Game: Critters

This is the game I've been babbling about in the topic "when does a theme become unsuitable for kids"

I got pretty stuck and thus despirited (is this a real word? :? ) with this one, so I decided to share what I got up to date.

The goal I had in mind from the beginning was, that I wanted a mechanic that allows players to construct hybrid, fictive animals, in a way that is visually impressive. What I mean that the presentation of the animals shouldn't feel forced, like in QUIRKS, for example. They have to seamlessly join together, to the point where the viewer cannot tell that the image het pu together is in fact quarters of four different image.

I made this by drawing chubby, bubblegum shaped critters and cutting them into four parts, quarters. There is a quarter for head, back, forelegs and hindlegs. But these aren't taken strictly, for example a bird don't have forelegs, and it's wings are on it's back.

I currently have 20 or so animals. Here's a few example hybrids.

http://materu.tx.hu

(these images are my works, please, don't distribute them without my permission. I'm pretty sensitive in this matter :evil: )

I think I did a pretty good job on visuals :). Next step was to decide on setting.

As most games that revolve around evolution or natural selection use the area control mechanic, I wanted to make something different. Here's what I came up with:

There is a main gameboard, depicting a planet. There are three different regions on it, which serves as a bank for the three kind of resources (black, cyan, red), and a track for the Sun (and possibly for a Moon).

During the course of the game, the Sun serves as a game clock. It is advenced every turn, and places the number of resources shown on the track to the continent next to it. These tokens resemble plants and fillers growing on the planet. So, the Sun gives different resource in different seasons (there are four seasons, two longer, for red and cyan tokens, and two shorter, for black tokens). When the Sun enters a new season an event card is drawn.

In front of every player, there is a track with four regions.

1.Food stock - the overall vitality and food reserves of their race
2. Eggs - young critters, that deserve care of older ones
3. Grownups - Adult critters, the backbone of the race
4. Deceased - deceased members of the race currently on the planet, waiting to rot

The players can advance a given number of tokens on this track every turn. They get Victory Points for every token that makes the full lifecycle, and returns to the planet.
Care must be taken tough, because you need food to feed adults, adults to take care of the young, and time to let the deceased rot and the eggs hatch. And your opponents are constatnly trying to steal tokens from you and pervent your tokens to make the Full Cycle

Every players hold three Behaviour Cards in hand. These are choices of diet for their critter for that turn. Every turn, the players play one of these, and they get their share of avaliable food in the chosen diet based on the numbers and attributes of their critters.

1. Herbivore - gets food from the planet
2. Parasite - gets food from the food stocks of other players
3. Egg stealer - gets food from the Egg part of other players LifeCycle track
4. Carnivore - gets food from grownup critters
5. Carrion - gets food from deceased critters

there are two more special behaviour cards

6. Mate - allows a player to trade parts of their critter, and both invovled player gets bonus tokens
7. Hide - allows player to pass that turn, no other player may steal tokens from him

So, if everybody plays herbivore, everybody get little food. If the players constatnly try to steal from each other, and there are no herbivores, than everybody will starve and eventually become extinct. The players have to manage a working ecosystem together (ever heard of the prisoners dilemma?)

if somebody becomes extinct, which happens pretty offten, than he discards his current critter, gets a whole new (randomly), and starts over, with his accumulated score preserved.

So I got a World and I got Critters, but I have yet to devise a way to inegrate the two. There must be a way to differnciate between critters and to handle conflicts between players. I have to admit, all I miss is the heart of the engine :cry:

I have too many ideas, each is very hazy, and don't know which direction to take. I jot down a few factors that could be used as building blocks in these mechanics.

1. three kind of resource >>> It matters which kind of food the critter grown up on (I have a red token on food stock, I advance it to become a red egg, than a red critter)

2. itt matters that how many tokens a player has on each space on the LifeCycle track (food, eggs, adults)

3. The mechanism I would like to use on Critters is one of the folowwing, or a combination of the two

a.) each part has two of six possible type of colored dots on it. The dots are added together, and the sums tell the different attributes of a critter

exmpl. > head - speed, claws
back - claws, vision
arms - claws, speed
legs - vision, camouflage

>> so the critter has >> speed: 2
claws: 3
vision: 2
camouflage: 1

b.) every part is associated with a rulebraker, the more you have of the same type, the stronger it brakes the rules

WOW, thats a lot of text. I hope it's still eidible. I'm pretty stuck here, and would appreciate any kind of kick in the butt to get me started again.

There's a few other things, but it's already too much for one post, I'll write more on this only if it spawns interest