{"id":17880,"date":"2025-04-12T10:05:54","date_gmt":"2025-04-12T10:05:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/?p=17880"},"modified":"2025-04-18T13:50:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-18T13:50:06","slug":"wriggle-roulette-%e3%82%a6%e3%83%8a%e3%82%ae%e3%81%8b%e3%83%98%e3%83%93%e3%81%8b","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/faidutti.com\/blog\/blog\/2025\/04\/12\/wriggle-roulette-%e3%82%a6%e3%83%8a%e3%82%ae%e3%81%8b%e3%83%98%e3%83%93%e3%81%8b\/","title":{"rendered":"Wriggle Roulette – \u30a6\u30ca\u30ae\u304b\u30d8\u30d3\u304b"},"content":{"rendered":"
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J\u2019ai toujours eu une certaine fascination pour les jeux minimalistes, ceux qui parviennent \u00e0 cr\u00e9er une forte tension avec peu de r\u00e8gles et peu de mat\u00e9riel. C\u2019est de cet int\u00e9r\u00eat que sont n\u00e9s des jeux comme Attila<\/em><\/a>, devenu Licornes, mais aussi Babylone \/ Soluna<\/a>, Maracas<\/a><\/em>, et plus r\u00e9cemment de petits jeux de cartes comme 6 Suspects<\/em><\/a>. Et, bien s\u00fbr, puisque c\u2019est leur sp\u00e9cialit\u00e9, j\u2019ai r\u00e9guli\u00e8rement essay\u00e9 de placer plusieurs de ces jeux chez Oink Games, l\u2019\u00e9diteur japonais des excellents Deep Sea Adventure<\/em> ou A Fake Artist Goes to New York<\/em>. Si le premier jeu que j\u2019ai plac\u00e9 chez Oink, Whale to Look<\/em><\/a>, n\u2019\u00e9tait pas tellement minimaliste, le second, Wriggle Roulette, l\u2019est clairement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curieusement, alors que j\u2019ai fait des \u00e9tudes plut\u00f4t litt\u00e9raires, les enseignements scolaires dont je me souviens le mieux, et dont je garde le meilleur souvenir, sont ceux de math\u00e9matiques. Dans les ann\u00e9es soixante-dix, les programmes de maths de premi\u00e8re et de terminale faisaient une tr\u00e8s large place aux  probl\u00e8mes de probabilit\u00e9 et de d\u00e9nombrement. Tr\u00e8s souvent, ces probl\u00e8mes tr\u00e8s abstraits supposaient que l\u2019on pioche dans un sac contenant des billes blanches et noires. Et, donc, me suis-je dit, pourquoi ne pas faire un jeu enti\u00e8rement construit sur cette id\u00e9e, un sac duquel les joueurs, \u00e0 tour de r\u00f4le, piochent des billes qui ont une certaine probabilit\u00e9 d\u2019\u00eatre blanches ou noires, probabilit\u00e9 modifi\u00e9e \u00e0 la marge par chaque bille d\u00e9j\u00e0 tir\u00e9e.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Playing the prototype with the Oink team at the Taiwan Boardgame expo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mon premier prototype, dont le titre h\u00e9sitait entre Back to Black<\/em> et Into the Black<\/em>, \u00e9tait donc constitu\u00e9 d\u2019un sac contenant des pions blancs et noirs \u2013 des pions, parce que les billes, \u00e7a a tendance \u00e0 rouler sur la table. \u00c0 chaque tour, le sac faisait un tour de la table et chacun des joueurs \u00e0 son tour piochait, sans les regarder, un certain nombre de billes, ou d\u00e9cidait de ne rien piocher et de s\u2019arr\u00eater l\u00e0. Bien s\u00fbr, c\u2019\u00e9tait un jeu de prise de risque, le but du jeu \u00e9tant de s\u2019arr\u00eater juste avant qu\u2019un certain nombre de billes noires n\u2019aient \u00e9t\u00e9 pioch\u00e9es. Des probabilit\u00e9s, donc, mais aussi un peu de pari sur ce que font les autres joueurs.<\/p>\n\n\n

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J\u2019ai apport\u00e9 ce premier prototype \u00e0 la Taiwan Boardgame Expo<\/a>, \u00e0 l\u2019automne 2024, et y ai fait jouer une partie de l\u2019\u00e9quipe d\u2019Oink. Ils ont suffisamment appr\u00e9ci\u00e9 pour que nous y rejouions un mois plus tard en Allemagne, \u00e0 Essen, avec le reste de l\u2019\u00e9quipe. Il y avait cependant encore un petit probl\u00e8me avec le d\u00e9compte des points, un peu trop tarabiscot\u00e9 pour ce type de jeu. C\u2019est Jun Sasaki qui a eu l\u2019id\u00e9e de simplifier encore le syst\u00e8me de score, fen faisant un vrai jeu minimaliste. On a sign\u00e9 le contrat et, comme toujours avec Oink, tout est all\u00e9 tr\u00e8s vite, puisqu\u2019il se sera \u00e9coul\u00e9 huit mois entre la pr\u00e9sentation du prototype \u00e0 Taipei et la sortie du jeu pour le Tokyo Games Market.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Je pensais que ce jeu allait rester abstrait, noir et blanc, et ai \u00e9t\u00e9 assez surpris lorsque j\u2019ai d\u00e9couvert le th\u00e8me choisi par l\u2019\u00e9quipe japonaise, la p\u00eache aux anguilles, et les couleurs noir et rouge, mais pourquoi pas. Il s\u2019agit maintenant de p\u00eacher le plus possible d\u2019anguilles, noires, en \u00e9vitant de rapporte des vip\u00e8res, rouges. Baleine, anguilles, il semble d\u00e9cid\u00e9ment qu\u2019il y ait une th\u00e9matique \u00e0 mes jeux japonais !<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wriggle Roulette – \u30a6\u30ca\u30ae\u304b\u30a8\u30d3\u304b
