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<07/11/2018 - 22:31 | 1010 Link Street, Marietta, GA, USA>

Ever since I forced myself to adapt to blocking UAD, I've updated my lifestyle in many different ways. Overall, the difference in this is my desire to put as much mental load of stimulus on my mind as possible. Sometimes, when I'm focusing on a particular task, the task in question is simply not enough to sustain me properly for long. When it comes to books of any variety, it's never been an issue, but with anything else, I usually have to divide my mind's total allocation somehow, to multitask essentially.

I used to be bad at multi-tasking, but these days it's been too easy. In order to stay happy and satisfied with my current mental alertness today, I've been relying on podcasts while I work on my latest project. Half my mind can stay engaged and interested in whatever podcast I put on, since I only need about half of it devoted to this new project of mine.

I have to admit that designing this game has been so much fun lately, though I'm still in the designing stages, which later will be put to a full Alpha Test between me and Lumina. What project am I working on exactly?

It's not too convoluted, and one day, if it succeeds for us, I might be able to turn it into a real digital game that others can play and enjoy as well. I'm essentially making a new board game, or I should say I'm redesigning and modding an existing concept. One of the many things Lumina and I do to have fun is to play board games together, usually against each other.

Finding such games to play through telepathy where cheating cannot happen is most difficult. If any game relies on a player visually hiding any information at all, such as cards or pieces, then it's no fun for us, since visual sensory sharing is always forced in telepathy this way. There's only been one specific board game that Lumina and I have been enjoying for years now, a game called Monopoly. Since it's possible to often calculate the probability of where the player would land several turns in advance, especially for Lumina, there is at least a tiny amount of skill involved in the game. Even though I'm used to having my ass handed to me on a silver plate each time we play against each other, I have managed to figure out better strategies and defeat the undefeated champion of Monopoly, time and time again. And against what I thought possible, she and I were both finally getting a little board of the game (pun intended).

I'm always the idealist; it's my job to come up with new and exciting ways to make something better, or make it exist if it doesn't already. So now, I'm designing a totally new board game experience, designed intentionally for both the intelligent minded, the patient, and the telepathically inclined players. This is a project I've named, Tier 5.

Tier 5 is heavily influenced by Monopoly, in that I've implemented much of the same game concepts inside of this new game. But don't be fooled; this is still an original idea, one that will prove fruitful upon design completion. Instead of one single board with forty spaces, there are now five different boards players can travel to and from, each system with its own unique set of spaces, unique set of rules, unique property chain systems, and unique effects. It's essentially one hell of a dynamic expansion pack to the original Monopoly design, one that could keep a single game of two players going for months instead of hours.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

I really went all out with the rules too. The game is designed to be fully dynamic compared to the original. Just by having more than one map to fast travel to, a bit more luck is removed from the game, replaced entirely by the decision of the player in strategy, since being in different map system has its own set of upsides and risks.

I set up certain properties to have different requirements for building hotels, while others have unique special effects for screwing over others. I built an invoice strike system to add penalty for players who want to stay in a safe system all the time and stay too stagnant. I made travel lanes that must be used when traveling, optional unless landing directly on them, whether intentional or not. Each system has its own unique set of cards, its own unique jackpot and jail system, and I've even added express lanes within systems that can be used as closer internal travel when properly owned. Some systems have far more than forty spaces, while others have tolls needed to pay before advancing.

Some pieces of land are corporate companies, expensive as hell to buy, but highly rewarding when others land on it, especially since some of them have no monopoly requirement to add development packs onto them. I made sure to be thorough, to add so many new variables to this game while keeping everything balanced in the background all at the same time. Good and bad luck can still affect everyone, yet there is skill in deciding where one goes, what they buy, how much they risk, how they plan and strategize for certain areas; every single factor about this new game is light-years better than Monopoly!

Truth be told, I've always waited for a day to come when someone would invent a newer, better Monopoly. Aside from the original game, Hasbro has come out with hundreds of different variations of the game, but I've been disappointed beyond patience in every one of them. Every time they come out with a 'new monopoly,' it's nothing more than a trashy redecoration of the same old game, trash in the decision to have nothing new about it. Who the hell wants to pay twenty dollars each time for an upgrade only to the aesthetics of the game? I wasn't fooled by their millionaire theme either, since anyone should easily see that the values are all the same when broken down by proportions. After years of it, I've had enough. If they won't make a better dynamic version of Monopoly, then I'll make one myself.

I don't know how well it would ever be received for other players, but my strong motivation in this creation is focused explicitly on Lumina and myself playing it together. If I can really make this work and sell it, that would be totally amazing, but my real objective is to design a new game that Lumina and I can have a blast playing for countless hours of time. There's a lot of background calculation Lumina would be doing if she does play this, which is why I know even she will struggle to succeed in this game with more control. It might be a bit much for others; I simply don't know. I'll have to Alpha Test this thing myself, looking for issues and errors before I present a playable version to her.

Little projects like this are very important to me, especially in this instance, because if this succeeds, Lumina and I can go on to play Tier 5 for such a long time. It might even inspire her to make some games herself. My bigger difficulty will be digitizing this later after the design specs are complete, but I'm not too worried.

The expansion of the game allows for the maximum recommended player count to shoot from 4 to 8. Having eight players would be some amazing chaos. I would love to have a chance to test this game with other people besides Lumina. If the day ever comes where this games can be released and gets some popularity, I hope others will be willing to play it with me as well.

I mean it. Tier 5 is the next best digital board game, coming soon, eventually... (Few years tops).