Category: Game Ideas

1. Forager – This game is about gathering different types of mushrooms, using a board and little tokens with small mushroom drawings on them, the idea of the game is to collect similar edible mushroom species. However, there are many chances to stumble upon toxic mushrooms! If you accidentally gather a toxic species, you will lose several mushrooms in your basket written on the token – i.e.: Ink Cap Mushroom = Lose 3. The board is set up with multiple sections where mushrooms will grow, these “Forests” can provide more opportunities for gathering similar mushrooms, but you can only be in the same forest for two turns. This game is very similar to Takenoko

• A Box for my Trinkets! – This game is about collecting trinkets, each player has a unique box where they will collect and hold their trinkets, however, you are given one “style card” that will vaguely tell you what size, style, and type of trinkets you can collect. Don’t worry though, there will be dozens of trinkets that can fit these requirements, it’s all about trading, bargaining, and gifting your fellow collectors (other players). Such as when they want to trade you have to give them something in exchange. Other players will not be able to tell what trinkets you have, and you’re meant to keep them a secret! The goal to win the game is to have a box full of trinkets that fit your “style card” and a special trinket that is golden – your most prized possession.

• Green Thumb – A game about having a lot of houseplants, but only a little bit of room! The idea of this game is that you start with 4-5 house plants, You’ll begin with a room space with a window and some shelves, At the beginning of the game, you get a few plants that will tell you where your plants go in the room if you have the space, correct lighting, and proper temperature, your plants have a good chance of surviving. Now the idea of the game is to fill the space and keep your plants alive, the greener the better! Once you have filled your space and feel that your plants are of the highest quality of life, you win! However, there are many opportunities for pests to infect your plants, plants of optimal quality will begin to flower and spread – or cuttings will need to be harvested. This factor will be decided by chance, and each player will have a different affect happen every two turns.

• Media – Mediums – A game about gathering up different experiences through trying new art mediums. Each player will begin the game with one art medium that they are good at, and throughout the game, they will have to gather different unique art mediums that can not only benefit the medium they have already mastered but also create something that represents all mediums and their uniqueness. (This game is more of a long-term commitment, so I’m not sure how well this would work irl)

• To be a Frog – Though this game a self-explanatory, this game is about being a frog. You must establish an area in the pond where you will eat, sleep, and lay your eggs. The way to achieve this is to collect lily pads for your pond and ensure you have eaten enough flies to establish your area and avoid predators. At the beginning of the game you will start with a card that explains what your frog has as skills, are you able to eat more than 4 flies? Are you a poisonous frog that can ward off predators more easily than others? The way to win this game is to establish your home, create future generations, and establish a food source.

5 Games about Collecting

1. Beach Collecting – The goal is to have the most points by collecting the most valuable items that you find on the beach. Cards will have pictures of different treasures found on the beach like beach glass, different types of seashells, and beach garbage. You get negative points every time you find beach garbage, because of the extra effort of having to get rid of it. When you draw a card, it automatically goes into your collection. However, you may also choose from the face up cards (more rare), but you have to pay for it using coins. Coins are obtained by selling your treasures. 
2. Extraterrestrial Expedition – In this game, players travel across the galaxy, stopping at various planets where they must leave with a souvenir. The planets could be fictional or nonfictional. Players must complete challenges when they arrive at the different planets, making it difficult to obtain souvenirs. Souvenirs are worth the most points but players can also obtain points by collecting stars throughout their journey. 
3. Taste Trek – This is a collaborative game where players must work together to reclaim an evil creature’s sense of taste. Otherwise, they will be eaten because he won’t know how bad the players taste. Players must travel to different dimensions representing different elements of taste like sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. Players must complete challenges to collect each element of taste. 
4. Plushie Collector – A game about collecting different plush stuffed animals. Every player has their own goal that they are working towards for their collection and they want to complete their collection before the other players. 2-3 goal cards are dealt to each player at the beginning of the game, players select one goal to work at for the entirety of the game, and the others are discarded. Plush must be purchased using resources that include stuffing and characteristic tokens that represent the personalities of the different plushies. 
5. Crystal Collector – Plastic “Crystal”s are jumbled around in a box or bag, like you are panning for them. You randomly select 3 out of the pan to add to your collection. The goal of the game is to be the first person to complete 7 objectives or phases, which involve collecting certain amounts of crystals. The mechanics of this game are like Phase 10, where you can advance onto the next phase or objective when you complete it, but not all the other players will be able to move on.

