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yet another "suggest a theme" question

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 00:17
NewbieDesigner
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I have in mind a 10(H) x 15(W) rectangle grid (adjustable for player count). The grid will consist of cards or tiles, 5 or 6 suits. Cards will be removed (one or more at a time) from the grid until completely empty. The removal will start in one corner and make its way across to the other side but not in a uniform manner; there will be fragments of pieces left behind that will eventually get taken.

The theme I came up with was eating a birthday cake starting with one piece on a corner of the cake. Each piece will have a candle on it and there will be 5 or 6 different colored candles. If there is a board with tiles, there could be crumbs on the game board underneath the tiles (purely aesthetic). This sound lame?

I have in mind Tigris/Samurai/Ingenious “most least” scoring but I’m open to other suggestions. Maybe each suit will have one tile with a “take another turn” special action on it. Or "swap a tile" with someone else.

Any other theme ideas where the board starts in the shape of a rectangle and tiles or cards get removed from the entire board from one corner? Something maybe related to erosion or devouring. Not too dark though.

Thanks as always.

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 02:44
#1
Stormyknight1976
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Earthquake

Earthquake comes to mind. Each player has his or her own city on the grid. Players try to take out the other players city by removing tiles. How to remove tiles or areas on the board. Have a 6d colored with six different colors. If the player's own color is shown, the player can add a piece back in their area or zone. Its like Sim-city and Twister mash-up. Sim-city has the weather and earth destruction and Twister has the colors to step on or put a hand down onto the color.

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 09:48
#2
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Thanks- I think I have the

Thanks- I think I have the mechanics figured out and pieces will be removed from the board (never added), and the removal will occur from the top left corner towards the other side of the board until all pieces are gone.

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 11:11
#3
Stormyknight1976
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Would like to check out game mechanic.

Thats good. I wrote that all up just before going to bed in bed. I liked the concept. Um. Would like to ask if I could use that earthquake game mechanic and see where it leads. The game would be a block and luck game with player interaction.

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 11:14
#4
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Go for it!

Go for it!

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 12:35
#5
Stormyknight1976
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Thank you

Thank you

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 16:19
#6
JustActCasual
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Joined: 11/20/2012
Mining?

Mining would be the most obvious theme. Especially works well with the directional aspect since you are 'tunneling', and the acquisition of various gems or ore is fairly intuitive. You also can't put new ore into the ground...and you could work in fun partial information mechanics, as you could see where certain types of resource were, but the value of the vein could be hidden (ie. I can see that there is a grouping of gold tiles over there, but the actual amount of gold you get from each tile could be on the underside).

It would be neat to see a resource acquisition game on a more micro scale like this: could also be incorporated as a minigame element within a larger game skeleton.

PS: I think the cake idea is novel, and definitely lends itself to be marketed to a younger age group, but if you want to go with that it would seem better to work with a circular cake in a general 'wedge' style. It would play strongly to the theme as well as providing the opportunity for even more unique mechanics...oops I just thought of a new, different birthday cake game :#

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Mon, 12/10/2012 - 16:54
#7
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Thanks. I did think of the

Thanks. I did think of the mining idea but now that you mention scoring, I do like the idea of hidden information since I'm not sure the "least most" would work. Maybe if all tiles are face down but everyone knew the distribution of points- kind of like Thebes where half of the tiles are worthless dirt.

The way tile removal works was inspired from the game Pixelated:

"The object of the game is to change the colour of the squares until the entire screen is a single solid colour. Starting with the square in the upper left corner you can change the colour of the blocks in order to match that of the surrounding squares. This is done repeatedly until the entire screen is a single colour."

Check out the screenshot.

http://apps.microsoft.com/webpdp/en-us/app/pixelated/91ed69ef-2519-4d1f-...

This seems tailored made for a grid style tile game. I would just have to tweak the scoring since the app is solitary and involves removing everything in less than 22 moves.

I'm surprised this mechanic hasn't been used before but maybe I'm not aware of a game that uses it?

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