Week 2 Game Ideas – Card Games

Amber Holt

1. Fixer Upper – To start the game, players are dealt one house card that is to be flipped and sold. Each house card has unique requirements to fix the house to be sold. Players are also dealt X number of cards that have either resources or the required item to be fixed on them. I think that the game could either be played where you collected resources to ultimately trade for the desired requirement card or you just obtain requirement cards through drawing cards or action cards. A die would determine the course of action of a player’s turn, with symbols that represent different moves that can be made on that turn (This feature is inspired by the Bob Ross Art of Chill Game). There may be some actions that players can take every turn, such as drawing or playing one card, in addition to the action rolled on the die. Action cards would spice up the game a little bit and throw out little twists that could include actions that are already on the die or swapping hands with another player. Players can work on up to 3 houses at once, but start off at 1 at the beginning of the game. Players are not allowed to have more than one house at once until their first house is completed and resold. A new house card can be drawn randomly from the house deck of cards if designated on the die or on an action card.
   • Whoever sells X number of houses first wins OR whoever reaches X amount of money profited first wins (think having a game piece that moves along a spectrum of numbers, increments of 10,000, similar to the points mechanism in DiXit and Bob Ross Art of Chill Game)
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. The End of the World Game – solution cards and catastrophic event cards. (I wrote this down the other day and I need to think more about how this would play) 
4. Language Go Fish – same mechanics to go fish, but instead of grouping cards with the same number, you have to group cards with the same theme. This could be in a different language to help people learn a new language, or it could be in English with more difficult themes to decode (like NYT Games’ Connections). In the more difficult case, I think there would need to be a guide of sorts of possible group combinations, but I don’t know how that would work in actuality. 
5. Bug/Plant Garden Game – You want to collect bug and plant cards to develop a healthy garden ecosystem. The bug and plant cards could potentially have different rarities that correspond to points. You would have to plant a plant card into your garden as a turn, but bugs would automatically enter your garden. Some bugs can have beneficial effects and others can infest your garden and mess everything up. I think it would be fun for there to be an opportunity where players can share plants with each other or even plant bugs in others gardens to mess them up. I see this game having action cards or an action die that makes players do certain things on each turn. The goal of the game could be determined by garden objective cards that make each objective unique each game, such as collecting this plant, this plant, and this bug. 
6. Card/Word Game – Included is an (almost) standard deck of cards. However the name of the value of the card is spelled out on it to represent what letters can be used to create words. The value of the card is also equal to the points that can be obtained when using the letters. Formed words are written down and the points are tallied for that specific word and any unused letters from the card don’t get to be used and the card is discarded. I’m still working on the end goal/objective for this. (I think I just came up with an overcomplicated version of Scrabble by accident) 
7. No One Wants to do the Dirty Dishes – Players must make food throughout the game using different food items, dishes, and utensils and their goal is to make the most food items (or get the highest score). The problem is that the dirty dish pile can get to be quite large. It acts as a discard pile when the food dishes are made but plates must inevitably be cleaned so that they can be used to make food again. The dirty dish pile penalizes players who wash the dishes and they can’t make food during that time but if the dishes aren’t done no one can get points and make food. There are consequences when the dishes aren’t done. 
8. Matchmaker Card Game – Inspired by random match maker flash games on girly websites from my childhood and Tomodachi Life’s silly matchmaking. There are cards of different partners or characters and they all have different interests and characteristics. To be considered a match, interests must line up to another card meeting the condition card currently on the table. A condition card could say something like people interested in tennis and heavy metal can’t form a relationship at this time, but they must match with being cat lovers. The goal of the game is to be the first person with 7 matches made. This game would involve having a hand of character cards, drawing, and discarding like most other card games.