Apologies but this is quite long. My problem is i have lots of ideas, and less time to implement them. i want to pick one or two games from my many ideas to prototype up and start playtesting (i will probably ask for help playtesting once i get there) so what do you guys think of these ideas? most of these dont have names yet, any worth working on? which ones catch your interest or dont?
Archon- this is loosely based on the Archon series of video games, the concept is each player plays the ruler of an element, in front of you is the vast void. you must expand your element and conquor the void, but each player is doing the same. as you take control of power nodes your element grows stronger, and you can summon elementals to fight for you. the issue is each elemental has different default behavior. you can override this with energy, but thats a cost. earth elementals will move inherently differently from air elementals etc so the elements will play vastly differently. id also like to add a selection of spells for each element to reinforce this. as a side note this game is somewhat prototyped already, working on playtesting.
Deathmatch- ok story for this is there are dimension hopping masters of the universe who are bored, so they find warriors and heroes from across times and realities to fight in their deathmatches. there is a limiting field in place so the killbot's eye lazers can be blocked by the knights shield, etc. once in the arena though, never stand still because the arena is just as deadly as your opponent. i thought of this game as a way to incorperate any figure from any game and come up with a set of rules to play them. to create a character you pick a figure (or token or whatever) choose your race and class (could be mages, WW2 soldiers, Ninjas, aliens, anything) based on those choices you had starting gear and created a deck of cards. (not a deckbuilder though your deck doesnt change durring the game) you would cycle through your deck fast using cards to move, prepare and attack on your turn, and dodge and defend on other peoples turns. attempting to avoid limitless traps. death is not final though and winners and loosers can customize their character with new equipment and spend exp and such between matches.
Warehouse- dont really see many games of this type, simulating the management of a warehouse. 2 ways i could go with this, either coop where each player is a different department (receiving, picking, shipping, inventory) and you get VP for doing your job, but by doing your job you are helping someone else do theirs. for example the more stuff gets received, the more the picker can pick, the more that gets picked the more the shipper can ship, etc). the other way i could do it is competitive, each player has a player board with a shipping and receiving section that attaches to the main warehouse board. anything in the warehouse board is fair game though. either way players will move goods around the warehouses with the vehicles. and spend money to build racks to hold more product in the central warehouse area.
Solar Supremacy- at one time i was working on a redesign of the old Supremacy game system. after i put quite a bit of work into a rules redesign i discovered a new company had gotten a hold of the copyright and were redoing the board but leaving the rules mostly intact. so i decided to take my revised rules and migrate what i could into a 4X space game. i love a lot of the Euro influence in games today even most wargames today are using a lot of those mechanics like VP and such (like TI) to me though sometimes i just want a good ol fashioned ameritrash game. dont get me wrong i dont want it to be complex just for complexitys sake, but i want it to have a lot going on. exploring systems and planets, good tech system, Race creation, that sort of thing (I think ive come up with an easy way to do race creation in a board game)
Adventure- ok think Runebound + mertwigs maze + Modular Board + Various goals. your character runs around a player created board, encounters are based on what terrain you land on. for example Forest encounter 5+ so if you end on a forest space, you roll a die on a 5 or more you draw an encounter card. that way the random encounters make sense with the terrain and more dangerous areas will have encounters more often. roads might have a high encounter rate (3+) but most of those encounters are harmless. any elite encounter you drew would ignore you if you were under a certain power level to prevent bad things happening to low characters from a random card draw. also scattered throughout the tiles would be adventure locations like mertwigs maze. Moving into one of these placed you on a seperate board (double sided for variety, and the same locations would be double sided on the corresponding terrain tile. the adventure locations are where the good loot was including artifacts and relics. to upgrade your character you would have equipment, spells, companions, and different classes would be better as using certain ones. to win there would be a variety of goals, collect X gold, or X relics, or complete X adventures, defeat X epic monsters, gain X levels or powers. you could draw one and that was the game win condition, or pass them out and keep them face down in front of each player etc.
the issue is each elemental has different default behavior. you can override this with energy, but thats a cost. earth elementals will move inherently differently from air elementals etc so the elements will play vastly differently
This mechanic jumped out at me as having a lot of design potential; especially with the elemental theme. I think this would lead to some interesting strategies as players must not only execute on the strategy, but must also keep it under control and effective until they can win.
this one is kind of protoytyped already. its interesting how the different elements play. sometimes you can force the move of one or two elementals and that changes what everyone else was going to do, but some elements like earth are hard to move on a large scale you almost have to over ride every one you want to change.