I don't know if this is true for other designers, but I always feel more creative in the Autumnal months: Temperatures dropping and giving way to crisp evenings, the Pumpkin Festival Show in my hometown. For some reason, my brain just clicks better this time of year; and when it does, it seeks to game-ify everything.
If you'll remember, I started this whole "Brainstorm Challenge" thing as a way to keep my brain fresh in those non-Autumn months. It's lead to some hilarious light fillers (Octopy Wall Street) and a game--Gyre--that I'm working to further develop and pitch to Publishers like Talicor, Mindtwister, and Nestorgames. While some suggested changes to Gyre have caused it to simmer in the back of my mind for a bit, other ideas for games have been popping up left and right. Listed below are just some of them.
Stop, Police! -- Living in rural Ohio has it's benefits: clean air, the ability to see the stars at night, and fresh produce straight from the farm to the plate. However, with these positive aspects of life also come rednecks with giant trucks and the inability to obey traffic laws. This penchant for vehicular manslaughter led me to an interesting thought though. After seeing multitudes of drivers merging into the wrong lanes, speeding through yellow lights, and cutting others off without turn signals, my thoughts of "I wish there was a cop here to give them a ticket" turned to I wonder if there are any games where you could take certain actions if another piece wasn't present in the game or in a particular zone.
From what more knowledgeable gamer friends tell me, there is something like this present in Illuminati and El Grande, so I'll have to check those out. The first thing my mind went to--and I know the theme has been done to death--is something Gangster related and worker placement-esque. A large majority of worker placement games have static workers, i.e. meeples that simply act as triggers for resource gain when placed in a certain area. I'd really like to see a placement game where each of the workers were dynamic. In this case, maybe 3 gangsters that have a hierarchy, a double agent, and a policeman. Resources could be "cheated" out of particular zones at higher rates depending on the rank of the gangster placed there, but would be reduced dependent on the number of policemen there. The role of double agents could then be defined based on the level of cheating that has occurred there in previous rounds.
Slide Rulers -- I played a LOT of Rummy with my relatives while growing up. I also played more games of Boggle and Scrabble than I care to recount. But the one game I think I've played more than anything else is Mancala. There's just something elegant and accessible about that game. (It also helped that my mother is a shark at it, which caused me and my competitive nature to figure out strategies faster than normal). Even today, I own 4 mancala boards--travel, 2x normal size, and a custom carved board--because I enjoy the game so much.
After so many plays, however, Mancala does lose something. You can start the game with differing amounts of pebbles in each pod, but at its core, the game is just a math equation that's relatively simple to figure out for experienced players. My though, much like the game above, focused around "what would happen if you made each of the pods have a variable power or made the pebbles that moved around the board different?" To answer this, I made the pebbles blue and pink dice (to represent boys and girls) and changed the banal pods into playground equipment or locations you would find in an elementary school. Players would get 2 blue dice and 2 pink dice and attempt to move them across the playground into their "home base." Each space moved would subtract one pip from the die; if a kiddo ran out of pips, he/she was exhausted and could be rejuvenated through a secondary game resource known as lunch money. Lastly, would be black dice known as bullies. If one of your dice came upon a bully, he/she could bypass it if the number showing on the die was higher, otherwise an amount of lunch money equal to the difference would have to be paid. End game scoring would be 1 point for a singular boy or girl on the home base, 5 points for a boy/girl pair, and the square of a group (i.e. 3 boys = 9pts).
Whack-A-Mole -- After punching out the chits to Mage Wars and Small World Realms, I couldn't help but wonder what could be done with the sheets and sheets of leftover punchboard most gamers probably just throw out. In seeing the Cardboard arcade idea good friend Chevee Dodd came up with, an idea for a super cheap filler game based around Arcade Favorite whack-a-mole dawned on me.
If you could find a leftover punchboard that was roughly 8 x 8, you could give each player a pawn that he/she would place on the grid somewhere. From there deal out 7 cards from the deck (which, ideally would consist of 13 each of up/down/left/right cards). Finally, roll a d8 and a custom die with letters A through H on it. The combined result (e.g. E6) would be where the "mole" popped up and players would race to play a sequence of cards that would take their pawn from their current space to the location of the mole. First one to play the correct sequence gets a point. Incorrect sequences would be penalized by a 5 card hand rather than a 7 card hand. First player to whack 5 moles wins.
I am NOT a Crook -- The last idea I had was inspired by the RNC and DNC that have taken place over the last couple weeks. Instead of stories that focus on what the candidates can do for our country, all I've heard about is the LIES LIES LIES rhetoric and bipartisan mudslinging. This got me to thinking: most candidates, when confronted with campaign shortcomings will either deny any wrongdoing or claim that they don't know what you're talking about. This got me thinking about a Hanabi style bluffing game with political themes and undercurrents.
Each player would be dealt one of 10 potential candidates that only they would know. They would then be dealt 4 "campaign promise cards" that would be visible by every other player but them. Each candidate would have certain attributes like charisma, funds, etc. that would help them throughout the game, but the basic crux would be that each candidate would be making campaign promises to voters based on what they THINK is in their hand, and then other candidates could make counter claims based on the public information. Rival candidates could expose a lie told by a rival, but in doing so would allow them to turn over a campaign promise in their hand, thus giving them increased knowledge about their potential campaign promises.
Splatter Up! -- With the success of DreadBall on Kickstarter, I really want someone to make a Baseball version of Blood Bowl. I played a bit in college and also loved the Mutant League series of video games when I was in Junior High. I think, with his pedigree and experience in game design, that something like this would be right up AJ Porfirio's alley.
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