Invent a Tabletop Game
Today’s challenge–
Invent a New Tabletop Game!
We all have a favorite game that we just can’t get enough of. When I was little my grandmother would arrive for a visit and I would go running to the game closet to get Candy Land. She would have to humor me with a game before she could do anything else! Jenga, Cranium and Ziggety have all been favorites. This Christmas I was introduced to One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Played it for three days straight. These days my daughter and her grandmother spend hours around Bananagrams!
What kind of games are your favorites? What is it about the game that attracts you and keeps your attention? What makes it fun??
For me Candy Land just meant I got time alone with my Grandma (and I loved candy!) Jenga required some dexterity. Cranium and Ziggety offered variety in the play. One Night Ultimate Werewolf took a while to get the hang of and requires strategy and cunning. I enjoy Bananagrams because you are in control to a certain extent and are playing against the “clock” or at least you have to finish before your opponents.
As you begin to brainstorm your ideas for your game consider the following questions: Do you like games with a lot of cards? With objects to build with? Team or single player games? Strategy or luck based games? Games with dice, a board, pieces to move around?
Don’t stop at one idea. Come up with hundreds. Your ideas will get better over time, your process will get better over time, and you will learn more with each idea you bring to life.
Bruce Lund – Toy Inventor
Don’t forget your DESIGN STAGE! You might want to sketch out your idea and jot down some ideas for rules. Come up with a theme and a goal. What will make it challenging and different from other games? This will be a fun invention to test and retest as you get it to work just right.
If you really want to go all out with your game invention you could submit your idea to the Chicago Toy and Game Week – Young Inventor’s Challenge! Find out more here. They have a fantastic design guide to help you through the game inventing process. Check it out!
Table top game invention to do list:
- Brainstorm ideas
- Decide on type of game
- Outline goal of game- how do you win?
- Flesh out game play- what do you do to get to the goal?
- How many players?
- What pieces, boards, cards, dice, tokens do you need?
- Refine rules
- Build!
- Play with others -test, tweak, test, tweak and retest!
- Share your game!
Color Collapse
This is the game we came up with at my house. It is called Color Collapse. We used dominoes and colored disks from the game Skippity. Here is how you play: Build a domino train 3 dominoes long then place a colored disk- orange first. Place three more dominoes and then a green disk. Continue in this manner placing disks every three dominoes until you have built a train using all 5 color disks with three dominoes between each. Note: It is important you place the disks in this order- orange, green, yellow, blue and red. Here is the points guide:
Play begins with the oldest going first. He or she pushes down the fist domino and sees how far along the train the dominoes topple over.
In this picture you can see the dominoes stopped at the green disk. Checking the points chart you can see this player received 15 points for their first move.
Now it is the next players turn. They reset the dominoes following the same path as the first player. Now this player pushes down the first domino. You can see the dominoes stopped at the yellow disk. This player earned 20 points for their first round move. You can play as many rounds as you want until you call it quits. when you are done playing, add up each players points. The player with the most points wins!
Have Fun! I can’t wait to see what you come up with!!
From our BnT Inventor’s…
Our friend Keegan reported on his game called “Monster’s Luck”. It’s a cross between chutes and ladders and candy land. You can have 1-4 players. Each player has a piece to move after the dice is rolled. There are traps that may make a player lose 3 turns or go back to the start position. To win you have to roll the exact number to cross the finish line. Also, there are different routes to select along the way. We’ve played it a few times and it’s been a lot of fun! It’s definitely a game of luck! Way to go, Keegan!
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