Liubo Lab

This project is is created for Carnegie Mellon University 

 Entertainment Technology Center, 2023 spring

Tools

Roles

Role

I am the producer of the project. I work on planning the project's priorities, creating timetables, and reporting to the project instructor. I also take notes during meetings to inform the team about areas for improvement. Additionally, I am in charge of making design decisions and hosting playtests to gather valuable feedback from both school professors and the board game community. 

I am also involved in implementing the rules of the game in Unity.

History

The ancient Chinese board game Liubo (六博棋) is one of the earliest board games in history. It was once very popular but is now only known from limited artifacts and texts. Its boards are often found buried in tombs, along with playing pieces. Scholars have argued for centuries about how the board game was actually played, and several methods have been proposed


Goals for the project

Reconstruct and playtest this “lost” ancient board game, based on available artifacts, texts, records, English/Chinese-language scholarship, consulting with experts, etc. – plus our team member’s own ideas about player experience and which version of the game seems the most fun.

Create a digital method (a game, an app, etc.) to teach contemporary audiences how to play our proposed reconstruction of Liubo. Also convey some of the history of the game and information about how it’s been reconstructed.


Game Overview

We created a PC game designed for two local players. The player with the green pieces goes first. They roll the sticks, which generates a number indicating how many spaces their pieces need to move. Players take turns rolling the sticks.


Game Rules Summary

Liubo is a game about birds catching fish. Each player controls 6 pieces representing birds. These birds fly around the board in order to reach the center square, which represents a pond full of fish. Birds catch fish by crossing over or landing on this pond, and then score points by dropping the fish in the circle “Nest” spaces on the opponent’s side of the board. However, you can also score points by capturing your opponent’s birds before they reach the nests! The first player to 6 points wins.

We introduced the rules of the game in both English and Chinese.