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[JasonPickering]

Hey guys, was thinking about Tablet games. specifically the ones that work great when you have it laying in front of you like a board game. (Monopoly, OlO, Glitch Tank) I was just wondering has there ever been a good way to have hidden information in a format like this? I always think of players having hands of cards, or in sports game where you pick your plays, but you can always see the other player. Is there a way to do this?

[The Translocator]

You could always hide all the information for every player except the one that are currently taking their turn, similar to the way Frozen Synapse does it.

[JasonPickering]

Yeah. I was wondering if it was something I could design where the tablet stayed between the players, not something that was passed back and forth.

[valrus]

Before the game starts, pass the tablet around and have each player decide on something that will give information only to them, even if seen publicly.

You could, for example, give them an opportunity to "mark" their cards by putting "fingerprints" or some other mark on the back.  Each player would try to come up with a scheme to mark which card was which without being obvious about it.  Even with a very simple card game (like "highest card wins") this could lead to some neat gameplay, trying to figure out your opponents' schemes without revealing your own.

[Uykered]

Are you be able to design what ever it is without hidden information then? It's not usually a good thing unless it's more of a party/casual style thing, but in that case you could maybe just use phones for the hidden information and have the tablet as the central "board".

[SirNiko]

Pokemon Stadium does a thing where the game automatically hides your information and you press a button to momentarily bring it up if you need to see. Unfortunately, Pokemon Stadium is structured so that players can know all their pokemon's attacks before the match and not need to check at all if they have a good memory.

There are phones that are popular in Japan because they have a secret mode that uses subtle color shifts or changes to the shape of icons to indicate some incoming calls, so they are only obvious to the person who owns the phone. You might borrow some of the ideas there.

http://www.technobuffalo.com/2013/01/18/fujitsu-f-series-the-official-phone-of-japanese-philanderers/

The problem with marking cards is that the game will favor players with good memories who don't need to mark the cards or whatever they use at all and therefore don't reveal any information to their opponent. A very advanced player could memorize all the possible marking methods.

You might make something work where each player starts by taking a turn, marking their cards or simply memorizing their layout, then blanking the screen before passing to the next player. Once all players have seen the board, you can put it between all the players and let it go. If the marks are subtle enough and the background complicated enough that an observer won't know (for example, a snowflake background where the player knows one very particular snowflake is theirs, or just a sequence of letters where the player knows one combination represents their mark) you might make it so that even an advanced player can't know which one is the opponent until it's too late and the match is over.

[dirak]

It could be something as simple as when each player types in their name, something on the screen flashes up.

For example, if you were making a murder detective board game, every player would type their name in, but one would get the information that they murdered someone.

[eyeliner]

Use their bluetooth connected devices to send them info about the cards?

[valrus]

The problem with marking cards is that the game will favor players with good memories who don't need to mark the cards or whatever they use at all and therefore don't reveal any information to their opponent. A very advanced player could memorize all the possible marking methods.

You might make something work where each player starts by taking a turn, marking their cards or simply memorizing their layout, then blanking the screen before passing to the next player. Once all players have seen the board, you can put it between all the players and let it go. If the marks are subtle enough and the background complicated enough that an observer won't know (for example, a snowflake background where the player knows one very particular snowflake is theirs, or just a sequence of letters where the player knows one combination represents their mark) you might make it so that even an advanced player can't know which one is the opponent until it's too late and the match is over.

I think you might be thinking of a different kind of card game than I was. (Of course, if you know your own cards and their positions, you can still know your own cards when they're flipped over face-down.)

I was thinking of something more like the following game. Each player would have their own deck (say the numbers 1 to 21 plus four specials), and before play begins each gets two or three minutes alone to scrawl something on the back of their cards (dots, lines, shapes, dongs, whatever).  After play begins, however, the cards are dealt at random, face down.  Until you actually choose a card to play it, the only information you have about your own cards comes from the marking strategy you invented privately before the game started.

In other words, your pre-game task is to make a "language" describing each card that's easy enough for you to remember under pressure, but hard for an opponent to work out the system. 

(Granted, if I have neuro-atypical memory powers and can memorize how 25 completely arbitrary dong drawings map to 25 card possibilities, then I would make a strong opponent.  But not necessarily the best opponent, since there are two other parts of the strategy beyond minimizing the obviousness of your own system: figuring out other players' patterns, and setting up apparent (but false) patterns as part of a misdirection strategy.)

[Blink]

Make it like an advent calendar:

Large pic

Just have a little tile you can open with the relevant info. Teach the players this, then when they need their secret info, they can cover that small part of the screen and open it, then close it and you can make that digitally disappear. It might not work in actuality, but this is the route I would pursue - small enough to hide and something that appears and disappears in a set part of the board that is established very clearly before it even appears.

[Elwood Sharit]

Maybe a bit finicky but you could have the cards show their backs to all players when the tablet is flat, but if it's picked up and tilted in one of the four directions, then that player's cards are revealed to them. This way you could tell if someone was trying to look at someone else's cards if they tiled the tablet any direction besides towards them.

But this is kind of limited for obvious reasons.

[JasonPickering]

the tilting idea is interesting. as well as the advent calender idea that one reminds me of Texas hold em, where the players peak at their cards.