Un jeu de Bruno faidutti et Jun Sasaki
2 \u00e0 8 joueurs \u2013 20 minutes
Publi\u00e9 par Oink Games<\/a><\/em>
Boardgamegeek<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019ve always had a fascination for minimalistic games, games which manage to generate a real tension with few rules and few components. This is why and how I designed games such as <\/em>Attila<\/a>, now republished in Poland as Unicorns, but also <\/em>Baylon \/ Soluna<\/a>, Maracas<\/a> and, more recently, card games like <\/em>6 Suspects<\/a>. Of course, since it is what they do best, I regularly try to pitch these games to Oink, the Japanese publisher of the outstanding <\/em>Deep Sea Adventure and <\/em>A Fake Artist Goes to New York. In the end, the first game of mine published by Oink, <\/em>Whale to Look<\/a>, was not that minimalist, but the second one, <\/em>Wriggle Roulette, clearly is.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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Playing the prototype with the Oink team at the Taiwan Boardgame expo.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Surprisingly for someone who ended making mostly literary and social science studies, the school lectures I most enjoyed and best remember were those of mathematics. In France in the seventies, the high school math curricula were heavy on probability and combinatorics. Many of the examples and problems we had at school involved drawing from a bag containing white and black marbles. So, I thought, why not a game entirely based on this, with just a bag from which players, on turn, draw white or black marbles, the probability of drawing one or the other being  slightly modified with every new marble drawn.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first prototype, called sometimes <\/em>Back to Black, sometimes <\/em>Into the Black, was just that, a bag and black and white tokens \u2013 tokens because marbles tend to roll on the table and disappear under furniture. Every round, every player would either draw some tokens from the bag  or just stop and leave the game. Since the goal was to stop just before a certain  number of black tokens were drawn, this was a game of probability, of risk taking, but also of double guessing.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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I brought this new prototype in Fall 2024 at the Taiwan Boardgame Expo<\/a>, and played it with some of the Oink team. They liked enough to ask me to play it again one month later, in Essen, with the rest of the team. There was still, however, an issue with the scoring system, slightly too convoluted for that type of game. The final scoring system, which makes this game truly minimalistic, was Jun Sasaki\u2019s idea. Then we signed the contract and, like always with Oink, things went very fast, since there has been only eight months between my first demo of the game in Taipei and its publication at the Tokyo Game Market.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

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I thought the game would stay in black and white, and was a bit surprised when I discovered the setting \u2013 fishing eels in the mud \u2013 and the colors \u2013 red and black \u2013 chosen by the Japanese team. It is now about fishing the most black eels, the best ones, without drawing nasty red vipers. Whale, eels, there seems to be something fishy with my Japanese games !<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wriggle Roulette – \u30a6\u30ca\u30ae\u304b\u30a8\u30d3\u304b
A game by Bruno Faidutti & Jun Sasaki
2 to 8 players \u2013 20 minutes
Published by Oink Games<\/a><\/em>
Boardgamegeek<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n