De'va vou?

I'd like to suggest http://luding.org/ as a good place to search. They currently have 17408 games in their database, on a few less than BoardGameGeek, and definitely a lot of different ones than BGG.

-- Matthew

Well, on the BoardGameGeek you can browse games by theme and by mechanic. You can also often use the Geeklist feature -- if you find a game that's kind of close, either in theme or game play, see if there are any Geeklists for the game (towards the bottom of the game's main page). Sometimes you'll encounter a list like "Games About 13th Century China Played With Nailguns And Playdoh," or something that seems like the kind of game you're thinking about. Check out the list and review the individual titles to get a better sense.

Is it still marketable as a knockoff?? Even if the other game would be better I would imagine sales will still happen if the price is lower.
Price drives some consumption, but as you know there are a lot of other drivers, too. If, for example, you could design a game that was very similar to Monopoly, yet a bit better and cheaper, do you think you could beat Hasbro at it? Probably not, people buy Monopoly because it is Monopoly. There was a guy over at the BoardGameGeek who was talking about his superior form of Scrabble, that was more fun, and that he couldn't believe that anyone would buy Scrabble over it, yet again, people buy Scrabble because it's Scrabble, not because it's better or cheaper than the other games out there.

If you're not going up against much marketing power or money, then sure, I can see it, maybe. But even then, there are, say, 10,000 people who will buy a game about frog gigging in the Old West. If the other game was out there first and 9,500 of those people already own such a game, they're not likely to buy yours, even if it's cheaper.

Few are the retailers who will stock two nearly-identical products, so you'll have to win their hearts long before the consumers'. Including convincing the retailers that they'll actually sell enough more of your games to make it worth carrying your cheaper version. If it takes 10 minutes of a sales guy's time to sell a game to the consumer, on average, and the retailer'd make $15 on the sale of your competitor's game and only $10 on the sale of yours, that price decrease is going to have to cut down on that sales time quite a bit.

So, to me, it's all about market placement. If your game is better marketed, then maybe a cheaper knockoff could win the day, but I doubt that it's the best business model out there, at least in fairly niche markets like most non-Hasbro board games.

-- Matthew