New Game: DDoS (The Game)

Designers: Ashley Bingle & Josh Peters

Our game is based on the idea of a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, in which master computers control large groups of other computers in an attempt to take down large servers. While this game is designed to resemble such an attack, it takes a lot of creative license and requires no knowledge of computing to play.

Target Computer

In this game two (or more) players attempt to knock out the Target Computer seven times before they have gone through the draw deck of computers twice (or more if more players). Every turn the player draws an Upgrade card and flips over new computers into the Target's network. They cannot attack the Target unless there are no computers protecting it in its network. Instead they use the computers in their own network to take out those defensive computers and add them into their own network for future use.

In order to take down a computer the player must have an equal or greater Strength on computers that are ready to attack. However, each time a computer performs an attack it must wait a certain number of turns until it is able to move again, this is determined by its Speed value. (The Target computer's Speed tells how many computers are added to its network before each player's turn.) The cards are rotated through a series of four orientations to indicate how many turns it must wait until it can be used again.

When a player defeats a computer (aside from the target), they have the option to add it into their own network, provided that the combined Network Cost of the computers being supported by their Master is still less than or equal to the Network Connections available. If the network cannot hold the computer it is discarded into a stack that will be shuffled when the draw stack is depleted. They can also choose to replace another computer in their network, provided it has not been used in this turn to attack.

high network capacity Computer

At points the player may choose to improve network capacity, either by adding upgrade cards to that effect, or by capturing a high capacity computer with a larger number of network connections and using an entire turn to rearrange their network with that computer as the Master. Upgrade cards may be applied at any time, to any computer, and each type has its own duration for how long the upgrade lasts. There is no limit on the number of active upgrades, however, the player may never hold more than five upgrade cards in reserve.

Every time the Target Computer is taken out, its stats change, so that it has a different connection capacity, different strength, and different number of computers being flipped from the draw stack.

The winner is the player who has taken out the most Target Computer cards when all seven have been beaten. (If there is a tie, as there might be in a 3 player game: 3-3-1, then the player with the strongest network of computers wins.)