by bwolfheart
Yes, its quite...dumb.The creator of the game wanted to add a theme to his game. Because yes, games with theme have an edge. And ones with a theme people like and enjoy have an even higher one. And some of those great themes include medieval and animals.
What he didn't realize or understand is that his game ALREADY HAS a GREAT and PERFECT theme to it that fit the rules OH SO WELL: ANIMALS. Since the rules of the game are heavily involved in strength of the pieces and size of the pieces that PUSH AND PULL smaller pieces and induce the "froze" status or what I like to call "scared frozen" and on top it. Having easily distinguished pieces from elephant to rabbit help this A LOT.
The thing Omar needed to do was only to STRENGTHEN/ENHANCE his animal theme further. Why not enhance the board to look like a safari or plains or something. If I had the chance to give him some designer advice on how to distance himself from chess. I would have told him to make the pieces more unique and different than the classic chess staunton look.
The Sumo "theme/story" is silly and Ive shared it with some friends that play absract games and find this tacked on story actually deters possible interest. He needs to stick to the animals.
Although I've always wondered why Camel and Horse. The Elephant makes perfect sense. Its the largest living land animal. But The camel stronger than a horse?..ehhhh. ANd aren't they generally the same height? And the Horse well...its a chess knight (another relation to chess it could avoid by removing the horse). I'd replace the horse. How about an Bull? That's a common animal type.
In fact I'm currently working on redesigning the pieces, but yes I'm sticking to the original chosen animals. I've actually drafted up quite a few pages worth of concept sketches. Some more abstract some more detailed full body animals.