[Prototype] Flower Garden

Fengol

I promised my sister I would make boardgame for my 6-year old neice for Christmas. I'm going to miss the deadline but finally last night I got all the mechanics together.

Flower Garden is a children's game with an easy risk-reward element, card collection and random surprises. Players race around the board collecting flowers and when the 1st person crosses the finish line the points are awarded for the flowers the players collected. The best aspects are the simple nature of the game and the player interaction from the random chance tiles players land on.

This is still a work-in-progress so the following details might change.

The board is a track of 60 adjacently connected squares, each with 1 of 5 colored flowers printed on it or a random chance. Players are represented by tokens that start on the first square.

On the player's turn they can choose to roll a 6-sided die and move that many squares on the board or automatically move 4 squares.

When they land on a square they get a flower card the same colour as the square they landed on.

If they land on a random chance square they draw a random chance card and follow the directions. Random chance descriptions include "Pickup 1 flower of your choice", "Swap up to 3 flower cards with the player on your left", "Give the player on your right 1 flower".

The first player to cross the finish line is awarded 6 points. Then each player with the most flowers of each type is awarded 4 points. Lastly each player that has at least 1 of each type of flower is awarded 3 points.

This game hasn't been play tested yet but I hope to build a copy this weekend for testing and to record a Let's Play.

I have a long list of requirements for this game:
* Must be short, 20 minutes MAX.
* Must be simple for a 6-year old to explain to her friends.
* The goal and progress must be clear.
* Must include some player choice.
* There must be a board and the players must be represented on it.
* There should be player interaction.
* There should be random rewards.
* It would be compelling if there was a collection element.

CandyflossKid

Sounds good. I remember playing Mouse Trap as a kid and I must say, collecting the most cheese blocks was probably the most satisfying part of the game for anyone who played. Hanli also pointed out to our class that humans have an innate desire to gather (herself included in collecting "every damn item" in a game :P) and I think it adds an edge of investment that works well with young kids :) Better that it is simpler in order to reduce game time to a maximum of 20 minutes, and to make it easier for them to remember the rules. (Shorter game also means shorter playtest times! :P) Hopefully she'll be pleased! :)

AlphaSheep

It sounds like you've got what I consider the three basics of a good collection mechanics for a game:

• Incentive to collect as many of one type as possible.
  
• Incentive to get many types.
  
• Ability to trade strategically
  

Tuism

I like it! Works well for the intended audience :) I would make the default move 3 spaces so that the reward for gambling is above average (right now there's only really incentive to try for a 5/6 if you're behind maybe, strategically speaking). But of course play testing would speak for itself :)

Like :)

Fengol

Played the first play test this afternoon and got some valuable feedback on the order of tiles on the board, the dice rolls and scoring. The overall opinion was positive and the group felt it would be a good game for the target audience.

The group was made up of 4 (myself included) 30-something, experienced gamers. I realise this game needs to be tested by the target audience; but I felt the feedback from an experienced group would be more valuable for the first round of play tests, and I don't have access to a group of kids the right age.

The problem with the order of the tiles on the board is they repeat symmetrically which makes the chance cards that say move 1 step forward to back and take the flower would always make the player take the same type. To resolve this I'm going to start by placing the chance tiles and then place different flowers next to each and work from there.

I used @Tuism's suggestion that the player could move 3 spaces instead of 4 which was met with approval but a good suggestion was to remove the 3 from the 6-sided die and replace it with the ability to take a flower of any colour. This adds the risk of not moving with the reward of a preferred coloured flower.

On the scoring, the first player to cross the finish line gets 5 points instead of 6 to remove the edge. Players also get 5 points instead of 3 for having at least 1 of each colour.

Some other rules were introduced. The game immediately stops after the first player crosses the finish line. When there are no more flowers of a colour to collect, players do not receive more (the number of available flowers of a colour in the prototype was 15 and will be increased to 20). The oldest player goes first and then clockwise around the table. During the swapping of flowers, if the receiving player has none they give nothing for the cards they get.

Another change will be limiting the spaces from 60 to 50 tiles. The chance cards are less interesting at the beginning of the game because players do not normally have a lot of flowers to swap or share, and dramatically game changing at the end when players have lots of flowers and can lose them all. The chance tiles will be moved to occur more in the middle of the board and less at start and end.

Extra chance cards will be introduced. I won't list them here because I haven't mentioned the initial set but I'll do so at a later date.

That's all for now. I'm still going to try do a Let's Play video by the end of tomorrow but the board looks terrible and the pencil marks I've made aren't picked up well on camera.

Boysano

I like the idea, you could always make the change cards die rolls for more randomness which kids are more fine with than adults. Or if you don't want dice rolls, more cards will do the trick, how about a bonus level (middle of board) if play throws is double or special value, but it is players choice offering great reward, but for large risk. Like finding a flower garden..