My first game idea - now what ?

Heya buddy!

I agree with syele - its a good start to actually make a super super early prototype and then just mess around with it until something happens really!

I like the idea, it should be a fun game. I will echo advice I have just given to another new designer in another thread:

Start with a Theme
Gangsters? SciFi shooter? Dungeon Crawler? High Fantasy? Modern corporation? Historical?

Start with a mechanic
Worker Placement? Deck builder? Bidding mechanic? Dice fest? Non-tradiitonal? Abstract elements?

these are the two main popular ways to start a game. Once you have one, the other one needs to nestle around it, then once you have that main idea and the theme and mechanics to go with it - you can start fleshing it out.

Things that help after the idea
How many players does the game play? How long is a game? What do you want the players to feel as they play the game? What options do players have? What is the win condition?

So what might help you at this stage is deciding how many players, how logn the game will last, the kind of feelings you want players to experience in your game. Then write them down then think to yourself "How do I make X,Y and Z happen in this game?" and the answer will come to you :)

As far as your main game goes, it would probably fit quite well (as it stands) into an action point type system.

So each player has say 5 actions. An action can be
1) "dive" (move your meeple up or down the value of a dice roll)
2) Explore (choose any one of the face-down treasures on your level and flip it face up)
3) Use a special action

There are many treasures, (randomly select 12 out of 30) and they are placed on the board in the correct level (some treasures will have "dive level 2" or "dive level 4" written on them, these can only be placed in the correct levels)

Some list straight forward VP, but some have some clever abilities. Some could be like "spare oxygen tank" and that would allow (if used as a special action) a player to make 2 dive rolls instead of 1 for a dive action. Another could be "sonar" which will let the player flip up his choice of any single treasure at level 4 or less. Perhaps a special treasure could be "deep tectonic shift" which wold allow the player to choose any single treasure and either leave it or replace it.

If you wanted to be clever, you could also have some specific treasure worth more to some players than others - eg "yellow treasure" for the yellow player - this gives them a +1 to the treasure worth. Perhaps you could have a set collection thing as well, special treasure could be worth more if combined with other treasure eg: sunken propeller / sunken fuesalage and / sunken landing gear could be worth 9 points all together, but only a few points on their own.

Perhaps you could have some player powers or some sneaky moves that allow players to board and steal treasures from eachother as long as the other player was in the water at the time.

Players could throw some treasures overboard - perhaps some of these could be fake treasures that count negatively to the final score if another player picks it up.

there's quite a lot you could do with this idea :)

First thing is first: make a prototype!

hope ive helped
sam

This sounds like a nice approach to push your luck! I'm not much of a designer, but I have been diving and perhaps a few thematic additions might help out in some way.

I was thinking that when diving you need to:
- consider how long you can stay under: normally you calculate your dive in advance. If you go deeper, the pressure will cause you to use more air: Perhaps the game play could reflect this in that the action points represent your air reserves. If you dive deeper, you use more air. This could lead to strategic choices such as explore the surface longer, or take a lucky shot in the deep?

- weighing down a diver: to stabilize in the water, you need additional weight. When picking up a lot of treasure, you weigh down your diver, so he'll take longer to reach the surface. But perhaps you can shed some weights on your way up?

- pressurizing: you can't dive, nor rise too fast. You need to allow the pressure in your head to equalize with the water pressure. You could require a diver to spend a certain amount of time/turns to get to the surface, penalizing if he doesn't.

On mechanics: I was thinking Pergamon: you draw some tiles, arrange them according to worth: more expensive tiles are deeper down, harder to reach.

It's not much, and you certainly shouldn't add all of it (the game would become too convoluted), but it might inspire in some way :)

I think you've got a pretty good idea of how to move forward, so grab a piece of paper, nick some dice from another game and try some things out!

Good luck and keep us updated!!!