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The Insider's Guide to Malcocinado, Spain
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Game Ideas I spent a lot of my youth inventing games. The following are some of the ones I recall.
Pencil and paper games for kids
Word puzzle (for adults)
Scrambled Countries of Europe (or "Eurosmack")
Our kids really enjoyed a game we bought called Scrambled States of America from Gamewright. So they decided to create a version for Europe. Adrian (12) did all the artwork and Teo (9) did his share of the countries. It's highly educational, but that can't be helped.
Afrosmack
Here's our version for Africa:
Platypus
Dear Sir/Madam, Please consider the following game idea. It's for children ages 3 - 9. It allows children to invent their own simple games, using cardboard puzzle pieces to form the game. Each interlocking piece is square with one "male" side, and three "female" sides. That allows the puzzle pieces to be put together any way the children like, with zigzagging or a long loop. ---------------------- PARTS - 48 puzzle pieces: 6 groups of 8. Each group has a background color, and each has an animal drawn on it. Below is the animal's name. Above left is the phylum, class, and order. Above right is the population, speed, and length. - 1 die - 1 start piece - 1 end piece - 1 shortcut piece (the size of 2 squares) - 6 game markers in each of the 6 colors - 8 blank puzzle pieces THE SETUP Players work together to build a long, winding path out of the puzzle pieces. They can use the shortcut piece to add a shortcut where the path is close together. Then players work together to decide on the rules. They can invent any rules they wish. Some examples: - If you land on an animal matching your color, advance to the next space of that color. - If you land on a fish, you advance 2 spaces. - If you land on an opponent, the opponent goes back 3 spaces. - If you land on an extinct animal (population: 0), you lose a turn. - If you land on a fast animal, roll again. (The faster ones are printed in green, the slower ones in red). - If you land on a small animal, you swap positions with the person on your right. (The small ones are printed in red, the big ones in green.) We suggest the following fixed rules: - If more than one rule applies to a space, the player only applies one (their choice). - No more than 2 or 3 rules -- better to keep it simple. - You can only take the shortcut if your marker ends up on the shortcut. You can do whatever you like with the blank pieces: save a few if pieces get lost, draw more animals or invented animals with special rules, add fixed instruction pieces (advance 3 spaces), whatever. We recommend saving them until you have played a lot. THE PLAY The youngest player rolls the die, and moves that many spaces. Play continues clockwise. First player to reach the end wins. ------------------ That's it. A simple idea, but it has good selling points: - Imagination: The kids invent the game themselves. - Negotiation: They need to work together on the setup and rules. - Many things in one: A puzzle, a game, an art project. - Educational: It will give an idea of animal types and useful stats. (And I find that as an adult, the real (though approximate) data of population, speed, and length is enough to keep my mind occupied while playing the game with the kids.) I've done a lot of game inventing in my life, though it was my older boy, Adrian, who came up with this idea. The theme could be dinosaurs to capture the dinosaur-obsessed market, but I like the idea of mixing extinct and current animals in this age of diminishing species to increase children's understanding. I know Adrian as a 6-year-old would have pored over such a game for hours, just putting the pieces in order by one of the stats. If you've read this far and are interested, as I say, I relinquish all rights. I'd just like to see a good idea come to fruition. The only things I request are: - that you give me one more round of input, then you can change it all as you see fit. - that you send us a few copies of the game, once published. I have only sent this idea to Ravensburger, since I appreciate the quality of the products you make, and I know that you specialize in making puzzles. I don't plan to send this idea to anyone else. In any case, thank you very much for reading my email and for considering the idea. Kind regards, Tom Strong (Spain) +34 932 155393 Free Trade This is a noisy game where everyone tries to trade with the other players. I sent a videotape of my friends playing this game to a couple of game companies. Now I'm hoping my kids will in a few years pass the game around in college. I need to locate a set of rules for the game. Claude A solitaire card game I invented in my teens. The setup
The play
When playing to the x1 or x2 stack, you may only play onto a card in sequence (only a 6 or an 8 onto a 7, only a 9 onto a 10, only a 2 onto an ace -- consider an ace as a 1). When moving a stack up to the x3 or x4 stack, you move the full stack. x1 and x2 are empty, and you can move any card from the row of five to the x1 or x2 slot. When moving a stack up to the x3 or x4 stack, keep it slightly offset from previous stacks, so you can keep track of bonuses. If you have 8 cards or more in any stack, you get a bonus of 10 points (16 or more for a bonus of 20 points). You may not count cards in the x1 or x2 stack before deciding to move them (keep track). If you have less than 3 cards in any stack then you do not get any credit for these cards. If you are unable to play any cards in your row of five, then you can move one of these cards or move the x1 or x2 stack (you won't get credit for it) to a stack on the side called the penalty stack. At then end of the game, each card (or stack from x1/x2) in the penalty stack counts as minus 10. Queens are wild cards. However, as soon as you get one, you must put it in the x1 or x2 stack and either move the stack up or put a card from the row on top of it, considering the queen as a particular number (for instance, if you put a queen on a 4, you may only put a 2, 4, or 6 on top of the queen). The scoring
I played this game a fair amount. The downside is the complicated scoring -- it would work well as a computer game. Frontier I picked up styrofoam packaging and turned it into a gameboard. The idea was you pick up cards until you have enough to make a bunch of moves and surround an opponent's unit(s), kind of like a less abstract version of Go. The good idea was that if you move up to a "mountain", from there you can spawn: create as many duplicates of that unit as you like. I thought highly enough of the game to try to create a computer version of it, in order to learn the "C" programming language -- a project I never finished, though I remember the program created attractive fractal-based topographical maps. Ghost A fine game that I played with my teacher in fifth grade. The first player writes a letter. Each player in turn adds a letter before or after. You try not to make a word, but you must have a word in mind. If you think the other player doesn't have a word in mind, you can challenge. For example, my crowing moment with my teacher was: I started with B, he made it DB, my turn: EDB, his turn EDBU (thinking of BEDBUG), my turn REDBU, he challenged. My word was REDBUD, a type of tree. Blind Race Another game from my school. Draw a squiggly racetrack, with maybe a few "puddles" in it. One player places their pen at the starting line, studies the track, then closes their eyes and draws a line. When their line goes outside the track, the other person yells STOP, then it's the other player's turn. On your next turn, you start from the point where you went out. Hex Two-person game.
Triangulate Two-person game. Draw a random grid of dots, in rows and columns 2, 3, or 4 across or down, say something like this:
Boggleback This puzzle is based on the game Boggle. A player has written down the following words, after playing a game of boggle: toad
Can you reconstruct the 4x4 boggle grid of letters that were used for this game? The answer can arrived at through logical means. No trial and error is required. See answer. Now try this one: lynx
See answer. Wordlinks The goal is to build the shortest chain between two words. At each step of the chain, you can either remove one letter, add one letter, or change one letter. For instance, to go from SHORT to TALL: short
Now try A STITCH IN TIME (going from A to STITCH to IN to TIME). The answer I have is 17 steps long. When you're on a boring trip, take a random phrase and see who can come up with the shortest chain. Auction Action
How to link See "Wordlinks" above. The play
Scoring
The play, part II
How to link, part II
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Scrambled Countries of Europe and Africa (illustrated by Adrian)