Hotseating

Gameplay where players take turns using an interface to interact with the game system.

A limitation with computer-based games is that unless they are networked there only exists one screen and perhaps only one set of input devices. In cases where players cannot share the screen - for example due to a need of secrecy - an alternative is to use Hotseating. This is simply that players have to take turns using the interface

This pattern is a still a stub.

Wikipedia has an entry for the concept of Hotseating in games.

Examples

WarioWare series

Many other computer games, e.g. Bloodbowl,

the Advance Wars series,

the Civilization series

support network gameplay as well as Hotseating.

The site GiantBomb has a long list of games supporting Hotseating.

Using the pattern

In fact, one could argue that all most non-digital Turn-Based Games (e.g. Chess and Go) use Hotseating as only one player can interact with the game system at a time. This does however rarely mean that game designers of those games need to consider the design options described in this pattern. This since no effort from designers need to be exerted for it to exist and also since players can for efficiency reasons ignore this and simultaneously interact with the games if everybody agrees that this is okay.

Split-Screen Views is an alternative to using Hotseating which allows for multiplayer Real-Time Games while only using one screen.

Relations

Turn-Based Games Multiplayer Games

History

New pattern created in this wiki.

Acknowledgements

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