In 2013 I stumbled on the paper “Evolutionary Game Design” by Cameron Browne & Frederic Maire. I found myself chewing over their notion of “game quality” and set to creating a design of my own under strict parameters: it had to be a combinatorial game, made of parts that would be accessible and reproducible for cheap.

Because the best hobbies beget new hobbies, this evolved into an excuse to learn how to model in CAD and use a 3D printer. At bottom, the result was a snappy, 20-30 minute, two-player game where the value of your pieces is in constant flux (and all you need are d6s and a chessboard). I named it sen.

I hope there are a lot of reasons you’ll want to play sen, but one of the qualities I like best about it is that it offers players two paths to victory, that ensures no piece is ever the weakest or strongest.

As I developed the rules, I also designed a set of characters and built a backstory for a speculative production run of the game (Hobbies begetting more hobbies, again).

On its 10th anniversary, some friends and I put together this video on how to play the basic game. (Disclaimer: the URL at the end has been deactivated!)

The complete rules can be found here.

Animation Credits (The Strangeworks):
Written & Directed by: Eric Chang
Produced by: Lisa Muñoz, Christine Hernandez
Animation: Jordan Bruner, Max Strizich
Voice of Hartley: Christopher Gebauer
Music: Ambrose Yu

Sen designed by Eric Chang in 2013.

What does fun mean to me?