Thinking of my dream projects.

At the moment I have two projects I consider alive and active, my big steampunk/fantasy citybuilder called Steamtopia and my still unnamed horror auction game. Both of them are as done as they can be right now, I need more playtesting data before I can develop them further. Steamtopia has had to take a step back for the moment since it takes a long time to have a playtest session and I've not been able to try it on fresh players. The auction game has worked surprisingly well during our four playtest sessions, and I've made the last revisions before I will bring it to our small gaming convention next weekend where I will try a blindtest of the rules (but since all the players are my friends the actual play will not be blind of course). The interesting thing is that not being able to fiddle with something made me once again think about some of the games I've been LONGING to design...

For many years I've had a few dream projects that I've been thinking about, but have not been able to find good ideas or mechanics for yet. Time will tell if I ever discover the secret sauce to make them fly, but in the meantime I simply ponder upon them and the specifics I've drawn for each project:

PROJECT 1 - A kid's game

This is a really tough one. OK, anyone can make a game with all luck and a polished surface, but that's not what I'm interested in here. I want to make a game where kids can make decisions that actually have an impact and are interesting. Being an avid gamer myself all such choices end up being overly complex and hard to understand. I'm still searching for a theme and a mechanic that will give kids the insight of what a good game is like, call it a gateway to more advanced games when they grow older.

I've tried to study my oldest son (5,5 years) and what he does when he play games, but still no bright idea. It would be really awesome to be able to play a self designed game with my kids that they would enjoy, so this project feels really special to me. And I must admit it's a REAL challenge.

PROJECT 2 - A time travel game

Yup, many have tried, and I guess this is considered to be the Gordian knot of board games. Obviously the players must be able to change the past and by doing so affecting the future, I mean, that's the whole purpose of a time travelling game. Doing it in a believable and smooth way is the hard part. I've been thinking about some possible ideas the last week:

2a - Self healing time
There's an idea that reality works in the opposite way of the butterfly effect and will strive towards one set future, and you are only able to inflict minor damage to the fabric of time. If you murder the inventor of vaccine someone else will step forward and do it instead. The future is in a way deterministic. This would mean that whatever the players do will only have limited impact on future events, and the further in the future the less likely they are to be affected. This could be event tiles/cards that will change or perhaps only make stats go up or down.

2b - Time gets injured
We have a set timeline, and whenever someone fiddles with it we actually damage the fabric of time and space. There's a limit to how much change the fabric can take before it collapse, meaning that the players must be very careful what they do, when and how they do it. "Fixing" their missions without making the universe collapse could be a challenge.

2c - Paradoxes
This is a bit related to 2b, whatever the players do risc creating paradoxes. You keep track of the paradox level for different parts of the history, and this in turn dictates either what the players are allowed to do, or simply makes them gamble with the survival of the universe altogether.

2d - Different realities
When players change things time may branch into a parallell universe. Perhaps the players can travel between different universes? Perhaps they can be merged if their timelines becomes compatible? Maybe that's what the players try to do?

2e - Timey-wimey
Well, what can I say, I'm a big Dr. Who fan, and it would be fun to skip the linear time in favour of something more creative. Granted, they can say that because it's a tv series and they control the script in a way a designer can never control the players. But it would be cool rethink the time travel concept from scratch. One thing that I think nails what I mean by that is the text from Bill & Ted's excellent adventure saying "Meanwhile, in the future". Perhaps the players all have a separate and common timeline, meaning that from their point of view they are doing everything at the same time regardless of where they are in OUR time and space?

So, that's what I've been think of so far. Perhaps dividing time into different timezones (dinosaur age, stone age, modern age etc.) having each timezone have their own set of events? I don't know if a competitive game or a co-op would be more cool. And right now I don't have a main engine anyway.

PROJECT 3 - A timing driven card game with bluffing

Greatly inspired by games such as Libertalia, Love letter and Coup, I would like to create a game where the players are dealt character cards randomly that they play in some sort of order, and each character affect the gameboard or players in interesting ways. Perhaps there should be resources or moving cubes, I do not know. The thing I know is that the timing of playing your characters should be the essential engine in the game. This is the game I've been given the least thoughts and planning, and it is still very fuzzy even in my head.

But most of all I look forward to playtest the auction game some more, this time I will have a chance to see if my new rules for incorporating a fifth player works. The rules has been proof read by a couple of people, and a canadian game designer was kind enough to correct my crappy english grammar. I still await some more comments on the rules and will then prepare the final version for the convention. After the convention I think the next step is to make adjustments according to tester feedback and make a PnP of the auction game.

Until next time!