Look at This Cool Path Tile Game That I Made

It's probably not my least autistic characteristic, but I'm obsessed with it!

The path tile game is exactly the type of open-ended, easily-customizable game that I like to reskin with my own theme. My second favorite is the Royal Game of Ur, because we're not currently solid on what exactly the rules were, but even that's far behind how fun I think it is to make and play with these maze-like tiles.

This specific path tile game was made as a present for my four-year-old niece, so the idea was that it would be colorful but otherwise pretty simple. I wanted her to be able to make up her own rules, but I also wanted her to be able to play with the tiles as-is, matching colors or building little paths for her toys to follow, etc. 

Each tile is mat board, from a set I bought for $18 waaaaay back in 2014, have used for about a billion projects since, and STILL haven't used up--although omg I would LOVE to, lol! It's this exact set and it's $23 now, but back then I also had to pay almost nine bucks for shipping and now shipping is free, so I guess it's actually cheaper today? Rude.

Anyway, because the mat board is in assorted colors I just made the colored sides be the bottom and embellished the unfinished backs to make the game pieces. I don't think having the backs of the tiles being random colors would negatively affect any kind of rules someone would make for their game. Heck, you could even turn it into a feature!

I measured and cut the tiles, about 50 of them, measured and marked where the paths should meet the edges, and chose the four colors I wanted to use, and then got the whole family together to actually draw and color the paths. It was a couple of chill evenings listening to music and podcasts, and it was fun to see how everyone's path-making style was a little different. Some people liked smooth lines, some people liked lots of wiggles, some people had loop-de-loops, some people made lots of angles--between the four of us, I think we got through pretty much every possible permutation of a four-path square tile!

The marker is probably a little less professional-looking than paint would have been, but on the other hand I think we were all neater with marker than we would have been with paint, ahem. And I also like that marker didn't add a layer of dimensionality to the tiles, so if you don't notice the few coloring errors they do almost look printed. 

My favorite thing, though, is actually playing with these tiles, and even though it was a lot of work to make what's essentially a toy, I'm VERY tempted to make another version just for me. I think it would be cool to lay out all the tiles with the paths drawn in but not colored, and then choose the path colors according to some system known only to me--outward radiating rainbow, perhaps? Maybe something that looks more ombre? Obviously when you play the game you'd never think about trying to achieve that exact placement, but I like the idea of there being a single hidden order inside the game that's there to discover.

Okay, maybe this is actually my MOST autistic characteristic, lol!

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