I'm working on a game called Brain Swappers. It's supposed to be sort of cute and light hearted. Think most Iello games.
Each player starts out with a brain and a body of matching colors. Cute little alien guys with exposed brains.
Players need to collect 3 'ideas.' Ideas can only be claimed on the players' starting spaces.
The catch is you can only enter one of those starting spaces if your brain is in a body that matches the color of the starting space.
So the goal is to have mental duels with your opponents in an effort to swap bodies with them.
Players start with an equal amount of little plastic cubes (Brain Power). Each players' starting Brain Power matches their color.
You have to pay X number of Brain Power (of a matching color) in order to claim an Idea when you're in one of the starting spaces.
Once you have an Idea of every color you must return to your starting body, and get back to your starting space. That's how you win.
The board is just a bunch of hexes (the hexes have different variations of the player colors, some with 1, 2, or 3 colors).
My first plan was for brain swaps to occur like this:
Players can mutually agree to swap brains, as sometimes both players want to switch bodies. If this is the case they must agree to trade an equal amount of Brain Power to do so.
I like the idea of having everyone start out with a bunch of Brain Power in only their color, and by the end of the game everyone has a very diverse blend of Brain Power. Sort of how these little aliens get exposed to new ideas once they leave their home or something.
If you propose a brain swap, and the other player wants to hang on to their current body, a duel ensues.
The original plan for this was simply each player puts an amount of Brain Power into their fist (secretly) and both reveal. Whoever had more wins the duel. THEN they must both give each other the Brain Power they wagered. So betting big means you're going to be giving a lot of this "currency" to your opponent.
When someone claims an 'Idea' they dump the Brain Power into the 'bank' which other actions would allow people to draw from later. Though I'm not sure if the Brain Power paid to get an idea should just go straight back to the player whose color it matches.
An imbalance in Brain Power could become an issue.
I've since revamped the whole system to involve dice rolls for duels (the winner giving the loser Brain Power equal to the difference in their rolls). And the closer you got to winning, the worse your dice pool gets.
But I'm more curious about feedback on my original idea. And please let me know if I was too vague about anything. My current game is getting a bit too complex I think and wanted to go back to the beginning a bit.
I'm demoing this at an UnPub at the end of the month so I wanted to work out some kinks.
