I recently started another two player game design currently called 'Diver Delve' which I would consider a *sister* game to Stork Drop. The two have a similar framework but I think the gameplay will be different enough for it to stand alone.
In this design instead of sending baby animals down to the earth by parachute the players are guiding a diver down to the ocean flow to collect specimans for a public aquarium (the goal of the diver may change if I hit upon a better idea). There are no paths to follow like in Stork Drop and the divers must avoid being seen by the sharks that inhabit the water. Mechanically, the divers are represented by pawns and the water is a made up of 24 cards in a 5x5 grid with no center card at the start of the game. Twelve of these cards are double sided shark cards with half facing one direction and the other have facing the other direction. As the diver moves through the water he needs to stay out of sight of the sharks on adjacent cards otherwise he will need to pay a penalty of some sort, possibly losing oxygen which may be used as movement points. The players have three different actions they can perform to clear a path for their diver to move through: shift cards up or down, shift cards left or right, and swap two adjacent cards. With these mechanics the shark cards can be moved out of the way but the catch is that when moving shark cards left or right they need to face the direction they are moved in. If the shark is facing the wrong direction then the card is flipped which will show the shark facing the other way. I'm thinking this will keep the playing area a little unpredictable and could potenially give opportunity to mess with the other player.
As far as end game conditions I'm thinking of having ten mission cards which the players randomly draw and show three specimans the divers need to retrieve. Once a diver reaches an ocean floor card (which is placed below the 5x5 water grid) with that speciman on it and make it back to their boat (a card placed at the top of the 5x5 water grid) then they get a card with that speciman. The first player that gets all three speciman cards needed for their mission card wins the game.
