Racetrack — drive a car on squared paper
Each car keeps its speed from one move to the next and can change it by only one square at a time. Taking a bend means braking early. It is the physics of a racing car in a few lines of rule.
From Racetrack, a pencil-and-paper racing game.
What it shows a designer
One rule about momentum makes every move depend on the last. It shows how a simple physical constraint creates planning, risk and a track that the players draw themselves.
Credits
- Made by
- Unknown, known by the 1960s; rules published by Martin Gardner in 1973
- Sources
- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racetrack_(game)
www.neeldhara.com/courses/2024/01-mg/07/bookchapter-07.pdf
What you need
- squared paper
- a pen in a different colour for each player
How to play
- Draw the track. Draw a closed track on squared paper, a few squares wide, with a start line and a finish line.
- Start. Each car starts on a grid point on the start line. Your first move is one square in any direction, or none.
- Move. Each move repeats your last move, across and up, then changes either part by at most one square. Mark the new point and draw the line to it.
- Crash. If your line leaves the track, or ends on another car's point, you are out.
- Win. The first car across the finish line wins. Cars that cross on the same turn share the win.
After playing, talk about
- When did you have to start braking for a bend?
- Did anyone crash by going too fast? Could they have seen it coming?
- How would you draw the track to make the race closer?
Its blocks
How its blocks were checked against BoardGameGeek
- Racetrack: partly checkable, nothing against it. drawing the map: not checkable. race to finish: not checkable. indirect via board: not checkable. mostly skill: not checkable. full information: not checkable. take turns: not checkable.
In boardgameBuilder, Open game puts its blocks on the canvas. Changed, the same file can come back here from Propose a game.