GOPOLYCULEGO, a card-drafting game about building a polycule

I’ve made a new prototype for the Design Research Playground. GOPOLYCULEGO is a multiplayer card-drafting game about building a polycule, for two to five people. It’s a digital version of a physical card game.

It was inspired by Pouyan Bizeh’s doctoral research. The experiment was to see whether we could learn something about using games to explore polycules by appropriating the logics and mechanics of another game, in this case a sushi-conveyor card game. The obvious answer was yes(!), you can make a game that works, but it probably misses the mark in terms of representing what a real polycule might be like.

So it’s a bit of a failure too. It’s still a balanced, playable and potentially enjoyable game, it just doesn’t have any useful rhetorical value.

Play GOPOLYCULEGO here.

Written by

Dr Joseph Lindley

Joe leads Design Research Works and is a Senior Research Fellow at Lancaster University. He is passionate about the value of Design Research, in particular in applying that value to the challenges associated with emerging technologies, rapid societal change, and living sustainably. Probably best described as a 'generalist' his research practice usually involves material engagements with possible futures.