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What game do you wish you designed...and why.

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Tue, 01/03/2012 - 14:33
doho123
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This is something that I realized over the last week, since I had just purchased Mr. Jack, and played it. And found it to be the game that I wished I had designed. Mostly because I feels so unique to almost everything else I have played.

Things of note:
The game has a very chess-like appeal to me (with the constant "look ahead" of moves) without being anything like chess.

It feels very themed (due to the nature of the character special powers and the way they interact with the game environment).

It has a very unique approach (to my knowledge) of how to "solve" a deduction game, without resorting to the usual Clue-based tropes of "do you have this card in your hand".

And so, I'm interested in hearing what other people would have to say, with regards to games they wished that they have designed. And no, "because it's popular and I'd be extremely wealthy," is not an answer.

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Tue, 01/03/2012 - 15:10
#1
sedjtroll
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I wish I'd designed Merchants and Marauders

I have a notebook full of ideas about a game that is 90% similar to Merchants and Marauders - based mostly on stuff from a BGG thread in which the designer of M&M posted as well. There are a few things I would have done differently, and there are a few things that they did way better than I would have. They even thought of a cool name! Unfortunately the result is not the type of game I generally like to play - too chaotic and long for my tastes.

However, they did a really good job with the game, and it does pretty much everything I wanted to do, so there's really no reason for me to ever finish the game in my notebook. So because I liked thinking about it and I like the stuff in my notebook, I'll choose Merchants and Marauders by Kasper Aagaard and Christian Marcussen as my answer to this question.

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Tue, 01/03/2012 - 15:33
#2
sedjtroll
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Honorable Mention: Shipyard

I'll give honorable mention to Shipyard, by Vladimír Suchý. Shipyard is a longer, sort of fiddly game about building and scoring ships. Each of the actions in the game help you get different equipment and crew, make money, or hire employees which give you special powers. Each of those actions is governed by a Rondel, like those used by Mac Gerdts in Antike, Imperial, Hamburgum, and Navegador.

While it's a little long and fiddly, each of it's parts fits together perfectly, with nothing extraneous. Despite being somewhat complicated, Shipyard is very intuitive because of how well all the mechanisms fit together. I really find myself playing the game rather than playing the rules - a feature I very much appreciate in games.

So while I mentioned Merchants and Marauders above, I also wish I'd designed Shipyard.

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Tue, 01/03/2012 - 16:15
#3
Orangebeard
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Dark Tower - Milton Bradley

One of my favorite childhood games. If you are not familiar with the game, players were adventurers attempting to gather 3 keys which were then used to unlock the Dark Tower at the center of the board. The tower itself was a free spinning, electronic device that tracked each player's gold, food, keys, position on the board and controlled the random results of exploring the kingdoms in search of keys.

Even by today's standards, I would consider this game to be an innovative twist on classic fantasy themes. It was a very "hands-on" game with good replayability, miniatures and a whole box of little bits to make the game come alive.

Sadly, production of the game was expensive and short lived. Working copies of the game are very difficult to find and the ownership rights to the game have been challenged so it is unlikely to see any future printings.

There is a decent Flash version of the game that lets you play a solo game that is true to the original.

I would love to create a game such as this that is fun, immersive, innovative and is eye-catching on the table top.

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Wed, 01/04/2012 - 13:54
#4
doho123
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Interestingly enough, I

Interestingly enough, I happen to have a working Dark Tower.

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