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The beast is unleashed

First prototype version of the board with scoring track

So, I decided to completely give up on keeping my new game idea back, and I try to persuade myself that this will be a simple filler game that will take almost no time at all to develop, and that it will not harm my main project in any way, shape or form... We shall see what happens.

I'm working on a prototype for the new game, which will feature auctions of cards as the main game mechanic. I got some really nice advice on a theme, and I'm very grateful for it, but in the end I decided to go for a monster theme.

The idea, very briefly explained:

The deck consist of three different types of cards.

Each player start with 5 coins (or whatever, playtesting will tell...). Each round players get 2 coins in upkeep.

1) KEEPERS, different kinds of monsters, like vampires or witches. Each monster have a special ability. You may have at most three monsters in front of you, and they may not be of the same kind. A player may only use one special ability each turn, regardless of the number of monsters in front of him/her. Each keeper is also associated with a color, this is used in the end-of-game scoring

2) VALUE CARDS, these cards are scored each round, but they must be matched with keeper cards. For instance, the card "Wolf pack" may be worth 6 points if you have a werewolf in front of you, but only 4 if you have a vampire. Of course, if you have both it will be worth 10 points. If you have neither it's basicly worthless (well, almost, there's a end-of-game-bonus as well, all value cards are also associated with a color). Scored value cards are kept face down in a pile in front of each player.

3) SPECIAL ACTION CARDS, allowing you to for instance borrow a keeper of another player when scoring a value card or such. They are supposed to spice up the game a bit, but not too much. Will have to find out how many of these will provide the good mix.

So, each round the players are dealt two cards, and then three cards for each player is put on the table in rows. Next to each row are bidding squares from 0-5. Now the auction starts, and the first player make a bid on any row. next player may make a higher bid on the same row or bid on another. This goes on until all players have a card row of their own. They may now play keepers and value cards and score points for them. At the end of the turn they may save one card of their choice until the next round. Keepers stay until the player chose to replace them with new ones.

Near the bottom of the deck is a end-of-game-card that kille the game immediately. If anyone is dealt that card or if it show up on the table prior to the auction the game is over. The scored value cards that match any of the keepers in play at the end of the game is scored in some way (perhaps 1 point per card, or a bonus to whoever had the most cards of each color, I don't know what would be best... have to playtest).

That's it, pretty basic and down to earth. Now all I need is a ready prototype so I can see the game crash and burn because it didn't behave the way I anticipated it to behave... =)

Comments are welcome, if the prototype survives the first testing I will probably make it available for download in case anyone is interested. The game does not even have a working title at this point, I simply call it the auction game...

BTW, when I make the prototype I will use whatever suitable images I can find from the Internet, shamelessly stolen. it's not meant to be anything but a prototype, but just how sensitive are people about copyright when it comes to amateur productions only constructed for testing? In the unlikely event any of my prototypes turn out to be good enough for publishing it would need proper graphics of course, I'm very aware of that. But if I for instance posted images here on the prototype, would that be considered bad form since I don't own the images I used for the cards and board?

Until next time!

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blog | by Dr. Radut