April 2012 Game Design Showdown - "Fools Rush In"
Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.
We have a winner! I have tallied the votes, quite a few of them this month! Thanks for participating everyone! And without further ado, the winner is....
1st place, with 14 votes: Catch That Bunny! by Starflier
2nd place, with 9 votes: The Great Zvengali by TeaisforTim
3rd place, with 7 votes: Heavy Treasure hunt by AndyGB
and tied for 4th, with 5 votes:
Fools Rush In by BMinNY
While the Fairy is Away: The Revenge of Bunny Foo Foo by photeth
Lhasa by GreenO
Hart of the Forest by Matthew Rogers
All entries got at least 1 vote! Thanks again for participating. Congrats to the winners, I'll open up the Critiques thread now!
April is characterized by a few things - Spring, Easter, Passover, and a silly "holiday" called April Fool's Day.
I thought it might be fun to use one of these holidays as inspiration for April's Showdown, but not a theme restriction in itself... So be creative, and let's see some games about hoaxes, tricks, maybe even fish! If that doesn't float your boat, you could instead enter a game with some kind of (egg) hunt mechanism, or maybe a game about a series of plagues, or escape from bondage!
From Wikipedia about April Fool's Day:
April Fools' Day is celebrated in different countries on April 1 every year. Sometimes referred to as All Fools' Day, April 1 is not a national holiday, but is widely recognized and celebrated as a day when many people play all kinds of jokes and foolishness. The day is marked by the commission of good-humoured or otherwise funny jokes, hoaxes, and other practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family members, teachers, neighbors, work associates, etc.
In France and Italy children (and adults, when appropriate) traditionally tack paper fish on each other's back as a trick and shout "april fish!" in their local language ("poisson d'avril!" and "pesce d'aprile!" in French and Italian respectively).
The earliest recorded association between April 1 and foolishness can be found in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (1392).
From Wikipedia about Easter:
Easter marks the end of Lent, a forty-day period of fasting, prayer, and penance. The last week of the Lent is called Holy Week, and it contains Good Friday, commemorating the crucifixion and death of Jesus... Easter customs vary across the Christian world, but decorating Easter eggs is a common motif. In the Western world, customs such as egg hunting and the Easter Bunny extend from the domain of church, and often have a secular character.
From Wikipedia about Passover:
Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt. It is one of the most widely observed Jewish holidays.
In the narrative of the Exodus, the Bible tells that God helped the Children of Israel escape slavery in Egypt by inflicting ten plagues upon the Egyptians before Pharaoh would release his Israelite slaves; the tenth and worst of the plagues was the slaughter of the first-born. The Israelites were instructed to mark the doorposts of their homes with the blood of a spring lamb and, upon seeing this, the spirit of the Lord passed over these homes.
Together with Shavuot and Sukkot, Passover is one of the three pilgrimage festivals during which the entire Jewish populace historically made a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.
The challenge will be open for entries for a week, but I do not expect anybody to spend a week working on their entry. Rather the 1 week entry window should give everyone a chance to see the challenge and send an entry at their convenience.
Main Design Requirements:
Mechanical Restriction: Hoax, Hunt, or Chase.
A central mechanism in this month's games must be one of the following:- Hoax: A trick or bluff of some kind.
- Hunt: Some kind of search or race to find a hidden object or objects.
- Chase: One player, team, or faction in pursuit of another in some way.
Component Restriction: Game board with Geography.
For this challenge your game must use a central game board in a non-trivial way. The board must have geography that is significant to the game - it cannot simply be a place to organize cards, tiles, or information.Word Limit: 300 words.
- Submissions: The 1st of the month through the 8th.
- Voting: Through the 15th. PM your votes to sedjtroll.
- Voting Format: Each person has 6 votes to distribute any way they choose among the GDS entries with the following restrictions:
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- You may not assign any votes to your own entry!
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- You may not assign more than 3 votes to any single entry.
- You need not assign all 6 votes.
Comments or Questions: Comments and questions about this Challenge were handled on the Comments Thread.
- CRITIQUES: After voting has closed the entries will be posted for comments and critiques. Post constructive critiques and commentary about the entries to this Challenge in the Critiques Thread
- GDS Details: For more details on how these Game Design Showdown Challenges work, especially the details around the word count and graphics limits, visit the GDS Wiki Page.
Enjoy, and good luck!
-Seth
Theme: It's 1932, Your crew has just pulled off the heist of a lifetime. You scored it all - money, jewels, artwork, etc. You're free for now, but who knows for how long. The authorities are closing in quickly. You need to stash your loot quickly - but beware your crew mates as they are criminals after all and they will steal from you too!
Object: To be the criminal that has stashed the most loot when the cops finally close in and arrest you and your team.
Setup: Each player receives (10) $2,000 Loot cards, and 1 Bluff card The "Arrest" card Police Deck is placed approximately 1/4 of the way from the bottom of the Police Deck.
Each safe house is numbered, and the corresponding stack of Safe House Receipt Cards is placed on the safe houses. Gameplay Phases:
Core Mechanic: When a player lands on a safe house, they will have the option to stash loot, bluff stashing loot, or search the house for loot stashed by other players. To stash loot, the player takes a loot card from their hand, place it on the top of the pile of cards and shuffles the cards. The player than takes a receipt card into their hand. To bluff, follow the same procedure, except the player takes back the bluff card. To search the safe house, the player looks through the cards at that safe house and takes all the loot cards present into their hand, and all players with receipts from that safe house put them back into that stack.
End Game: When the "Arrest" card comes out, the game is over immediately, and the player with the most receipts is the winner.