. My quick search online to learn the rules for Acey Deucy recommended passing if there weren't at least a gap of 8 between the cards in your hand. Mind you, that never prevents the game from screwing you. I got an Acey Deucy at one point, and the game drew another ace as the third card and I lost. Predicably, I put a significant bet on that hand. Luck of the draw, eh? I'm not a gambler - never have been, especially in my video games. I prefer certainty over unpredictability, or at least a way to plan around bad luck.

The dealer rigged that one, I'm sure of it.

You can keep going for as long as you like with this game - you can't break the bank, so the only way for the game to end is if you go bust. Or just turn it off, whichever happens faster. The latter occurred for me. I can't really see you going bust unless you intentionally try to, or get horrifically unlucky.

This game's not going to get unlucky with it's scores - it'll go bust by its own efforts.

Time Played: 5 minutes

Difficulty: N/A

I can't give a difficulty score, as Acey Deucy is inherently an RNG-based game.

Gameplay: 1

As much as I wanted to give it a zero, I can't, because the player does have the tiniest bit of agency. There's one choice you can make - whether to bet or not, and there is the most basic of basic strategy surrounding that choice.

Controls: 5

No issues with controls, it's all standard for text-games.

Visual: 1

It's as plain and basic as a text-based game could possibly be. I'm not docking points for the typo.

Functionality: 5

There's very little that can go wrong with such a tiny game.

Accessibility: 3

Pretty much the same as most every other text-based game I've played so far. It's inherently less-accessible for being a text game, although this one has less text, which theoretically makes it easier to get into.

Fun Factor: 0

I can give it a zero for fun, though! Shouldn't be much of a surprise here. I kind of mindlessly drifted through playing the game. It's a pretty pointless one, and doesn't even include all the rules, which could've made it slightly more interesting. Slightly.

So it's not quite bust for Acey Deucy... but's it's leaving with a hefty dent in its wallet - a pitiful score of 15, the same as Horserace down at the bottom of the F-tier. Yeah, it's that bad. Though, "bad" is not necessarily the word to use, as there's not much wrong with Acey Deucy... there just isn't much of any merit-worthy substance. It's just a basic simulation of a basic card gambling game. That being said, I like it more than Horserace, so that's that tiebreaker decided. I hate Horserace. Acey Deucy is just more of a nothing-burger, landing itself in 41st place currently. That's out of 45 games on the tier list so far, for reference, making Acey Deucy one of the worst games reviewed thus far.

Next time, we move from a card game that has several different names, to a board game that has several different names.

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#027x - Gotcha: One Controversy, Coming Right Up

Release Date: October, 1973

Platform: Arcade

Genre: Maze

Developer(s): Atari

Publisher(s): Atari

Alrighty, finally I'm back from my break. It feels like quite an awfully long time, even though it's much shorter than previous breaks I've had. Probably because it wasn't that much of a break - I was sick for the entirety of my holiday and am still having some health issues. Anyway, that's enough about me - on to today's topic.

Now, who's ready for some controversy?

Video games have had no shortage of controversies over the medium's lifetime (it seems like there's more controversy than ever in current day.) But, there always has to be a first one, and I'm fairly sure this is it. A rather minor controversy in the grand scheme of video game controversies, to be sure, but it shows that developers were interested in doing some rather silly things with their games that would get them into trouble, even in these formative years.

Atari tended to be right at the forefront of most controversies early on in the industry's life. Lawsuits about copying Pong, terrible movie tie-in games, and Pac-Man. All with Atari at centre stage. It's been well-documented that there was a culture of excess at early Atari, including significant drug use (this has been admitted by staff,) which does provide a suitable explanation for some of the odd decision making at Atari. 

Those above controversies occur much later in Atari's life. In 1973 was their first flirt with danger, coming in the form of Gotcha. Gotcha appears to have been born out of Atari's frustration with the voluminous Pong clones dominating the video game market throughout 1973. Despite being the originators of the idea, Atari only had roughly 10% of the market that year. Patents were filed to stop the clones, but came too late to have any effect. By 1974 most of the Pong clones were falling out of popularity anyway, thanks in part to Magnavox's Odyssey lawsuits, and probably in part to oversaturation. Atari were then able to get more of a foothold, as those lawsuits put many of their competitors out of business, but benefitted them quite nicely.

