[In the Lab] A Wintery Themed Kids' Game: Holy Smokes!


These are some loose notes expanding the initial pitch I posted a while back. The premise is that little cherubs are flying around the sky collecting smoke puffs from chimneys. The higher up you catch a puff, the more valuable it is, but the less likely you are to catch it.

The game is set up as shown above. Little house cards are placed on the board along the bottom. Each house will produce one or two smoke puffs in their own color. Your cherubs start at the top of the board, in a space of your choice.

On your turn, you may move your cherub one space up, down, left or right. Then, roll 3d6. Choose one result as the wind. All three result determine which houses will produce puffs this turn.

Wind: Any smoke puffs on the board move up one space. The wind dice determine which direction the puffs will rise. For example, if a puff was on the left space of row 2 and you rolled a 6, then the puff would rise to the 6 space.

Houses: For each die result, add a new smoke puff of that corresponding house-color to row 1. If a house has two smoke columns, it produces two smoke puffs. For example, you rolled a 1, 3, and 6. So, the blue house makes one blue puff, the purple house makes two purple puffs, the tan house makes two tan puffs.

Capturing Puffs: If a puff floats into a space occupied by your cherub, you keep that puff and score points based on the row in which the puff was captured. Row 1 captures score 1 point, row 2 scores 2 points, and so on. (There will be scoring bonuses for capturing complete sets, maybe?) If multiple cherubs are on a space, the puff is not captured and remains on the board.

End of the Game: I think the way this works out there won't be enough cherubs to capture all the puffs. So, the endgame is triggered perhaps when a certain number of puffs leave the board?

Anyhoo, this feels more like a kids' game, but I still want to make something interesting enough for the parents.

Comments

  1. Tom GurganusDecember 24, 2011 at 9:11 AM

    This is nice and clean. I like it. How can you be so prolific?!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Daniel SolisDecember 24, 2011 at 9:40 AM

    Playing Pitch Tag with Fred Hicks definitely helps.

    ReplyDelete

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