Some other collecting games from previous weeks

1. Scavenger duck (thanks to Sara) – students are encouraged to collect 1 duck of every color across campus. Students bring the ducks to a centralized hub where they get a punch card of sorts that marks that they collected that color of duck. Ducks are collected so that cheating is eliminated. For completing this, the participants could get a stuffed animal duck (to give incentive to play and not just keep the cute ducks). 
2. Art Collectors (Billionaires Purchasing Art) – 
   • Art masterpiece cards (that don’t resemble other pieces of art to avoid copyright issues)
     • Below the painting on each card is the art description plaque that lists relevant details such as how much the art is worth, it’s period or movement (Renaissance, contemporary, etc.), the year/years the artwork was created, and maybe a little made up artist name for funsies
     • Players bid on pieces of art by laying face-down a combination of up to 3 Asset cards (cards that represent wealth but are just random objects that a rich person might own like Yacht or Personal Jet). Each Asset Card has a number of points that correlate to the value of the object (not the same as money). If all other players do not choose to bid (after the first player who is bidding has already laid down their bid), the bidder automatically claims the art masterpiece card and all of the Asset cards are discarded. If another player bids on the same art card, the player with the highest bid wins (the total number of points when adding all cards layed down). In the event of a tie, the auction closes, and that art card is discarded. 
     • Collection objective cards are how a player scores points in the game. These will say something like “collect one artwork from the Baroque period) or “collect one artwork that has a value of $X”. Depending on how difficult the collection objective card is, points earned from completing collection objective cards will vary. 
     • Like my Fixer Upper Idea, and the currently existing games DiXit and Bob Ross Art of Chill, players would have a token that represents them that moves along a spectrum of points, with whoever reaching the end of the spectrum winning. 
3. Garden Sabotage! is a card game in which gardeners (aka the players) compete to have the best garden by collecting cards, planting plants, and sabotaging others with bugs.
4. Bug Collector
   • Bug Collector is a card game in which players compete to complete their bug collection first by collecting bugs that fit certain requirements for their collection.
     • This is a card game where players race to complete their bug specimen collection first. There are certain requirements to their bug collection like they must have one arachnid, one moth, etc. These requirements are player specific and are determined by randomly dealing requirement cards to players. When players collect an insect, they can play it by placing it on their own board. I’m open for suggestions about how player  can possibly obtain these cards in a unique way to make it a little more interesting and challenging. I see this more as a “cozy” game, if that makes sense. 

theme is
High Sabotage

The Saboteur’s Ball is a social deduction party game in which players are attendees at an elite gala, trying to identify who the secret saboteurs are while undermining each other’s efforts to influence key figures by spreading rumors, planting evidence, and setting traps.

Corporate Espionage is a strategy board game in which players act as rival executives in a high-stakes corporate world, collaborating with or sabotaging others to secure the most resources by using underhanded tactics, corporate spies, and bribes.

Heist is a real-time card game in which players compete as thieves on a heist, secretly sabotaging each other’s plans while trying to pull off the perfect crime by using bluffing, deception, and carefully timed traps.

Spy vs. Spy: High Sabotage is a team-based action game in which players, as elite spies, collaborate to complete missions while simultaneously sabotaging rival teams by planting false intel, hacking, and setting up ambushes.

High Sabotage: Space Station Showdown is a resource management and strategy game in which players, as astronauts on a space station, must work together to survive while secretly sabotaging each other’s life support systems, stealing supplies, and causing chaos.

