Category: Game Rules

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Documentation for The Mow Masters

rules:

Mow Masters!

Objective:

  • The objective of the game is to get as many grass points/cards as you and your opponent mow all the grass on the board in order to end the game. 

Materials needed:

  • Board
  • Grass cards
  • Setback cards
  • Two dice
  • meebles  (marks which space/tile was mowed already)
  • Paper and pencil to keep track of score
  • Iphone timer

Setup:

  • Take all of the cards and shuffle them into one deck and place them in a empty space on the board.
  • The tallest player will start the game or be the first turn.

Turn:

  • Both players are going simultaneously
  • The player will roll one dice, and move the amount of spaces of that number on the dice.
  • The player can go anywhere on the board, no restrictions.
  • The player will pick a card for each space they move. For example, they roll a 2 and move 2 spaces hence pick up 2 cards. 
  • After you have moved (mowed) a space, you will mark it with a x  or a meeble.

(you can still use this space to move around in it but you can not get a card from it.)

Ex: rolls the dice and gets 3, but ⅔ spaces are mowed already. So, you can only pick up one card. 

  • If you pick up a card that has a setback, you will have to complete the task on the card in order to continue. 
  • You have approx. 25 seconds to complete the 
  1. Out of gas 
  2. Nebby neighbor 
  3. Dinner time
  4. Reapply sunscreen
  • You do not have a time limit with:
  1. Mower broke
  2. Dog poop on the blade
  • If you do not complete the setback challenge within the time constraints then you have to remove one grass card point from your pile. 

Winning/Losing:

  • Once the whole lawn is mowed, and there is no more space to collect cards then the game is over.
  • Count up your points, and the points win.

Some changes I made in Mow Masters was adding more setbacks and sabotages. A lot of the players gave me feedback on changing the setbacks since the game was too easy in a sense. I made a lot of alterations regarding the design of the board. I wanted to make it super unique and curvy, but it wasn’t making sense when the game was being played. So, I switched it around and changed the color which was to boring and wasn’t the best design. I finally stopped when the board was just in hashes to give the players a sense of what the board is and how it applies to game.

In the future, I would love to rework only roll 1 dice and two dice for challenges. As well as, adding a sand timer to pick up the pace in the game.

I would say that this is my least favorite game. The rules weren’t really making sense in my brain, and I kind of got frustrated with the design of the board. Overall, I did get get feedback so I was pleased with that.

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Final Chakra Crusade Updated

Chakra Crusade

Objective: 

The objective of Chakra Crusade is to align all 7 Crystals in their designated Chakra Rows by the end of the game to reach total enlightenment and harmony. 

Components:

  1. Action Card deck
  2. Color coded crystals (7 per color, total 35 crystals)
  3. Game board

Set up: 

This game can be played with 3-5 players

  1. Each player chooses:
    • 7 crystals of their chosen color. 
  2. Then players set 1 of each crystal in the start positions of each chakra path.
    • Start positions – are marked with a lotus symbol
    • Chakra Paths – are the color-coded rows leading toward the center.
    • Aligned Chakra position – are the central spaces marked with each Chakra’s symbol.
  3. Then shuffle the deck of cards, and deal 3 cards to each player. Then set the deck near the board. 

Start of the game: 

  1. The calmest player goes first. Each player briefly states why they believe they are the calmest; the group decides.
  2. Turns proceed clockwise.
  3. Each player must play 2 actions on their turn.
    • Actions may be:
      • Off-card actions (no card needed)
      • On-card actions (action on the card)
    • After playing cards, place them face-up in a discard pile.
    • At the end of your turn, draw until you have 3 cards in hand.
    • If the deck runs out, reshuffle the discard pile.

Actions include 

OFF card actions: 

  • Moving: You may move ONE crystal ONE space forward.
  • Meditation: Discard one card you dislike, and pick a new card from the deck. 

ON card actions: 

Movement:

  • Flow state: Move ONE of your crystals 2 spaces forward.
  • Chatarunga Down: Move one of your crystals back 1 space. Then move a different crystal forward 2 spaces.
  •  Energy surge: Move 2 different crystals 1 space forward each.
  • Friendly Flow: Choose one player. That player moves ONE of their crystals forward 2 spaces
  • Counter Flow: Reverse the direction of gameplay (if going clockwise, now go counter clockwise)

Sabotage:

  • Blocked Energy: Move ONE target opponent’s crystal back 1 space.
  • Skipping yoga: Skip any player’s turn (choose your target)
  • Still Mind: everyone moves ONE crystal 1 space backward except YOU
  • Vinyasa: Swap one of your crystals with one opponent’s crystal.

Defense (can be played anytime)

  • Shield of calm: Use this card to ignore any setback that has been played against you.  
  • Karma: Deflect a sabotage, and the player who tried to sabotage you gets the setback themselves. 

