Kronopolis: City on the Edge of Time

Solo Game design (or 3 players, each controlling workers from different time periods)

Kronopolis is a city in peril. Time flashes forward or backward, pockets appear and swallow entire sections of the city only to spit them out in another time. The leading physicists believe that time is compressing to a single point and when that occurs, it’s all over. Now residents from the past, present, and future must coordinate their efforts to save Kronopolis, or be doomed to share its fate.

Components:

Long custom board representing a timeline track for the city of Kronopolis. This track will be divided into 12 spaces (eras) of 3 regions (time periods). Each time period will have a set of building tiles, workers, resources, and custom d6 (resources may be harder to gather in the future, but that’s also where the best technology is). There will also be 2 black pawns and a d12. The first pawn will track the era affected by “flux,” the second with track “Time compression.”

Gameplay overview

At the beginning of a turn, a player assigns their workers to a region within their period. These simple actions could be gathering resources, constructing a building (turning in resources), activating a building, or even traveling to another period with assets (requires a certain building). After they are all assigned, each worker is resolved, left to right on the timeline. Resources gathered must be stored in a square of an era, along with the worker who gathered them. Buildings enter a square as well. Once all the workers have been resolved, a Time Flux occurs.

The era with the Black Pawn is vulnerable to the next action. Roll a d12 and, should a building or resource exist in the topmost space vulnerable to Time Compression, they travel to the era rolled. (Workers sent to another period MUST stay in their destination until they find a way to travel to other eras) If there are no available spaces in the era they must go to, these resources, workers, and even buildings are lost to time and must be rebuilt. After this is resolved, the black pawn moves forward one era and all workers return. If the black pawn reaches the 12th era, reset the pawn and move the Time Compression track up one. The Time Compression track determines which spaces are the most vulnerable to the Time Flux. As the game progresses, more spaces become vulnerable to the Time Flux.

Success or Oblivion

If the player can build a Time Stabilizer Facility in all three periods and fuel it with Kronolium (rare material), the player must put workers on all three facilities in the same turn to activate it. Time is not on their side. If the Time Compression track reaches the end, (36 turns) the entire civilization is compressed to the point of a singularity and the game is over.

Caterpillars & butterflies


2-4 players

During the spring the caterpillars eat as much as they can, turning into pops at the right moment, at least before the leaf falls off. Once they are butterflies they seek a partner and lay eggs. A new season starts.

Material

• 20 leaves – numbered 9-28
• 80 food tokens
• a normal dice
• seasonmarkertrack 0-28

Per player:

• 6 butterflies/pupa – size 2-3-4 male/female
• 6 caterpillars/eggs

Seasonstart:

1. Put 5 groups of 4 leaves randomly on the table (with 3 players 5x3; 2 players 5x2). Per group the leaves are connected to at least one other leaf
2. Put four food tokens on each leaf
3. Seasonmarker on 0
4. Players put caterpillars on leaves. First one clockwise, then counterclockwise, until all are on leaves.

Turn: Each player spends 3 actionpoints, then seasondice once.

• Eat (1 actionpoint): One of your caterpillars eats one food. Keep token.
• Short walk (1 actionpoint): One of your caterpillars walks to a connected leaf.
• Long walk (3 actionpoints): One of your caterpillars goes to another group of leaves.

• Turn into pupa (3 actionpoints): One of your caterpillars turns into pupa on its current leaf. There must be enough room to do so. Each leaf has four places, where each pupa needs as much places as the size of its number; each food and caterpillar takes one place. Pay as much food as the size of the pupa.


  Example: 
2 food left, 1 caterpillar can turn in to a pupa of size 2.

Throw seasondice and move seasonmarker forward. Each leaf with a number lower or equal to the seasonmarker falls off the tree. Food is put aside, caterpillars are lost. Pupas remain on the branches and are not lost.

This continues untill all leaves have fallen and only pupas remain. They turn into butterflies.


In the winter the tree changes: It looses a group of leaves, but adds one leaf in the other groups (now 4 groups of 5 leaves). Divide the food, earlier put aside, on the leaves.

