Battleship
23/11/20
For this task, we were asked to reinvent the game Battleship by implementing something new into the game. This could be whatever we wanted, as long as the game was still instantly recognisable as Battleship. To me, the main part of battleship is blind guessing and I don’t think that the game would remain recognisable without it. However, with my reinvention of the game, you don’t always have to make blind choices.
I decided that the best way to go was to add in power ups to the game. Various kinds with both pros and cons depending on who they were used on. My main inspiration for this was the well-known mobile game, ‘Candy Crush’. It’s another game that plays on a grid, which is why it came to mind for this task.
I have added four power ups to the game which I think both reinvents it and still remains instantly recognisable as Battleship. The first power up is the ‘Bomb’. As shown above, it reveals one square around each of its sides. The second is ‘Reveal’. When this power up is used, you can either choose to reveal a column or row NOT both. ‘Redirect’ allows you to redirect a hit coming from the other player. You can do this to avoid being hit, or to deceive the other team into wasting their go on an empty square. ‘Deflect’ enables you to deflect a hit coming from the other player and fire it back at the other player. For each of these power ups, the impact must land on a ship for it to count as a hit. Revealing the whereabouts of a ship doesn’t count and you will have to wait until the next turn to sink a ship.