#015 - The Game of Chomp (Not of the Chain Variety)

Release Date: February 1973

Platform: Mainframe

Genre: Puzzle

Developer(s): David Gale, Peter Sessions

Publisher(s): People's Computer Company

It's not this Chomp either, sadly (but the concept is strangely related.)

You know, when I thought of this joke, I didn't realise that it's oddly appropriate for The Game of Chomp - a game about eating (this might also be the first food-themed game, come to think of it...)

The Game of Chomp is yet another game that comes to us from the same People's Computer Company February 1973 newsletter as Mugwump and Hurkle, only on the next page over. Like those two, it's also an adaptation from previous source material, and not an original PCC game. 

Unlike Hurkle and Mugwump, Chomp gets an entire page dedicated to it.

Chomp, as it was originally called, was invented by David Gale, mathematician and economist who worked at the University of California in Berkeley (Gale also invented a board game in 1960 called Bridg-it, as a side note.) The concept of Chomp was first described in the January 1973 edition of Scientific American, in the "Mathematical Games" section. Originally, it was conceived as a pen & paper or tabletop game that could be played with counters. It's somewhat reminiscent of Nim-like games, as it's a game where players take turns removing objects from a pile - or, in this case, a grid. The objective was to force your opponent to take the last object, which was in the bottom-left corner.

The reason the game got the name Chomp was from the rules governing the removal of counters from the grid. Every counter within the north-east right angle of the selected counter get removed from the field. The analogy given in Scientific American is like taking a bite out of a cracker, if biting from the north-east corner of the cracker. Hence, Chomp.

PCC took this and modified the game slightly. In their rendition, written by Peter Sessions, the grid is a cookie, and the players take turns taking bites out of the cookie. Yes, this is a multiplayer game - though it can be played solo (the computer doesn't play against you, it only keeps score.) The objective is to avoid the top-left square (instead of bottom-left; the right angle system was also adjusted to suit) of the cookie, because it's poisoned. This is the most high-stakes, gladiatorial eating competition out there, folks.

I suppose the question now is: since this is a multiplayer game, how am I playing it? My rules for the blog do permit me to skip multiplayer-only games. 

Well, that last phrase is the key here: multiplayer-only. Technically, this isn't exclusively a multiplayer game. Singleplayer is an option in-game, even if, technically, the game is meant to be played with multiple people. So, what I can do is select to have two players, and I choose which of the two I want to win, and play accordingly.

Did ya get all that?

For the first, tester round, I didn't do this. I only decided on the above standard after testing the game with one player. The game's instructions are slightly unclear in some respects. I was unsure whether the game saying that "No fair chomping squares that have already been chomped" meant that I couldn't make any moves that involved previously removed squares. So I umm-ed and ahh-ed a bit before realising that the game would probably be impossible to play if that were the case, and continued on as normal. There's nothing else of interest to report from the tester run.

Congratulations, you just played yourself.

So for the second round, I selected a two-player game, and I wanted Player 1 to win. I was successful in this goal, though I felt as if I had no idea what I was doing throughout. It was a lot of back-and-forth, semi-randomly selecting sections of the cookie to remove, until it got closer to the end, where I tried to be more intentionally strategic. Well, as much as I could be, at least.

I got caught out trying to cheat at one point.

I'm aware that the game's Scientific American article explains some strategies, but I'm not really interested in reading it, to be honest. For this game, it's not worth it. It's not compelling enough.

At this stage, I'm stumped. I'm struggling to come up with anything else to say. Even doing up the scores for Chomp, I had a hard time thinking of what can be said about this game.

Time Played: 5 minutes

Difficulty: N/A

I'm throwing an N/A on this because it's technically multiplayer, so the challenge is theoretically variable; only equal to your own skill vs. your opponent's skill.

Gameplay: 2/20

In reality, Chomp is just "visual Nim," i.e. remove objects from a pile, but with an extra step. The extra step doesn't really add much to the base Nim experience. It's nice that there's a small amount of customisation for grid size, but it's mostly superfluous.

Controls: 5/10

As expected for a grid-based game.

Visual: 5/10

You'd expect for Chomp to have the grid visible on-screen, and it does. Good. Does it make the effort to make it look more than basic? No.

Functionality: 5/5

Nothing to see here. Vintage BASIC's version's "play again?" bit at the end doesn't work, but that's (probably) not the game's fault.

Accessibility: 2/5

It's problematic that Chomp is best enjoyed with multiple players. Finding someone else who'd actually want to play this with you seems highly unlikely.

Fun Factor: 0/20

Nah. I don't like it. It was a dreary, aimless experience.

So, after a pair of decent games, we're back down in the dumps again. The Game of Chomp earns a pitiful score of 19, which banishes it to the depths of the E-tier, alongside Digits and Letter. Chomp splits the two on the tie-breaker, and lands in 26th spot overall. That's 26th out of 32, for reference to how poorly this game did.

We're off the People's Computer Company train for the next couple of games. The next one, Slalom, is an odd concept for a text-based game. Maybe it'll make for a good game? Only if it can ski between the flags, I guess.

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