Important: Crystals can only move forward in their current Chakra Path. They cannot switch Chakra Paths .

Beyond first round:

Your goal is to place 3 crystals into the center aligned spot of each Chakra Path.

Aligned Chakras cannot be affected by any card once earned.

Winning and Losing:

  1. The player who has aligned all 7 Crystals in the center Chakra spots first has to announce: 

“I am Enlightened!”

They win immediately.

If multiple players complete their seventh token on the same turn, all are enlightened and share the win.

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Documentation for The Jammers!!

  • Game rules
  • The Jammers!
  • Madison Hurst
  • Objective
  • Make the most valuable jam recipes by combining various fruits and spices before the deck runs out! The player that reaches 30 points in recipe combos wins!
  • Ideal player count is 3-4.
  • Materials Needed
  • Strawberry cards
  • Blueberry cards
  • Peach cards
  • Vanilla spice cards
  • Mint cards
  • Basil cards
  • Ginger cards
  • Special action cards 
  • Jammer Scoresheet and pencil (to add up points as you go)
  • Setup
  • Shuffle all the deck of cards 
  • Deal 5 cards to each player
  • Place the remaining deck in the center of the table, face down (this will be the draw pile) 
  • Right next to the draw pile will be the discard pile (these cards can face up when once a pile starts to form)
  • The person who was last to eat a piece of fruit recently will go first! (if you can remember the tallest will go)
  • The turns will go clockwise 
  • Play overview
  • A players turn will consist of three phases (draw phase, action phase, and cleanup phase
  • Turn Order
  • THIS IS THE START OF YOUR TURN
  • Draw Phase:
  • Draw 1 card from the draw pile
  •  Action Phase:
  • Choose one of the following actions:
  • Complete recipe
  • If you have a the correct spice and fruits then create a Recipe Combo from your hand (e.g., “Blueberry bliss” needs blueberry  + vanilla)
  • Recipe Combos stays in front of you for final scoring.
  • Action card
  • Play an action card then discard it 
  • Discard a Card
  • If you don’t like what you see, you can get rid of a card that is in your hand to the discard pile. 
  • Cleanup phase:
  • After every player’s turn, you must have 5 cards in their hand.
  • There must be 5 cards in your hands, no more and no less
  • This goes for action, fruit, and spice cards.
  • Write down how many points you have after your turn (if possible)
  • For example: You pick up 1 card (6 cards in your hand). Then, play a recipe combo which includes three cards played. Leading you to pick up 2 cards from the draw pile.
  • For example: You pick up 1 card (6 cards in your hand). You still don’t see a recipe combo or action card that you like. You will then discard a card of your choice, and that would get you back to 5 cards. 
  • ***See more details in the action card key about how it affects the hand limit
  • YOUR TURN IS THEN DONE. 
  • Reshuffle
  • If the deck runs out of cards, reshuffle all of the cards except the completed recipe combos from each player. 
  • Recipe Key:
  • Strawberry jam (strawberry + cinnamon) 4 points
  • Blueberry bliss (blueberry +vanilla) 5 points
  • Peach sunrise (peach + ginger) 4 points
  • Mixed berry (strawberry + blueberry + mint) 6 points
  • Perry jam (strawberry + peach + basil) 7 points
  • Tri preserve (strawberry + peach + blueberry + any spice) 7 points 
  • Berry sweet (two fruits + cinnamon) 3 points 
  • Earthy herb (any fruit + basil) 4 points 
  • Action Cards:
  • Bunny attack: choose a player and they have to discard one fruit (player that discard their fruit must pick up a card from the draw pile)
  • Farmers market: draw two cards next turn instead of 1 and place card the 2nd card that was not used under the draw pile. Cards can be played the following turn.
  • Fruit poacher: steal 1 random card from another players hand (the player that was stolen from must pick up a card from draw pile)
  • Another man’s trash, is another man’s treasure: swap one fruit from your hand with one from the discard pile 
  • Jam Packed: Whatever recipe combo that you create on your turn will be doubled (tri preserve is originally 7 points, but would be 14 points with the Jam Packed card)
  • Win/Lose
  • The Game ends immediately when the player reaches the set number of JAM points (30) or over, and will be the TOP JAMMER!!!!!
  • Tiebreakers:
  • Most completed recipes
  • Most fruits used overall
  • If still tied, both share the victory as co JAMMERS!!
  • Photos of:
    • the game when setup 
    • details of the pieces
    • any process photos – making
    • any design iterations – changes to the board, cards or pieces
  • An overview of changes made
  • An overview of changes to make
  • Your thoughts and lessons learned from play testing
Documentation of The Jammers!