Game Theme: Art

Academic Integrity: This game is inspired by a thread of comments between Amber and me on last week’s game ideas, for this game, players are given a handful of 5 cards that have a multitude of different topics illustrated on them, such as animals, food, people, plants, and objects.  One player, following a counterclockwise play, will choose one topic card for players to fulfill, matching the topics mentioned before. The cards will specifically say something like “I am looking for something to eat for dinner, can you give me options?” and players are tasked with fulfilling the task by placing a card with food illustrated on it. However, these cards can be either AI-generated or created by a real artist via photography or drawing, it is the player who chooses the topic’s job to pick a card that they believe is not AI-generated. The goal to win is to have the most topic cards filled with non-AI-created illustrations.

Art School (Bringing this back from week 3) is a card game where players must collaborate to create a piece of art that fulfills a specific category. However, the difficult part is that only one player knows the category, for example, “Mythical Beast” and the player who knows the category can only give one-word hints. The drawing must be done in a quick passing style, with the player who knows the category only getting 10 seconds to draw, as the round progresses, each player gets 10 more seconds added until 3 minutes is up. After the time is up, players must write on a separate paper what they think the category was, and the closet gets a point. **Further explanation: As this is a super quick game, I think changing it up a little and implementing a level to the categories, like some that are very specific, like “Snail” or “Pancake Stack” would be fun to make it have more playability for those who aren’t confident in drawing, but it would be cool for it to also have a different point value when compared to broader categories.

“Art Noted” a scavenger game (Bringing this back from week 1) Students are given a small photo of a close-up image taken of an art piece on campus, they are given one hint on its location in the style of a riddle and then they must try to find the piece based on knowledge of the area and the riddle.  Students can work in teams for time’s sake. If they find the piece, they win a point. The first to get 5 points wins! **This is meant to drive students to become more aware of campus art** I received the AMC Experience Design scholarship, and this goes similarly with my plan for the scholarship, so I want to note that there are hundreds of pieces of public art on campus! Including the rules stated above, along with the understanding of the vast variety of art, I think sticking to only faculty and student-made art would be a priority, and creating cards that show more information on the art would encourage more awareness of the art on campus!

“I promise we are artists” is a Pictionary game, but we suck at drawing! (Bringing this back from week 1) One student is given a card with an object, animal, or thing and is tasked with drawing it on a piece of paper without lifting the pencil, and they can’t look when they are drawing it. They have 30 seconds to complete their new portfolio-worthy masterpiece, and the other players must guess what the thing is without hints. **I want to add an even more fun factor to it, and it’s that we must critique in front of the class when we present the art, I think having students also re-drawing the piece with needed time to compare would be super fun as well

Gallery Guess Who: A twist on the classic “Guess Who” game, players will ask questions to figure out the artist or artwork. Include facts about styles, including a list to assist players (with examples) periods with a timeline, and techniques used by the artist. It may be easier for artistic students but can be playable for anyone as it will include as much information reasonably way, while still including the style of the original Guess Who.

1. Full Tent- A game based on collecting character cards of circus performers (showman, lion, acrobats etc). The cards will vary in rarity. First to have a full house (or full tent) of characters wins.
2. Circus Tycoon- Run a circus! Invest in materials, talent, and resources. Players gamble with the possibility of their investments not paying off or catastrophic events effecting them.
3. Carnival Caper- Mechanics similar to Coup but *circus.* There are character cards with different abilities on them. Some cards have the ability to eliminate other players’ cards from the game. Each player starts with two cards and is eliminated when both cards have been disqualified. During their turn they can do an action on their card. Character cards might include ringmaster, acrobat, lion tamer etc. Last person standing wins.
4. Balancing Act- All players start with a ringmaster piece (a small figurine). One at at a time, players take circus character piece (other small figurines) from the pile and balance it on existing pieces. The last balancing act wins! (reverse jenga mechanics)
5. Ringmaster’s Gambit – Players move their pieces around the circus ring on the outside of a circular board. in the middle of the board is a spinner with many different outcomes. On the outside path (or circus ring), there are resources on the tiles. Once all players have moved once. The circus “begins” and the spinner is spun. Whoever it points to (or closest to) gets the prize or penalty that’s on the spinner outcome. Last one standing wins.

