Emerson's Car Racing Game

After the LeSS Conference in Amsterdam, I was so lucky to join the after party in Craig Larman’s AirBnB place with most of the LeSS trainers. I showed them the “Emerson’s car racing game” and we played together. The LeSS trainers liked the game very much. I was not surprised that Craig eventually won the race game:-) Here’s the spec of the game in Gherkin language.

# race_game.feature
Feature: Emerson's car racing game
  In one of the Odd-e company gathering, our colleague Emerson Mills
  introduced a game he invented. It's a simple game that is fun to play
  with 3 to 10 people. The game helps people to understand *technical
  debt* and *legacy code* in software development.

  If we made this into an online game, probably we can have more people
  to play together. It might be fun to play in a conference with many
  people and don't forget to provide the final winner a bit of rewards.

  Roles in the game:
    Organizer: Start the game, call for next tick
    Players: In each tick make choice, play the dice and move his/her "car"

  In an offline game, the "car" can be a card, on which you can mark the
  current number of damages. But we sometimes use our phones, and everybody
  remember their number of damages.

  The final should be at least 10 steps from the beginning line.

  Scenario: start a game
    Given the organizer created a game
    When a player join the game
    Then the player's car should be at the beginning line with 0 damage
    When another player join the game
    Then there should be two cars at the beginning line

  Scenario Outline: play a tick
    Given a player's car has existing number of <damages>
    When the organizer starts a new tick
    Then he should be asked to choose if he want to go 'normal' or 'super'
    When he makes a <choice> and the dice show <number>
    Then his car should <go steps> with <expected damages> on it.

    Examples: Player chose 'normal' and played odd numbers
      | damages | choice  | number | go steps | expected damages |
      |      0  | normal  |    1   |     1    |           0      |
      |      0  | normal  |    3   |     1    |           0      |
      |      0  | normal  |    5   |     1    |           0      |
      |      1  | normal  |    1   |     0    |           1      |
      |      2  | normal  |    1   |     0    |           2      |

    Examples: Player chose 'normal' and played even numbers
      | damages | choice  | number | go steps | expected damages |
      |      0  | normal  |    2   |     2    |           0      |
      |      0  | normal  |    4   |     2    |           0      |
      |      0  | normal  |    6   |     2    |           0      |
      |      1  | normal  |    2   |     1    |           1      |

    Examples: Player chose 'super'
      | damages | option  | number | go steps | expected damages |
      |      0  | super   |    1   |     1    |           1      |
      |      0  | super   |    2   |     2    |           1      |
      |      0  | super   |    3   |     3    |           1      |
      |      1  | super   |    1   |     0    |           2      |
      |      1  | super   |    2   |     1    |           2      |

  Scenario: end a game
    Given player1's car is 3 steps from the final
    And   player2's car is 3 steps from the final
    And   the organizer starts a new tick
    When player1 goes 3 steps
    And  player2 goes 2 steps
    Then player1 win
    And  player2 doesn't win
    And  this is the end of the game

  Scenario: Organizer starts a choose-first tick
    Given I've joined the game
    When the organizer starts a new choose-first tick
    Then I should be asked to choose if I want go normal or super
    And I will see the dice play after that

  Scenario: Organizer starts a choose-later tick
    Given I've joined the game
    When the organizer starts a new choose-later tick
    Then I will see the dice play first
    Then I should be asked to choose if I want go normal or super