Rocks, maps, scissors

Rock, paper, scissors is one of the most familiar games out there, although it’s not the kind you play for hours with your friends. In fact, it is mostly used when someone needs to make a random decision and has multiple options to choose from. The core concept is that everyone knows how it works, so it’s simple to implement into a variety of situations.

Rocks, maps, scissors is a very basic card game that uses the rock, paper, scissors mechanics in order to decide the outcome of every encounter. Not only that, but the cards themselves are actual depictions of the said objects, except that paper is replaced with maps, which is not that much of a stretch anyway. It might sound boring, but there are a few more elements to the equation.

Each player starts with five cards, and they can be pretty random. You pick three of them and place them in the middle of the table, while the other player does the same. After all three cards are played, they each go head-to-head with each other, and the victory rules are the same as in the classic version. However, you can alter these rules by playing cards with special properties.

Depending on whether you win the duels or not, the game rewards you with coins, which can be used to purchase cards from a random stack. These cards can also have special abilities, such as to transform your opponent’s card into something else, or even to switch places with other cards on the table. This gimmick adds more excitement to the formula, but it’s not enough to assure replayability.

As such, the mechanics get pretty repetitive after a while, especially since there are not enough cards to pick from. It’s a fun experience and a pretty neat idea, but it needs more content to keep players entertained for longer than a few minutes. Granted, the graphics are pretty nice, and even the animations seem very polished and smooth, which is a great touch.

In the end, Rocks, maps, scissors has the opportunity to evolve into something much better, if more content is added in the future. Obviously, more content would kind of ruin the rock, paper, scissors analogy, but more gameplay mechanics could also work instead of new cards.