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Thoughts On Project Smatter

What? Two posting days in a row? Is he back, folks? Is he back?
Well, we'll see.
I wanted to coalesce some thoughts I've had for a two-player semi-abstract game.  Its working title is Project Smatter, as it involves cyberpunk and chess elements.  Well, chess-ish.
That's the thing.  The game as I will envision it will push how we envision abstract games, while also utilizing different mechanics from the oldest games of the genre.  I especially want to play with:
  • Pieces that change into other pieces.
  • Different capturing types:
    • Jumping, a la Checkers
    • Taking, a la Chess
    • Hammer-and-anvil / surrounding, a la games of the Tafl family.
  • An unusual board
Right now, it's a 2-player game where each side starts with 8 pieces, all of the basic type - sPawn (Can move 3 spaces, hammer-and-anvil style conversion, turns enemy pieces into friendly sPawn).  Ideally, sPawn can be (optionally) upgraded under certain conditions to become cRooks (Can move 2 spaces, jump to convert enemy pieces into... friendly sPawn? Friendly pieces of the same type?), which can in turn become duChesses (Can move 1 space, can take enemy pieces, removing them from the game) which are the pieces used to win the game (by holding/occupying Victory Spaces? Crossing enemy lines? Returning home? Capturing a certtain number of pieces?)
I'm also looking at having a round board, with rotated rings inside to create a messed-up grid for movement, that will hopefully encourage lateral thinking in the spatial strategy.  But maybe a simple square grid works best? I don't know.
I'm a little paralyzed by the possibilities presented by some of the fundamentals, like I was with board shape for Cultivate.  Here's hoping I can work through them faster than I did for Cultivate.  At the very least, I've got a chewy basic premise, and some great chess-pun/references for the names of pieces.  We'll see.

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