Loops within loops, which naturally grab me.
A friend came over for board games. We played no board game. Instead, I convinced him to attend clown school and I mentioned the video game I’ve been playing. This game prompted him to ask curious questions. I offered to show him. He delightedly agreed! We played together for about 3 hours. Now he’s going to buy a copy so we can play multiplayer together on Tuesday.
My description of the game’s structure intrigued him. I told him: “I like games with loops that contain other loops”. This game has many loops, each subsetting and supersetting in intriguing ways.
The Game (“Slay the Spire 2”) contains 17 Tiers, which contain 3 Levels, which each contain 18 Rooms, which could each be one of 5 Types, in which you add and subtract Cards from your Deck, which contains further-modifiable Cards. And you can traverse the whole Game as 5 different characters.
Its structure reminds me of a game I play with my Partner. When she does something well, I assign her some number of points – e.g. “Two points for [Partner]!” When she accumulates 10 points, she can exchange the points for a ticket. When she collects 10 tickets, she can exchange them for a token. When she collects 10 tokens, she can exchange them for a point. (The score works because it’s arbitrary and pointless. If it were serious, I think it would be bad.)
My highschool computer science teacher commented that I naturally think recursively. This interest may just touch a natural predilection.
Partner has thusfar accumulated just over 45 points. I’m not sure she understands the rules.
I like games like that, but bigger and grander and everywhere.
Julian Wise 