Time for one you Brits stole from us Yanks :) - Blockbusters!

Okay, I've done some British-initiated ones..   I figure it's about time I show off one on the American side of the Game Show world... although the Brits still have this... with the "All New....", it's time to look at some Blockbusters!!!

This is one of those games, when I started it, I completely adapted the rules, to make it a chat-open game...

20 Hexagons.. 20 letters, 20 1-word answers.

Each letter has a question associated to it, in which the answer is one word, and the word starts with the single letter.     So the answer to a "P" question is a word that starts with the letter P

Version 1:    Originally, I didn't worry about going left to right, or top to bottom.   It was just 20 possible questions/answers, and behind each letter was a point value (5 to 25 points).   If you got the question right, you got the point value.    But to make it interesting there was always 1 "swap" space, in which if you got the question right, you got the points of the leader, and the leader got your points...  

There was 1 or 2 "Steal Half" points, in which you took half the points of the leader, and added it to your score, and subtracted it from the leader's points.   If you were the leader and you found those spaces, they were worth 0 points.

Highest score after 19 questions won the game, and if there was a tie, the tied players then competed for the last question.

The mechanics were (are) again, really simple (again, "keep it simple, stupid" works).

Click the letter, the question appears, let the players guess, then click the question to reveal the correct answer
Then click the answer to make the hexagon on the board disappear, and the point value appear.


Step 1:  Fill board button (loads up the question file)  - sets it to Round "0", so you can't run any questions yet
Step 2:  Start New round button - Loads the first set of questions into the board, sets the points, and reveals the letters on the board (making them able to reveal question) and increases the Round Number by 1.
Step 3:   One player picks the first letter, and it's clicked and the question appears.
Step 4:   When question is answered, click the question to reveal the correct answer
Step 5:   Click the answer to reveal the points won (if someone got it right)
Step 6:   Click the points to remove that hexagon from the board.
Step 7:   Repeat for 19 total questions, with #20 as the tie breaker




Well then, I decided, I was going to go with Version 2.. which was going to play more like the game:   2 players vs. 1 (which is the basic layout that it still is today), but leaving the points in (And you'll see why in a second)

A "P" question is chosen, and the letter P pops up in the "primary letter" hexagon.    Same principle applied as the game.     

Question/Answer/Points.

Then you click the scoreboard of whoever got the question right, and it either added the points, or it took the points from the highest player (Steal), or it swapped out points(Swap)   

And the hex changed to the color of that player.


The steal/swap, I did the lazy way, where you have to answer a pop up box to say which player had the most points - I could have programmed it to do it for me, but I just figured I'd go completely "keep it simple" for this one  - not to mention if the player that answered the question had the most points, I had to have a way to void the steal/swap function.)

Goal was for the team to go from left to right,  the single player top to bottom (yes, i have the colors backwards on the current screen, that's already been fixed)... 


(Ignore the black bar at the top, that's just me with a bad cut/paste job)

Then I realized I had a problem!!! 



 What happens if neither the single player or the team gets the answer?    OOPS!!  I can't just leave the space blank, as it could keep players from actually completing a connection...  so I have to make Version 3.

Version 3 is the same as Version 2, except there were 3 questions per letter (Harder (first), Medium (Second), Easy (Third))... if nobody could get the hard question, you show the answer, but then you click the "black hexagon" letter again (and no points awarded yet), to erase the question/answer and reveal the Medium question, and then if needed the easy question.



If the Blue (solo) Player won, by connecting top to bottom, the scores really didn't matter, as he/she wins the game and the prize.

If the Red (team) Players won, the player of the two with the higher score wins a bigger prize, the lesser score gets a small prize.

The worst thing about Version 3 is the trivia file... If I want to do a full three board game (where whoever wins 2 out of 3 boards wins the game), I have to have a trivia file with 180 questions in it... all of which have to be single word answers, and they have to be sorted in groups of 3 by letters to be read into the presentation.    (If I were to do a version 2 "best out of 3", I'd only need 60 questions in the file)

Do you know how hard it is to create 180 trivia questions that fit the lettering rules?  I've got other 'best out of three' game boards, but I can use any question/answer file to make it, so the question organization doesn't matter (although if i were to ever apply this 3 question rule to "Initial Reaction", god help me!).

Hard Q1
"E" answer
Medium Q1
"E" Answer
Easy Q1
"E" Answer
Hard Q2
"L" Answer
Medium Q2
"L" Answer
Easy Q2
"L" Answer
...

Repeat that for 18 more hexes/letters for 60 total question for one board.   Then do it again for board 2 and board 3.   Yep, folks.. that's 180 organized questions!!!  The Powerpoint side is easy... the question files are nightmares!!!!


PS:  The answer to the question is:  "Poteen".. so just remember that if I'm playing this game and you happen to stop by the show.

Coming up with those questions for each letter was a big struggle that I realized early on that keeps me from wanting to start my version of Blockbusters. Glad to see you were able to persevere and complete yours, well done!