William Attia’s Tai Chi Chuan - Coming from Cocktail Games

The release of Caylus Magna Carta is right around the corner, but William Attia already has another game in the pipeline: Tai Chi Chuan, from Cocktail Games. If Caylus and CMC were black, boxy pieces of granite, Tai Chi Chuan would be a creamy white cloud of marshmallow—that’s how different these games are.

“I just happened to realize one day that, as far as I know, there was no push-your-luck word game so far,” says Attia. “I thought about this game and proposed it to Cocktail Games, thinking it might fit quite well in their games range. The fact that Matthieu d’Epenoux (from Cocktail Games) had always refused to play Caylus because of its length and complexity was an additional incentive for me to propose a game to him.”

“Also, I thought it would be nice to try and design something very different from the Caylus CCG, the Caylus dice game, the Caylus miniatures game, the Caylus special DVD edition, the Caylus role-playing game and the few other secret Caylus projects I am working on,” he added, perhaps jokingly. Perhaps.

To play the game, the active player turns over a letter card, which he must use as the first letter of a word. He can then stop or turn over another card. If he continues, he must think up a new word that starts with the first letter and also contains this new letter. This process continues until he busts (scoring nothing) or stops. When he stops, other players can challenge him, turning over another letter and trying to think of a new word that contains all of the revealed letters. Players score points equal to the number of cards they collect.

Attia says that the game play has been balanced for the French language. French and English aren’t that different in terms of letter distribution, so the game might work equally well for those who parlez Anglais. Tai Chi Chuan is due to be published in September 2007.

Source: William Attia

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