A flyer featuring Atari's 1972-73 selection of games.

Atari's alternative solution to combat the Pong clones was to branch out from ball-and-paddle games. They already had done Pong Doubles as a sequel, and did Quadrapong through their sneaky fake competitor / subsidiary, Kee Games (a story for later.) Space Race, which I've already covered, falls into the same category as Gotcha, in being an alternative to Pong-style games, although it was also intended to fulfill a contract preceding Pong's creation. Gotcha, only Atari's fourth game, had no such contract needing to be fulfilled, and thus Atari were completely free to design the game as they pleased.

Once again, Al Alcorn was the chief designer for the game. The story goes that he was inspired by an error he saw occasionally in some Pong boards. This error in the circuit board would cause glitched numbers to appear all over the screen. In his eyes, the numbers created maze-like patterns, and so he modified what was a bug into a feature - not a first time occurrence at Atari. Alcorn made the numbers move, creating a moving maze, with pathways constantly opening and closing. Added to this were two characters, a chaser and chased, and Atari had Gotcha. The prototype design was finalised by Cyan Engineering's Steve Mayer, a recent acquisition of Atari that'll play a very important role in the company's future.

Gotta sell it somehow, right?

Now this all seems relatively innocuous and non-controversial, and you'd be right about that. So where does the trouble come in? Well, it's not with the game itself, but rather the... unique cabinet that was designed for it. The design was done by a fellow by the name of George Faraco, who was at the time Atari's "product designer." There seems to be come conjecture at this point, but the story goes that either he, or someone else at Atari, had their mind firmly stuck in the gutter and thought that it would be funny if they had Gotcha use a "feminine" control scheme to contrast with the more "masculine" scheme of a joystick.

As a result, the first design of the Gotcha cabinet included as a controller a large pink/purple half-sphere. One looking at this controller can very easily make out what it was meant to represent, and as such Gotcha earned itself an infamous nickname - the "boob game."

The offending article.

Adding to the controversy was the game's marketing. There's an infamous flyer featuring a man grabbing a woman who appears to be wearing a short dress with the appearance of a night gown. Alongside it is the cabinet with two of the pink controllers front-and-centre. What exactly Atari was trying to communicate here is anyone's guess. Were they trying to market Gotcha as a more "adult" game? Or just playing off of the suggestive controllers with the subtlety of an atomic bomb?

There are so many questions with this flyer.

Regardless, Gotcha wasn't a very popular game. It was received poorly, and it sales weren't all that positive, either. Ralph Baer has it listed as selling 3,000 units. Of those 3,000 units, the majority ended up not using the controversial controllers, instead replacing them with cheaper, more conventional joysticks.

Non-pink cabinet.

One more noteworthy thing to mention with Gotcha is that it's also the first game that experimented with true colour. Most arcade games through the early 70s that wanted colour did so through the use of cellophane overlays - the colour did not actually come from the game itself. Gotcha, however, actually had a true colour version produced, and is likely the first colour arcade game ever produced. It's quite rare, but cabinets of it do still exist in the wild. Back in 2016, a collector named Ed Fries acquired a PCB of colour Gotcha, restoring it to working order.

A quick word on the game itself. I did play it for the article, although I won't be scoring it. It's a fine little maze chase game that has some merit from the constantly changing maze. I could see it being fun. The sound is quite obnoxious, though. My thinking is that it could've potentially been more successful without the whole "boob game" thing hanging over it like a bad smell, and if its release were delayed till after the Pong craze ended in 1974.

Getting back into the process after the illness/holiday has been rough. Lots of work and lots of fatigue has been taking a lot out of me. So apologies if this article feels a little short and dry. There should be some more regularity come next week, and hopefully I'll be back to two articles a week then.