Spatula, a Silly Game Idea People Seem to Like
I was talking over some challenges with a current design with my wife over breakfast. I'm working on Solar Senate and I wanted to avoid any mechanisms that called for players to pick up cards. Picking up cards from a hard flat surface is a pain in the butt and often marks the edges of the card in the process. I try to make the physicality of cards a feature of play, or at least not an obstacle. Then I got to thinking about this very old game idea I had during a bout of brainstorming dexterity games that could be played with only cards. The game was called "Spatula." It was a real-time dexterity game similar in structure to La Boca. You can see the basic gameplay in the vine above. It goes like this: There is a big pile of food cards in the middle of the table called your grill . Food cards have a raw side and a cooked side. There are plates on the edge of the table awaiting specific combinations of food, like "bacon and eggs." You have one card in y...