reducing cubes on around the board

Are you committed to using only cubes?

I imagine that stackable chips - featuring different sizes for denominations, and/or colours per player, may be useful for you.

Can you implement a dial for each location? What about dice, where you flip upright the corresponding number of clues in that location?

Regarding your end-game condition: I really don't have an opinion on this. It may be wise for you to playtest the specific number of rounds condition you mention, and see if it still "feels good."

If you have Translucent Dice (12mm) instead of Acrylic cubes (8mm), you can do some extra type of potency of the ectoplasm.

Instead of being a "Cube" if it was a "Dice" you get 36 dice and each time you drop some ectoplasm (a Dice), the potency of the ectoplasm can be expressed as from 1 to 6. I propose using "6" instead of "1" for the most dangerous ...

But 36 x "5" = 180... That's more than "99" and players "lose" the game. As soon as one of the tracks goes higher than "99" ... the game ends in a loss (right?)

So this example shows how you COULD use the TRACK with 12mm DICE and it might be a little more "expensive" (using dice) ... But it could add a whole other "Tactical" Layer to the game.

Again feel free to use, adapt or ignore these ideas if they do/don't work for you.

Best.

If you feel like 99 points is too HIGH of a "mark" to REACH, you can have DIFFICULTY levels which specify the amount of ectoplasm that each track starts with:

(for example) = 40 Ooze (Yellow), 20 Slime (Green), 10 Plasma (Blue).

Those would be STARTING values for the three (six) tracks... And you can tweak these to match LEVELS of difficulty as per level being attempted. This adds to variability in-terms of the design.

It also can make for HARD or EASIER levels too. So when you start playing the game, maybe you'll want an EASIER level... But as you gain experience playing, you might opt for a HARDER level to test out both your knowledge and skills within the game.

Again feel free to use, adapt or ignore these ideas if they do/don't work for you.

If a human collects one cube, it serves as a 1 point penalty, right??? So you need to have a way to TRACK without necessarily requiring an area in which you put THOSE cubes... The way I see it, the three (six) Tracks would do a lot to help keep check on how the ghosts are doing and how the humans are faring against them. So, I think you would need the Tracks to keep a tally on the "score".

If you want to trigger a "Game ending" via a function, well like I said in an earlier comment, you can set the difficulty of the game based on LEVELS of each COLOR... I don't know how many points get collected by the Humans versus reclaimed by the ghosts. But I THINK 99 points is a LOT. Especially if you are moving the tracks by 1 point.

That's where I had the idea of having a standard 1d6 roll each time a Human collects a cube ... And then the points get added 1 to 5 and "6" is reserved for a special "consequence" (like your "1" concept).

That method would of course make 99 points easier to trigger but still make the game FUN in that players know that they need to worry about their left-over ectoplasm ... Knowing that it can adversely react with the Humans.

But again ... These are just some ideas you can work with...

Now getting back to "Wave" vs. "Game" endings. If you have a "Game Ending" function, you're going to need a Track (or several). As for "Wave Endings", you'll have to manually track that ALSO if it has some kind of influence in the end-game scoring (as per your explanation).

Again these are just some ideas ... The real point that I want to make is that, If you ADD some kind of RISK to leaving ectoplasm around (1 to 5 points plus a "6" consequence) it adds TENSION to the game.

The ONLY issue that I have is with this statement:

Does that mean the Humans collect ALL cubes or just one per room??? If it is ONE (1) cube per Human ... Well then I would ADD the 1d6 die roll... And add that amount to the corresponding Track color.

Why? Just because I think 99 points where you go up 1 point per cube SEEMS to me to be an awful LONG time. Like nobody will ever reach 99+. But if you add a die roll, then the ectoplasm has a significant more likeliness to have an "End Game" trigger function. And like I said earlier (in one of the previous posts), you can have LEVELs of difficulty. Maybe a Deck of 10 cards with different distributions of the LEVELS. And that could add more replayability because the ghosts have different trigger/levels to worry about when collecting the ectoplasm.

Again feel free to use, adapt, ignore these ideas if they do/don't work for you.

Note #1: BTW how do the ghost's haunt the Humans??? How does that mechanic work?! I ask because it could maybe impact scoring as well... I'm just asking because I don't know ... And would see if there is a link to the left-over ectoplasm or the collection of ectoplasm by the ghosts themselves or the Humans...

And sorry IF I repeated a bit of what I had posted earlier... I was just feeling like the whole "1 point" per cube seems relatively with little to NO TENSION. Meanwhile a die roll with a "consequence" on a "6" is very tension-filled. 1 to 5 add to the Track (again no worries early on ... but towards the near END of the game... HUGE Tension for EACH ROLL!!!) and whatever you want as a "consequence" could also add more tension to the game too... "Please don't rolls a '6'!!!" Hehehe!

Note #2: Or a "6" could be a benefit like -5 Points off that Track ... That means EVERYONE will be hoping for a "6" later into the game and the values 1 to 5 just ramp up the tension too! It doesn't mean that the consequence "needs to be BAD", it could be in the player's FAVOR also!

Note #3: And if a track goes beyond 99 points... The Humans CALL 555-2368 (the "GHOSTBUSTERS") and it's END-GAME for all the ghosts! Hahaha! :-)

Could you limit the number of cubes/dice each ghost has and then make losing all your cubes a game ending condition? In this case the dice/cubes would represent the ghosts essence. In order to perform a actions in the mortal realm the ghost must leave some of their essence there, which become ectoplasm. Of course the more powerful of an action they take, the more essence/ectoplasm they leave. It could be something like leave 4 uses to do the really good action. If you used dice it could be something like roll 14+ to do the really good action. The dice rolling can represent the difficulties that ghost experiences when trying to take actions in the mortal realm.

Maybe if a intruder is scared to death, it attracts more intruders. Thematically emts, police, detectives, paranormal investigators, ghost buster knock off, mad scientist, ect. Maybe these could be super-intruders. Super intruders would simply be a intruder with that does things slightly better than a normal intruder. Thematically, after three deaths the premises would be overwhelmed with super intruders thus making it unbearable for the ghosts.

Ghost not wanting to share a house with the new owners is the starting premise for the movie Beetlejuice. So there is an off chance if you watch it you could draw some inspiration from it.

Feel free to use, disregard or improve upon. Good luck with your game.