So I was perusing the shelves at a thrift store and saw a copy of Jumpin' Monkeys which is a game where you catapult plastic monkeys into a plastic tree and hope that it doesn't fall out. Later it occurred to be that this might be an interesting way to execute a worker placement game. Let's say you have four different trees with four different fruits and the player with the most monkeys of their colony in a tree gets to claim the fruit on that tree.
Thoughts?
Who is your target audience here? I feel like alpha gamers would probably get frustrated by the lack of control here...unless you gave them some way to react tactically after seeing the result of their toss. Meaningful choices are key: maybe you could have different designs of monkeys to chose from before you catapult? (ie. heavy 'bomb' monkey, a grabby monkey with more arms for better attachment, a chain of small monkeys for bola effect and multiple points, etc.)
Connect 4 Launchers has a similar mechanic of catapult strategy: you might want to look at that game for execution strategies. For other physical strategy games Catacomb and Dungeon Fighter are worth a look.
Just a semantic point... the mechanic you're talking about (most monkeys in a given tree wins it) sounds like Area Control, rather than Worker Placement. (Worker placement is when there are a certain assortment of actions available, each of which can only be taken by a certain number of players; you place a worker to take the action, after which the space is occupied and no one else can place a worker there.)
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I was thinking this would be primarily for families with kids 5 to 10 years and also casual gamers. Definitely not something for gamer gamers.
One of the challanges to this game is the placement of the trees. If there were a single tree surrounded by four other trees hitting that middle tree would be a challange. These trees could also be on a turn table and one actions could be turning to make a tree more accessible.
This is starting to sound kind of impractical to make as a sellable game but it would probably be easy enough to build and bring to gaming cons just for the fun of it.