My theme is BUGS. I did not see the idea formatting rule at first, so feel free to ignore the other stuff unless you want to see the idea elaborated on.

1. Sting! (not sold on the name) is a card game in which players compete to be the last one remaining by stinging and biting players with bugs.
   • In this card game, players use bugs to bite or sting other players. ___ # of stings and you die. Bites would have different effects than stings, so stings are more lethal. Think of this game as the Bang of bugs. Like Bang, I think that it would be fun to have a card that means certain death that gets passed around, like a black widow card. Some other cards could involve players developing allergic reactions that makes them less resistant to be able to take medicine to combat stings. Some roles or characters could include an entomologist, bug collector, exterminator, and a curious child. This would all have different advantages and effects, but unlike Bang, players don’t need to figure out each other’s roles and base their strategies upon that. 
2. The Lamp is a board game in which moths (the players) compete to earn the most points by landing on spaces and collecting cards, being careful not to advance too far and touch the lamp.
   • In this game, players play as moths trying to get as close to the lamp as possible, without ever actually reaching it or they will be eliminated from the game. This board game has a board that is similar to your standard follow-the-path-to-the-end board game like Candyland, but you don’t actually want to reach the end. Players accumulate points based on the different spaces that they land on on the board and a winner is determined by whoever has the highest number of points at the end of the game (think Game of Life). Players choose themselves when they want to stop playing. For instance, if they feel like they don’t want to risk rolling the dice and potentially reaching the lamp, they can choose to end the game for themselves right there, but they won’t earn any more points. What makes it a little more challenging is that there is two dice—one normal 1-6 die and one with different actions on them. These different actions will indicate a number of things, some of which will force the players to move more or less than what is indicated on the number die. The player who gets the closest to the lamp without touching it will be awarded special bonus points at the end of the game. 
3. Kitchen Antarchy is a card game in which chefs (the players) compete to earn the most points by cooking dishes and containmating other players’ dishes with bugs. 
   • Kitchen Antarchy is a card game where players must try to cook dishes while trying to stop other players from cooking dishes by contaminating their ingredients with bugs. One of the components of this game are ingredient cards. Both sides of the card show the food ingredients. However one side is contaminated and the other is uncontaminated. To cook a dish, players must slowly add ingredients to a pot, only allowed to place 1 each turn. This gives the other players plenty of time to contaminate their dish. Depending on the specific dish being cooked, the dish can be completed despite an ingredient or two being contaminated, however those dishes are worth less points at the end of the game. The game ends when one player has cooked 7 dishes, but the winner is points-based. 
4. Bug Collector is a card game in which players compete to complete their bug collection first by collecting bugs that fit certain requirements for their collection.
   • This is a card game where players race to complete their bug specimen collection first. There are certain requirements to their bug collection like they most have one arachnid, one moth, etc. These requirements are player specific and are determined by randomly dealing requirement cards to players. When players collect an insect, they can play it by placing it on their own board. I’m open for suggestions about how player  can possibly obtain these cards in a unique way to make it a little more interesting and challenging. I see this more as a “cozy” game, if that makes sense. 
5. The Game of Lice (pun on Game of Life) is a board game in which lice (the players) compete to reproduce the most by navigating through the life of a louse.
   • The Game of Lice involves playing as a louse, with your goal to be to reproduce as much as possible to terrorize the heads of unsuspecting humans. Playing off the Game of Life, the houses would be the heads of humans. You need a head before you can start reproducing. Also like the Game of Life, there would be so many “egg” squares where you get lice children. Whoever has the most lice at the end of the game wins. Some spaces and cards may set your lice population back such as a failed lice treatment. 
6. Mothopoly is an economic board game in which players compete to have a monopoly on their collection of bugs] by collecting sets of bugs.
   • Obviously a play on Monopoly, instead of collecting properties, you would collect different bugs or moths. I’m not entirely sure what the other spaces like “Free Parking” or “Jail” would be called at the moment.
7. Invading Insects (repost w/ some elaboration) is a legacy board game in which the players collaborate to stop the invasive bug species from taking over by killing bugs in strange but effective ways. Some of these weird methods could include blasting them with music, spraying them with hairspray, using a hydraulic press, a Saw trap for bugs, etc. 
8. Garden Sabotage! (repost) is a card game in which gardeners (aka the players) compete to have the best garden by planting plants and sabotaging others with bugs.

