OK Folks, I know most of you, like me, had a few games (concepts at least) that you didn't even bother to submit to the GDS. While we're waiting for the next round of voting lets march all those second rate games out into the sun and see what happens.
peace,
Tom
My other idea STUNK.
But the contest did remind me to revisit an old city building dice game and work the bugs out of it.
I'm not really waiting for the next round because after seeing what was submitted i expect to be eliminated in the first round.
Played around with a game where black and white dice were ninjas, and leaped across roofs (represented by tiles, while the spaces between them were alleys) trying to maintain dominance of the cities rooftops. When dice were defeated on a roof top they were kicked into the alley adjacent, and re rolled. They had to move through the alleys and find a partner (an allied die of the same number) to climb back up to the roofs. It was kind of neat, but it didn't work well enough to submit. I might return to it later though.
I also tried out a sword fighting game, but couldn't make it interesting enough. It just got repetitive, with the players' swords men pushing each other back and forth across a deck. I was going to title it "I Am Not Left-handed!"
I probably would have voted for,
Rascally Rabbits
Bunny Buster
You don't know Jack-Rabbit
or any other cleverly titled game that involved rolling for rabbits.
it's quick, it's light, and it's catchy.
I think integral to meeting these game elements is a set of rules that can be internalized within 5 minutes or less.
I only found out about this site a few days before the deadline to the GDS so I only had time to try to get one game ready and rolling, if I had more time to think about it that idea would probably ended up as the one not good enough to enter. Still I like the idea of the bunny game, though I think someway to steal other players dice or to lose dice would make it more interesting. I also agree that the point of the competition was to keep it simple and I tried to avoid voting for any complicated games for that reason.
For the most part I voted for games that were simple, clever and original. The bunnies idea amuses me greatly, but I'd have a hard time voting for games that don't involve interesting choices.
My first (and best, I think) idea was for an exploration game, possibly called "Dice Temple" (not very catchy, I'm afraid...). Players are exploring a lost temple, and each player has 3 dice (red, green, blue) representing his "stats" with three types of equipment (whip, torch, pistol?); these are rolled at the start of the game. The temple is a 5x5 grid of cards, and each edge of a card is an "exit", with a color and a "threshold" number, representing the traps of the temple. To pass through the exit/trap and onto the next card, you have to exceed the threshold number in that color with the sum of your stat in that category combined with a free roll. (The cards all start face down, so you're exploring the temple as you go).
The rooms themselves contain various effects -- reroll one of your stats, -1 to one of your stats, add an additional die in one color, face a challenge (roll in a dice-off in one category against the game board).
There's also a press-your-luck element, where you basically keep going until you choose to stop or fail a roll; failing a roll sends you back to the entrance in the lower right corner BUT staying put could risk someone else discovering more of the temple before you get a chance to. You get points for facing and passing the temple's challenges, for each turn that you survive in the temple without getting sent back to the entrance, and for finding the hidden exit to escape the temple.
I mocked up a prototype and played it through and it's fun, but I chose not to enter it because (a) the components exceeded the requirements of the challenge, and (b) it's derivative of a game design I've already worked on extensively. I don't know how the game I did enter will do, but the one real advantage of this GDS is that the games are so easy to prototype and play through that I hope to work on one or both of them!
I had another idea that didn't fit well with the component restriction. It's a religious themed building game of land grabbing and set building.
Players roll dice with faces for wood, brick, stone and some special faces. After a number of tries, probably 3 players would use their roll to build what they can onto a board of squares.
Players can build chapels, churches and cathedrals, each worth an increasing amount of followers (points). Using the special hammer die roll, a player can upgrade an existing building to a better one by subtracting the cost of the smaller building from the building cost of the larger one.
Other fun stuff like the lighting bolt symbol, which can't be re-rol allows you to destroy your opponent's buildings if rolled in sufficient numbers. 3 bolts= 1 building blasted, 4 bolts=2 buildings and 5 bolts=5. The gold coin symbol can be traded for the resources at a different price per resource, or three of them could simply net you some quick points.
The other fun aspect is that the game is played over 3 centuries at the end of which is a scoring round where players score bonus points for how many buildings they were able to fin onto each row or column. The cheap wooden chapels are also all torn down after each scoring round as they simply can't stand for a hundred years.
Anywho.. a little long, but that was the idea!
A bluffing game where players are dealt cards that have dice combos on them and point values. Players roll their 5 dice yahtzee style and then there's a poker-like bidding round where players reveal their cards (and thus their point total) one-by-one. Each turn the player either reveals one of his cards (thus revealing part of his true point value, increasing the value of the pot, and staying in the hand) or folds. This one would have qualified for the contest, but I didn't think it'd be as strong as my real entry.
Another game wouldn't have met the component requirements, probably. I've been tinkering with emergent game systems and I think I could have worked out an adventure game where the world emerges as you play. Still working on that one.
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We all know what happens when you get a pair of bunnies. In this simulataneous action game the players race to grow their horde of bunnies bigger than every one else's.
Players: 1-too Many
Components: A large number of dice with bunnies on the faces. Lets say d6 where some portion of the faces have a single bunny and the rest have a pair of bunnies
Setup: Deal one die to each player, put the remaining dice in the pool
Someone calls the start of the game and everyone starts rolling their die. Whenever a player rolls a bunny pair, they can grab another die from the pool and keep rolling. Each bunny pair rolled entitles the players to another die from the pool.
When the pool runs out the game is over an the player with the most dice wins.