[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

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has...
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results tha...
Read more

One Thing to Avoid in Game Design

Image
When game designer Paul Peterson was interviewed for the upcoming Titans Series of games from Calliope Games, there was one segment at 1:55 that really caught my attention (emphasis mine): "A couple years ago I was teaching people how to play Guillotine and I hadn't played in a while. The first thing I did was say, 'The first thing you gonna do when you open your game is you look through this deck and you take this card.' I pulled out the Callous Guards card and threw it over my shoulder. Everybody laughed. I said, ' That's the biggest mistake I ever made as a game designer in my life.'" Oof. Those are strong words. What's the big deal? For context, the game Guillotine is all about collecting the heads of French nobles during the revolution. There is only one guillotine, with a line of nobles waiting for their grim fate. On your turn, you play action cards to change the order of the line, then take the Noble card from the front of the ...
Read more