1. Harmony Quest is a cooperative puzzle game in which players work together to solve complex puzzles by combining their unique abilities and using the game’s interactive environment.

2. Galactic Rescue is a space exploration game in which players collaborate to repair and upgrade their spaceship by gathering resources, solving engineering challenges, and coordinating their actions to ensure a successful mission.

3. Mystic Guardians is a fantasy adventure game in which players team up to protect their realm from dark forces by using magic spells, strategic planning, and character skills provided by the game.

4. Survival Syndicate is a cooperative survival game in which players collaborate to build and maintain a shelter, gather resources, and fend off environmental threats by utilizing tools and crafting systems within the game.

5. City Builders United is a city-building simulation game in which players work together to design, construct, and manage a thriving metropolis by sharing resources, planning infrastructure, and tackling challenges collaboratively.

Art School is a card game where players must collaborate to create a piece of art that fulfills a specific category. However, the difficult part is that only one player knows the category, for example, “Mythical Beast” and the player who knows the category can only give one-word hints. The drawing must be done in a quick passing style, with the player who knows the category only getting 10 seconds to draw, as the round progresses, each player gets 10 more seconds added until 3 minutes is up. After the time is up, players must write on a separate paper what they think the category was, and the closet gets a point.

The Journey is a tile-placing game in which the players will randomly select a role in which they must work together to escape an area (the tiles) think escape room, but it is super small, and each player has a different skill and ability, like players who pull a ‘water’ role card can move things on the tile that are blue. The tiles are around 1’x1’ and have a multitude of random obstacles that limit players from passing through and only certain players can move certain things. This game is meant to go off the saying “It’s not about the journey, it’s about the friends we made along the way”

Convince Me! Is a card game where players must collaborate to convince the “Founder” player to fund their creation. The players who are the “Makers” are given a spread of 10 cards face down that all have bizarre pictures of creations on them, the creations are machines or products that aren’t real, and the cards contain 3 things that the creation can do, players who are “makers” must pick ONE card and ONE of the purposes of their creation and convince the “Founder” The players who are the “Makers” must agree on one of the cards to pick, and can ‘reselect’ their creation based on voting in the group. The collaborative part begins when players must agree to the different prospects of their creation, and they must agree on when the price for their creation is fair.

Stow Away is a fast-paced card game where players are split into two teams, the stowaway and the security. The game is set up with one side sitting across from each other. The setup begins with one side taking a ‘place card’ for each player and that will be where they are hiding. The place cards have a picture of the hiding location, a visibility score of 1-5 (1 being out of sight and 5 being practically out in the open) and they have a perk written on them that explains the abilities positive and negative of the spot. The security players’ setup begins with receiving their specific security roles as well as their ‘location cards’ that will give them a general location that they are securing. The idea of the game is for the stowaways to remain hidden without causing suspicion and for the security to find the stowaways before the cargo is delivered. Through the gameplay, stowaways will attempt to help each other hide by giving up their hiding spots, creating diversions and distractions, and staying completely silent! For security, they will team up to search larger areas, use perks like flashlights and search dogs to find clues and find the stowaways, all while openly communicating the whole game!

Trial by Combat is a board game with four corners where players must compete in a rock-paper-scissors style fight to cover the most spaces on the board with their color, the winner will not only need to have the most color on the board but also be able to beat at least 2 other players in combat to win the game. The rock-paper-scissors comes into play as each player will have a draw pile and discard pile where they will pick up three cards with random items, food, tools, and animals that they can use to win a battle, an example being, drawing a lion card, and being able to beat sheep, pig, and deer cards, versus picking a pig card, and beating a stew card, versus picking a stew card and being a freezing cold card. The list goes on!