During the course of this design, it went through many reworks. From fixing confusing directions, card size, amount of cards in each category, and changing how a players turn would work. I am pretty proud of what I reworked and testing to see how fluid the game is. I strived to make the cards cut as neat as possible which was tedious, but I am proud of committing to that. Moreover, the game became more fluid once I changed the hand limit to 5 cards (no more or no less). My last change was adding more spices to give people more chances to make recipe combos, and adding a Jammer scoresheet.

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Final Project: Spooky Detection Agency

Spooky Detection Agency 2Download

For my final project I deiced to make a board game based on ghost hunting. This was the 3rd attempt for a game like that’s, as previous iterations were tough for users to understand. This one has a better quaily board, colored chacarer tokens and updated rules. I wanted to dye the players, however rit dye was extreamly messy and didnt adhere well, so alcohol based markers were a subsitute, otherwise all pewioces are 3-D printed or cardstock.

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Week six questions

There was a game that I was attempting to develop at the same time I was starting out with A Game About Colors… This other game was called Boxed In.

Boxed In came from wondering what a competitive version of Shut the Box (the classic pub game) might look like. Giving each player their own tray made the game immediately more interesting, and most of the development came from ongoing playtests with ChatGPT—mainly experimenting with doubles penalties, pacing issues, and ways to keep the game from stalling out.

We found a few solid ideas, like the Stalemate Release rule, but I never quite reached a final version that felt fully balanced. Still, the process paid off. A lot of what we learned while testing Boxed In directly shaped the design of Race to 65, which grew out of the same experiments but landed in a much stronger place.

Original Rules — Boxed In (Early Concept Version)

  • Each player has their own tray with tiles numbered 1 through 12, all starting unclaimed.
  • On your turn, you roll two dice.
  • After the roll, you may claim:
    • either die result (if unclaimed),
    • or the sum of the dice (if unclaimed),
    • or both individual numbers and the sum, if all three are unclaimed.
  • You could not affect your opponent’s tray; the game was mostly a race, not a conflict.
  • Doubles rolls were allowed to trigger bonuses for the roller or penalties against the opponent, but these were still very loose ideas at this stage and not yet defined.
  • First player to claim 10 tiles on their own tray won the game.
  • If a number was already claimed, you simply couldn’t take it; the roll did nothing.
  • There were no locked tiles, no cursed tiles, no drain effects, and no stalemate rule.
  • The flow was straightforward: roll → claim whatever’s free → try to reach 10 tiles before the other player.

In the beginning, both players are just getting their boards started. You roll, claim a few easy tiles, and see what kind of shape your board is taking. It’s mostly about opening things up and seeing where the numbers fall.

As the game settles in, you’re making small adjustments based on what the dice give you. The doubles effects add a little movement, but most of the time you’re just trying to keep your board flexible and avoid boxing yourself into a corner.

Toward the end, there are fewer open spots and each roll gives you a couple of decisions to think through. The Stalemate Release rule helps keep things moving, and you’re mostly trying to keep the board workable long enough to reach your goal.

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Week four questions

5 game ideas that revolve around a single theme of of your choice. if your theme is time traveling ducks, then all five ideas need to be different games that utilize the same time traveling ducks theme any idea off theme will not earn a point. continue to follow the idea formatting rule:

I accidentally already covered this topic in week 3, regarding games revolving around color. One of the ideas morphed into the original concept for A Game About Color, More Or Less. The original rules of that game were as follows:

A Game About Colors, More or Less… — Version 1 Rules

SETUP

  1. Place the 12×18 game mat in the center. It shows rectangles A, B, C, and a color key.
  2. Shuffle the 48-card Solid Color Deck and place it color side up on rectangle A.
  3. Leave room for each player’s personal pile and a discard pile.

GAMEPLAY

  1. Youngest player goes first, clockwise afterward.

Player Turn Sequence:
a. Move the top two cards from Pile A: one to B, one to C, both color side up.
b. Roll the six-sided die to determine the active color using the board’s key.
c. Compare the two revealed color sides on B and C, declaring which is more/less of the rolled color.
d. Flip both cards to reveal numeric values for C, M, Y, R, G, and B.
Higher number = more. Lower number = less. Matching values = Good Luck (automatic win).
e. Correct or Good Luck → player keeps both cards. Incorrect → both to discard pile D.
f. Turn ends; next player draws new cards to B and C and repeats.

END OF ROUND AND WINNING

  1. Round ends when all 48 cards from Pile A have been used.
  2. Players count only cards in their personal piles and record scores.
  3. Shuffle all cards and start a new round.
  4. A game can only be won at the end of a round. First to reach 50 total points wins.

Example of Gameplay

It’s Maya’s turn, and she’s the active player.

She takes the top two cards from Pile A and places one on B and one on C, both color side up.

She rolls the die and gets a 2.
According to the color key, a 2 means she has to compare the cards for magenta.

