Hello Reddit! Last night, I came up with an idea for a card game, and wanted to see what my fellow peers thought of it.
This is just the rough idea, but I hope it's fairly unique. You play as a BMX rider, pulling off crazy stunts to gain the crowd's favor. The first part of the game would be building the track. There would be a track deck, and you'd flip over (a) card(s). Players would then bid on that track piece, for their own track. Why would you want to bid on track pieces? Well, when building your track, you're trying to combo track parts together to let you gain huge amounts of favor. For example, let's say you have a ramp card down, and the next card drawn is a rubber tire wall card. You're hoping to get a firey hoop to combo with you're ramp, but you could also take the guaranteed wall. As players bid on track pieces, not all players tracks will be the same. You build your track from left to right, using track pieces like flat ground, ramps, hoops, mud pits, etc.
Then comes the race! Rather than being the first person to finish your track, you attempt to gain the most favor from the crowd by performing stunts and styles. There are 2 types of cards: stunts and styles. At the start of your turn, you advance your excitebike one card forward on your track. You then may play up to one stunt, and up to 1 style. Styles can also be played on other players turns. Stunts let you pull of crazy moves, and give you favor. The basic stunt card would be a wheelie, for example. It might give you one favor, and can only be played on the ground. Here's the key thing though: many stunts can be linked together when in certain conditions, such as the track pieces you are on, the stunts you do, any styles, etc. Linking up your stunts gives you bonus favor, so you want to link stunts. Other stunts like superman can only be played in the air, ie going off a ramp. To prevent the problem of players only playing the best card, without much choice, I hope I've come up with a decent way. First, stunt cards have different effects besides a favor amount. Do I play my wheelie now and get the one favor, plus the possibility of starting a chain, or do I play my powerslide? The other card type is styles. Styles have two uses. Some styles modify your stunts/chain. An example would be nitrous. You play that along with your stunt turn, with the requirement that you're on the ground. Nitrous would let you take an extra turn, essentially letting you play an extra card. The disadvantage of nitrous is that since you're ahead of everyone else after using it, your losing a turn later in the game. So it essentially allows you a one time boost of playing an extra card, at the loss of an extra turn later on. Other style cards can be played on other players turns, such as wipeout, which would cancel their stunt and chain. Once all players have completed their tracks, the player with the most favor wins the game!
This idea came up from the realization that almost all games I design are rules heavy, meaty, with serious themes, and almost always have combat. I felt like I wanted to break the rut I'm in, and try something rules lite, with a fun theme, and no combat. So what do you think? It's just a rough idea, obviously, but I think it might work. I'm open to feedback and ideas.
EDIT: I've changed the multiple tracks to a single track. At the start of a turn, you reveal the top 3(?) cards of the deck, and then players bid on which piece will actually be added. This allows for the bidding interaction, and trying to get track pieces that will work with your stunts/styles in hand. Also, I've been thinking of changing it to a race. The first person to cross the finish line gets a bunch of favor, so players still perform tricks to try and get favor points. Theoretically, a person who finishes first could still lose if they didn't do very many points. So how do you get ahead of other players? Boost pads, nitrous, certain styles/stunts, etc. Plus, there are cards that slow down other players.
