SPIEL '17 Preview: Battlefold, or Fancy Face Beating with a Twist

Fold-it, released by designer Yohan Goh and Korean publisher Happy Baobab in 2016, is a representation of a game that we've seen many times before: Here's a pattern; now recreate that pattern before anyone else can. If you do so, you get a reward. Collect enough rewards, and you win the game, which of course is a reward of a different kind.

The innovation of the game came in each player having their own patterned cloth, with players needing to fold that cloth along the depicted crease lines to create the target pattern. Fun! Manipulating the cloth is pleasing in its own way, different from the tedious cloth manipulations required to fold sheets or clothes as the cloth is light and you can fling it any way that you want, including in the face of those who make the pattern faster than you do.

The designer of that game, working with Dave Choi, has now expanded upon the original idea in an ingenious way. You like folding cloths? Well, let's do more of that, but with everyone having a unique cloth this time. What's more, the folding is no longer its own reward, but a tool in a larger challenge, namely the killing of everyone else.

Four-player battleground

This new game —Battlefold, which Happy Baobab will release at SPIEL '17 — puts you in the role of a traditional fantasy character: warrior, elf archer, wizard, or feline assassin (since felines always make ideal killers, as the extinct birds and mice around my house will confess in the afterlife). Everyone starts with the same number of health points and basic actions on their player board: move one space orthogonally, attack with a strength of one.

As in Fold it, each round starts with the revelation of a target pattern, with many of the patterns showing question marks that players can fill in as they wish. As players finish making the target pattern on their individual cloth, they grab one of the available numbered action markers, with one marker less than the number of players. Once all the markers have been grabbed, players then take actions in the order shown on the action markers, with each player being able to take their basic actions — move, attack for one — as well as all of the actions showing on their folded cloth.

Some of the target pattern cards in the game

This is the beauty of the game. No longer as you simply attempting to be the best pattern-making machine; now you can attempt to make patterns that suit your current needs in the game, while yes, still meeting whatever standards have been set for the round.

As I mentioned before, each player has a different pattern and mix of symbols on their cloth, each specialized to match the nature of the characters, who each have their own ways of attacking along with special powers:

• The warrior is up front about things and can attack only those orthogonally adjacent to him — and if he's standing on the same space as someone else, he does two damage instead of one. Piledriver!

• The wizard attacks all those diagonally adjacent at the same time — bzzt! — and if any of the damage is not prevented by shields, then the wizard regains one life point. (When someone has a shield on their cloth, they take a shield token that they can hand in at a later time to reduce by one damage done to them.)

Elf and warrior

• The assassin also needs to be diagonally adjacent to someone to attack them, and while they can attack only one person at a time, they have the unique skill of ignoring traps on their cloth. (Normally, whenever a player has a trap showing on their cloth, they take a point of damage. The threat of this pain often has you wanting to fold those traps underneath other symbols to both avoid damage and do something positive for that action space instead, but this takes time! Time in which someome else can grab an action marker instead of you!)

• The archer can damage someone exactly two spaces away from them, and when that damage takes place the wounded body is pushed back one space. Thus, the archer tries to dance around the borders of the playing area, while the other three characters want to get in close, hit someone, then move away.

Sample treasure cards

When you take actions, you can do them in whatever order you want. A treasure chest gives you a random bonus that you can pocket for use at a later time, whether an extra point of damage, a healing potion, the ability to freeze someone if you damage them, diagonal movement, and more, so naturally you want to grab the treasures first so that you can figure out what best to do on a turn. Whoever is last in turn order has only the basic actions available to them (along with previously acquired treasure), so they often don't have much to think about beyond hoping that they don't get hit too badly before the end of the round.

Take enough damage, and you die. That's not good, of course, since death is kind of a bummer, but dying doesn't spell the end of the game for you. No, you become a ghost in the game. Now you're no longer interested in damaging other players (or perhaps you're simply unable to damage them, what with being a ghost and all), and instead your quest is to return to the land of the living. To do that, you must attack the other players (as before because attacking is all you know), but instead of doing damage to them, you simply regain a soul point for each damage you would have done.

Target acquired, with one solution

This solution to the death issue in what is ostensibly an elimination game is a winner. You're not simply out of the game watching others to see who wins as you still have a shot at winning as well — yet you don't have a good shot because your basic actions consist solely of one move. You can't use heealing potions to gain soul, and you can't acquire treasure items and shields because they slip through your fingers. Thus, if you don't finish your folds in time to collect an action marker, you have zero chance of "damaging" someone and reclaiming any sould bits. You're still in the game, yet you're penalized for having the poor judgment to die ahead of others — a great compromise for a game with this goal.

I've played Battlefold twice on a review copy from Happy Baobab, both with three players, and I got to experience the afterworld once as my self-healing wizard didn't heal himself sufficiently to stay among the living. Not finishing in time to take actions is frustrating, but you have only yourself to blame — and when you do manage to land a few blows (on targets that can't damage you since you're already dead), it feels good.

As for actually winning the game, you need to either be the last player standing in a field of ghosts, or you need to reclaim enough soul to return from the dead; apparently that feat will serve to impress everyone else enough to drop their weapons and fold before you in awe.

"Just remember that death is not the end"