Adventures in brain storming.

Game design ideas

Board game involving water pipes

1. Stealth Mechanics
1. A game where you dont know whats infront of you
2. Randomized map
1. a game where you’ll never know what comes next
3. Trap setting?
1. being able to set traps for other players to walk on or avoid
4. Each player gets to set up the path/map for the opponent?
1. Players creating the map for the opponent.
5. A game timer?
1. The player must reach the end/objective before something gets them
6. A monster ?
1. The goal is to avoid him while trying to get the other players eaten
7. A game where the goal isn’t to win, but instead not to lose?
8. The goal of the game is to not be the slowest?
1. A game where theres a monster who's movement is controlled by chance, and players must fight to not be the slowest?
1. The monster will have his own turn, moving in the direction of the closest player (via dice roll?)
2. Players will go turn by turn, rolling for movement (hopefully away from the monster)
3. Cards will be pulled by landing on a tile? (or each turn?)
1. cards will have effects like, double dice roll, slowing enemy player movement, laying traps that slow players, items that lure the monster away/towards other players, items that let you swap places with a player?
9. Same idea as before, but the monster is player controlled?
1. Cards that force him away/too another player to keep someone from focusing just one player

10. A game puzzle like game about water pipes/flow? (With a more fun mechanic? Replace water with magic or something?)

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   The strategy is to control the flow of water via strategic placement of tiles?

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   Rival plumbers fighting for control of a pipe system.

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   Winner is whomever can direct the flow to their end pipe first?

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   Drawing cards and/or tiles for pipe pieces

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   cards could be items like bombs, hammers, saws (which destroy pipes) , drain clogger, poison, fish[?]

11. Game about protecting cows from aliens

12. A game with a rotating map
1. the goal is to get to the center of the map
2. every few turns the maps rotates, forcing players to adapt to the changes
13. 3D Game?
1. players build structures for some purpose?
1. maybe a defend the castle sort of game?
14. Defend the castle board game?
1. one player plays as king, the other as the citizens
15. Game based around colonies of insects, goal would be to keep your colony alive via resource management
1. think settlers of catan with bugs, tile confrontation and environmental effects.

16. Detection game?
        16.1. Goal is to cheat on a test or steal something, avoiding detection of    teacher/guards

17. Explorer game

        17.1 Goal is to reveal/explore the most of a map, certain tiles net more points player with most points at the end wins

18. Pirate game
1. goal is to get to the treasure first while avoiding non player controlled boats
19. Sport game built like portal
1. a repeating map (like pacman warp) where the goal is to navigate a ball to a goal via tiles that change the movement of the ball and a looping map
20. Chaotic card game?
1. a game like “worst game ever” where the fun of it is random tasks and player interaction

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The surprising thing about this was how quickly I abandoned my fog of war tomb raider idea, despite being so sure that it was the game I wanted to make.

Out of the 20 my favorite 3 are 8, 10 and 15.

In regards to 8, i plan to look into the monster being player controlled instead of based on chance and situational rules. The challenge with this is balancing it so the monster can’t just pick player A to hunt for (because he just doesn’t like him as a person) and must adapt to hunting the most available player instead

In regards to 10, as fun as it seems to me, its not a very appealing idea (rivaling plumbers just isn’t hip anymore I guess.) So i plan to look into another theme for it while keeping the mechanics and goal the same.

As for 15, i like the idea of each player being their own colony of insect (like ants/bees/wasps/moths all with their own benefits) But i fear that it’ll be too close to an already existing game. With different starting “races” you also have the task of heavy balancing so ones not overpowered compared to the other.

Yeah fun stuff.