We have a winner!
Tornado Town
Spinning and twisting into first place, Tornado Town tore up the competition! A close second place goes to Exo Prime. Both are truly outstanding entries for this month's challenging competition. There is much to discuss about this particular challenge, and with the high level of participation there's bound to be some fascinating points raised about all of games. Congrats to all our participants; now let's start generating some feedback!.
Please Read: Details on entering the Game Design Showdown.
Entries are posted!
Take a good look through the entries this month. There are plenty of unique uses for spinners represented, and hopefully a few solid games as well.
Let the voting begin!
There are a lot of ways to randomize information in a game, because it's a great way to summarize all the crazy variables you don't want to worry about simulating.
But as you all know, not all randomizers are created the same, nor should they. You can do some things easier with cards than with dice - like modeling conditional probability problems, for instance. And of all the randomizers, drawing cards/tokens and rolling dice are probably the most common.
March's GDS looks at a lowly, oft ignored randomizer: the spinner.
Under-utilized perhaps because its randomizing ability is similar to dice, spinners are nevertheless a unique component. Recent games like Tzolk'in have reintroduced at least the presence of "spinny-things" even if they aren't necessarily used to randomize anything in that game.
You challenge this month is to look at the spinner - I mean really look at it. What does it offer a game? How is it physically different from dice, and how can you use that? Then you must design a game where a spinner features prominently and uses it to randomize something - not just track progress like in Tzolk'in.
Be one with the spinner.
Good luck.
Now the standard details:
Word Limit: Standard 500 word
Voting: Award a Gold, Silver, and Bronze (worth 3,2, and 1 points respectively) Medals to your three favorite entries. Any entrant that does not award all three Medals will receive a Pyrite Medal (that's "Fool's Gold") worth -3 votes!
When submitting your entry: Please PM submissions to richdurham with the following subject line.
Subject: GDS - MAR - [your username]
Submissions: Saturday the 1st through to Saturday the 8th.
Voting: Through the 15th. PM your votes to mindspike.
Voting Format: Each person has 3 Medals (Gold, Silver, and Bronze - with values 3, 2, and 1 vote respectively) to distribute any way they choose among the GDS entries with the following restrictions:
Entrants may not assign any Medals to their own entry!
Entrants must assign all 3 Medals.
An entrant who does not assign all 3 Medals will receive a Pyrite Medal (-3 votes) as a penalty.
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, visit the GDS Wiki Page.
Enjoy, and good luck!
-Rich and Mindspike
Critter Scramble
3-6 players 20 to 30 minutes Make pairs and collect all the chips. Just make sure you don’t claim a pair that ain’t there.
Components
6 Spinners Board - Center Pot Bank with 120 chips – 40 each labeled ‘Color’, ‘Word’ and ‘Number’. 12 second timer bell Optional: Beer and pretzels or WAY too much sugar
SPINNERS
There are 6 spinners in the game and each is unique. There are 12 pie shaped wedges on each spinner board. Each wedge has a color, a color word, a number and some critters.
Color - The wedges are colored red, purple, blue, green, yellow or orange in no particular order.
Word - Somewhere on each wedge is a word - red, purple, blue, green, yellow or orange. The word does not match the color of the wedge.
Number - Each wedge also has a number, 1 to 6 printed on it somewhere, again in no particular order.
Critters - And to top it off, every wedge has random, unique cartoony critters, none matching any on other wedges in the game. The critters are in gangs of 1 to 6, but the number of critters in the gang will not match the number on that wedge.
For example, one wedge might be colored blue, have the word “RED” printed on it close to the axel, the number “4” on the outside edge and one cartoon donkey half way out. Another wedge might be yellow, have a school of 6 cartoon fish peering in from the edge, the word “Green” somewhat centered and the number 4 near the axel.
Each spinner will have at least one wedge of each color, color word and number, but may have 2 or 3.
Game Set-up
Each player gets one spinner and 6 chips.
The Bank puts one chip in the pot for each of three possible matching types; color, word and number, making sure that all chips in a pot are labeled with the matching type.
Order Of Play:
Simultaneously, each player spins their spinner. As the spinners stop all players look for sets of 2 or more matching colors, words or numbers. When they see a match they may take as many chips as they can with one single-handed grab from that segment of the pot.
Once the timer dings no player may touch the spinners or the chips remaining in the pot.
Players then compare what they pulled from the pot with what they can see on the spinners. If there is a pair of whatever they may keep the chips they grabbed. If not they must return the chips to the pot and pay a one chip penalty to the bank.
Game End: Game ends when bank can not fully fill pot or someone breaks a finger. Player with the most chips wins.