Farm themed Card Game

Do the players have their own separate goals? If there are common goals, I think it would just become a matter of who pays attention enough to avoid placing the penultimate piece of a goal.

If you only draw one card at a time, it seems that it would be infuriating when you only need a carrot to finish two different goal cards, and you draw anything but a carrot. Possibly if they have a hand of, say, 5 cards, and they have an option of discarding any two cards to draw a specific card, but they've reduce their hand size permanently by 1 card.

Or maybe you can just use your turn to exchange any number of your cards with the deck. Or possibly, in addition to drawing one card and playing one card each turn, you may optionally exchange another card for a new one.

If the goal cards are part of the same deck as the veggie cards, then there's an interesting trade-off between filling your deck with goal cards and no way to fulfill them, or lots of veggie cards so lots of flexibility of what to play, but no goals to bother playing towards.

If you want to keep it simple and family-friendly, perhaps every turn, before drawing and playing a card, each play swaps out the goal card for a new one.

One of the developmental goals for kids around the kindergarten age is to be able to sort items according to type - this is perfect for that. It also appeals to kids who might be familiar with more modern games like farmville or harvest moon while keeping the old school mechanism of tic-tac-toe or connect four (like you said).

If you wanted to add a layer of complexity, you could make the "goal" cards something the child/player could collect and spend at a store type of thing to buy farm animals or fences or whatever. The goal could be to get to a certain number of points (as you suggested) OR to build the farm to a certain point.

The problem is "marketing" to younger children is DIFFICULT. First off you will have to find a "publisher" to make your game.

As an "indie" designer, my designs can only be for people aged 13+. This has to do with some sticky rules that say your game IF for a younger audience must pass an "inspection".

See here for more details: http://help.thegamecrafter.com/article/20-can-i-make-games-for-kids

Perhaps you could figure the cost of this "testing" into your Kickstarter and maybe make the game yourself... Again I'm not convinced most backers are parents with children. I could be wrong - but I get the impression that it's a younger crowd with disposable income for games.

So less expensive game - means you need to find less expensive production, less artwork, less components, etc. You get the idea - you are the one who made the very valid point.

But pitching the game to a game Publisher - one that specializes in Kids games - might be very do-able.

Just look at our "Publisher List" for "Kosmos Games": last update they are looking "For childrens games ages 5+ (even 3+)" and "For family games ages 10+ (even 8+)"... You might have the IDEAL game for them!

Our list is at: http://www.bgdf.com/node/621

As it's moderator - we've just gone through the list and "refreshed" the out-dated information to CURRENT submission guidelines.

So there are Publishers LOOKING for games for Children!

My advice, you should have a mechanic that allows you to REMOVE ONE VEGETABLE from the garden. Or maybe place it in an adjacent row. This is to prevent people from "screwing" you over. Like everyone wants the last fruit but somebody decides he would rather that no one get that "goal card". Maybe because of "point value", not sure...

Just an idea - you may want to playtest it.

Update: Is this just TETRIS without electronics? It seems mighty similar (having a second look at the rules stated)... I still think the concept is interesting...

I would FORGET the BOARD. It's costly and you just need square cards... Would lower the price of the game significantly.

Update #2: I would change the SETUP a bit. Instead of only 1 GOAL card, make it that you can play up to 3 players.

X O X O X O X

7 positions, the "O" are the GOAL cards. With 7 rows, you can have 3 players "on the board". And they SHARE lanes next to them. Being in the middle sucks because you share BOTH lanes (left and right). Probably a good place to be the parent (tougher for the adults to win)...

Make like 3 levels of cards: easy (one column), medium (two columns) and hard (three columns).

Maybe add wildcards to the mix. And a *special* card "The Tractor" which allows you to remove ANY card in a column.

Again just some ideas...

Update 3: I really LIKE the THREE (3) lanes. You can play Mom, Brother and you... and vary difficulty. Mom = Hard, Brother = Medium, You = Easy.

This sort of setup can make the game FUN for everyone!

OOps! Double post!

My concern about having common goal cards which stay there until they are fulfilled is that it will make the game actually harder for young children, unless the older players are just willing to let the younger player win.

The problem with the common goals is that the strategy will be never to play the penultimate part for a pattern unless you have a reason to believe that your opponent(s) do not have the right piece to complete the pattern (and you do). This ability to look ahead an entire move will be more challenging for younger kids, so they'll just get trounced. They won't understand why, on there turn, there is almost never a pattern that needs only one piece to complete it, yet the other players often find that situation.

The two suggestions I made -- Either players have separate goals, or a new goal card is turned up on every turn -- either of these alleviate this problem. Having the new goal card on every turn increases the luck aspect considerable, and makes the game about just pattern matching to identify already-made patterns or ones that need only one part. It would, of course, need to use much simpler patterns than a game where you work over multiple turns to make a pattern; otherwise no one would ever match a pattern.

Anyway, that's my 2 cents. As gamers, we want games with a significant skill factor, in order to remain interesting to us. But when making games for young kids, the luck factor should dominate.

Here's an idea for a skill balancer: Give each player one type of vegetable that they can place for free (i.e. as a free turn), but manipulate it so certain vegetables are more used in patterns than others. So, perhaps the youngest player can place carrots for free, the next youngest player can place cabbages for free, but the grown-up places peas for free. Then your cards all have carrots, only some have cabbages, and relatively few have peas. This actually gives the youngest player a significant advantage, even though it doesn't really seem that way since everyone gets one item they get free.