Maya looks at the two color swatches on B and C. After studying them, she decides that the card on B looks like it has more magenta than the card on C. She says, “B has more magenta.”

Now she flips both cards over to check their values.
Card B shows a magenta value of 58.
Card C shows a magenta value of 42.

Her guess was correct, so she takes both cards and adds them to her personal pile.

Her turn is over, and the next player repeats the same steps with two new cards.

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Prototype – Dessert Dash

2 person game (Kaelin and Madison)

Rules:

Objective: 

Be the first to finish your stack of ice cream dishes. 

Materials:

1 deck of 60 cards

Setup: 

Shuffle the Deck and deal each player 30 cards randomly

Gameplay: 

Flip over two and place in between your deck of cards. 

There are no “turns”. The players race to be the first to finish their deck by rapidly matching either the flavor, type of dish or number of dishes on their card to the respective ones on EITHER of the cards that are flipped up in the middle. 

As the game progresses, obviously the cards will change based on what cards the players place on top. Keep placing matching cards as fast as you can, whenever you can.

Winning:

The game ends when one player finishes their stack. That player is the winner. Hooray!

Changes made:

There were edits made to the rules during prototyping to specify the simple mechanics – we had a moment that somehow the game was played but completely wrong so we tightened the wording

Changes TO make:

We’re going to tweak some of the coloring on the card to be more consistent – the blue ice cream cups threw a few people off on what type

Thoughts about Playtesting:

Most people understood the concept while one group totally didn’t so that was interesting – we clarified the rules so all people would understand. It’s interesting to see how people interpret rules or completely don’t read them when they think they know how it works.

Game Card Images:

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“Chef Check” (ver. 1) – Rules

Created by: Harmony & Bryce

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Objective: 

The goal of Chef Check is to be the first chef to reach the winning score by creating complete meal “runs” and earning points each round.

During each round, players race to get rid of all their cards by forming as many runs as possible, each run scoring valuable points. The round ends when one player plays or discards their last card, and everyone adds up their total points from completed meals.

Keep track of your points throughout the game.

Setup

  • You need a score sheet and a pencil.
  • Shuffle the Food Cards and deal all players 7 cards, and place the rest face down in the center as the Draw Pile.
  • Turn the top card face up beside it — this is the Food Discard Pile.
  • Create a separate space for the Sabotage Discard Pile, where used sabotage cards will go (they can’t be reused or picked up later)

Gameplay

  • Any player can go first, and game continues clockwise
  • To start your turn you must pick up a card from the discard pile or the draw pile. 
  • During your turn, you then have freedom to then lay down any meal runs you may have and/or use a sabotage card.
    • When you use a Sabotage card, place it in the sabotage discard pile.
  • Then to end your turn you have to discard one of your cards from your hand
    • IF you picked up from the discard pile to BEGIN your turn, you CANNOT discard that card during the same turn. 
    • When discarding your card, place it on top of the previous card so that the previous card is no longer visible.
  • IF the deck runs out of cards, reshuffle the food discard pile and take the top card and flip it over to begin the new discard pile and continue play.

Points

Players add up their points at the end of each round. These are the values of cards/runs:

  • Chef Meals: 20pts 
  • Regular Meals: 10pts 

IF you have cards remaining in your hand after a player has run out of cards, you subtract the point value of what is in your hand from your current points. Each card left in your hand is -5 points.

Winning

Once a player reaches 100 points after a few rounds of play, wins the game and the game ends. 

Card Types:

There are 4 types of cards in Chef Check: Entree cards, Side cards, Drink cards, and Sabotage cards. Three cards of all food types make up a set:

Example: (Fillet Mignon [Entree], Rice [Side], Water [Drink]). 

Entree cards are distinguished by the image of a plate with utensils, side dishes have an image of a bowl, and drinks have an image of a glass. Sabotage cards can be played once during a player’s turn, which can affect themselves or other players. 

Chef Meals

Chef meals are special card sets that yield extra points when played. Instead of receiving 10 points for a set of 3 unrelated food items, completed chef meals yield 20. Cards in the same meal set are color coded below. 

  •  High Class  –  Filet Mignon, Mashed Potato, Red Wine  
  •  Pescitarian  –  Salmon, caesar salad, lemonade 
  •  Meal prep  –  Roast Chicken, Rice, Water
  •  Cookout   – BBQ Ribs, Mac and Cheese, Beer 
  •  Red lobster – Lobster tail, Veggies, Dr. Pepper

Sabotage Cards: ( ! symbol on each card )

  • Mice Attack: Your target has to get rid of ONE of their runs and put it in the discard pile.
  • Kitchen Fire: You burnt one of your food items, discard a useless card from your hand. 
  • Food Swap: Swap one random card with another player.