The butterflies are looking for a partner to lay eggs. The player with the most food tokens begins. He selects one of his butterflies, and selects one butterfly with the same number of another player. Both may
lay one egg on one of the new leaves, and put as much food as the size of the butterfly on the leaves. The two butterflies are put aside.
This continues until all players’ butterflies have a partner, or can no longer find one with the same number, or the players run out of food.

Turn all eggs into caterpillars. Players keep surplus food. A new season begins.

Play one more half year (now with 3 groups of 6 leaves). Stop when butterflies are born.

The player with the most butterfly-points wins. Amount of food is tiebreaker.

Elemental Cycle is a 2-player Mancala-based game where you move stones representing the elements. The game setup has 12 bowls in a circle, with each quarter of the circle being the starting place for one element. Each bowl begins with only one elemental stone in it, as shown:

      F    F    F

 A                   E
 A                   E

 A                   E
      W    W    W

 F = Fire (red)

 A = Air (white)
 
E = Earth (brown)

 W = Water

One player sits at the top and plays Fire. The second player sits at the opposite side and plays Water. Players randomly choose a starting player and alternate turns. During a player's turn they may choose any bowl and place all stones from that bowl into the bowl's clockwise from the starting place, placing one stone at a time (per Mancala). The order they choose to place the different colors of stones is entirely up to them. Whenever a Water or Fire stone circles the entire board and lands back on a home space (any of the three spaces will do), that player immediately scores a point. The first player to score five points wins the game and this is the only way to end the game.

A few 'special' results can change the basic movement. If Fire and Air stones end the turn in the same bowl with no other elements present, a Fire stone is removed and placed back in any home space by the Fire player. This does not score a point. Similarly, Earth alone with Water will cause water to be moved to a home space chosen by the Water player with no points scored. Finally, if a player moves in a way that causes a bowl to contain exactly one of each element, that player may take an extra turn.

Summary: Air destroys Fire

Earth destroys Water

All elements in balance = extra turn

Lir’s Challenge


Lir, the Irish God of the Sea, has issued a challenge to the river and seas sprites. The sprite who displays the best ability to manipulate water will become the new master of the sea! The challenge is simple. Over the next 4 years, demonstrate your skill with water magic by making lakes boil in the winter and freeze in the summer!

Game length: 60-80 minutes, 4 players

The game consists of 4 years (rounds) with 4 seasons that consist of 3 turns each. Season is shown on a circular track with 12 spaces and year in the center on a 1-4 track.

Each player as a single, three-sided pyramid that shows the 3 states of the water in their lake – frozen, liquid, and boiling. They will also have a playing mat to store heat/cold tokens and to mark the length of their current and highest scoring streaks. The longest scoring streak will be used for the end game bonus, which is 8, 5, 2, -1 going from longest to shortest. A scoring streak is how long they kept their lake in single scoring state, frozen or boiling, measured from the time the lake could start scoring.

Two points are awarded immediately when a sprite has a frozen lake in the summer or boiling lake in the winter, the two scoring seasons. If a sprite ends a scoring season with their lake still in it’s scoring form, they will receive two additional points. For example, if a lake is boiling at the start of winter, that player will immediately score 2 points. If it is still boiling at the start of spring, the player will receive 2 more points.

The game has 2 dice, one for the scoring seasons and one for spring/fall. The winter/summer die will have 1 one, 3 twos, and 2 threes, while the fall/spring die will have 2 blanks, 2 ones, and 2 twos. The ones and twos on the fall/spring die will be evenly split between red and blue.

Each turn, the appropriate die for the season will be rolled, and a number of hot or cold tokens equal to the number shown will be added to all of the players lakes, shown by placing them in front of the pyramid. Heat tokens are added in the summer, and cold tokens in the winter. In the fall and spring, the type of token added is shown by the color of the die.
After the die roll, players may choose to take the same number and kind of tokens added to their lake from the supply and put them in their stockpile or choose to add saved tokens to their lake. Once players have decided, heat and cold tokens are canceled out until only a single type or no tokens remain. It takes 6 heat/cold tokens to change a lake from one form to another, and when a lake changes state, those 6 tokens are removed from the lake.