[Prototype] Coin Wars - minimalist tabletop miniatures game
Coin Wars is a simple tabletop game played with items you’ll probably have in your wallet/purse. It could be described as a minimalist tabletop miniatures game. The idea is to have a game that can be explained in under a minute, and will be fun to play for a half hour or so.
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Rules:
Requirements:
[list=1]
[*] Challenge someone to a game.
[*] Each player selects a few coins for their team. They should be chosen so that they are relatively easy to distinguish from your opponent's. Recommended: two coins each.
[*] Place your coins on the designated play area (however you like).
[*] Put the business card and a coin to the side. The business card will be used for measurement and the coin will be used for luck shots.
[*] Select the starting player and begin!
[*] Alternate turns between players until you have a winner.
[/list]
Each turn you can do two actions, a
A move action allows you to move a single coin up to a short/long distance - place the business card next to the coin, and move the coin to the other side of the card matching the short/long distance.
A fire action allows you to take a 50% luck shot at an opponent coin within the short/long distance of one of your coins. On a successful shot (flip the set-aside coin) the opponent coin is destroyed and removed from play.
Goal: destroy all your opponent’s coins before he/she does the same to you!
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We are thinking of putting the finished game on the back of our business cards, with small diagrams to explain some/most of the rules text. The idea is to to make the cards more interesting and memorable as a networking tool. As such, a simple game is valued over a really deep game, but at the same time we’d like it to be actually fun to play.
Special thanks to @dislekcia for a few suggestions that really helped simplify the game a lot, and well done to @Tuism for narrowly beating us to the punch ;)
Questions:
[list=1]
[*] Are the rules easy to understand?
[*] What do you think of the game? Is it fun? Interesting enough?
[*] Anything you think we should add or remove?
[*] Is the idea of putting this game on our business cards a good idea, or something you think would seem gimmicky or detract?
[/list]
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Rules:
Requirements:
- Two players.
- One standard business card.
- A few coins of varying sizes.
- A flat open play area.
[list=1]
[*] Challenge someone to a game.
[*] Each player selects a few coins for their team. They should be chosen so that they are relatively easy to distinguish from your opponent's. Recommended: two coins each.
[*] Place your coins on the designated play area (however you like).
[*] Put the business card and a coin to the side. The business card will be used for measurement and the coin will be used for luck shots.
[*] Select the starting player and begin!
[*] Alternate turns between players until you have a winner.
[/list]
Each turn you can do two actions, a
- short and
- long
- move or
- fire.
A move action allows you to move a single coin up to a short/long distance - place the business card next to the coin, and move the coin to the other side of the card matching the short/long distance.
A fire action allows you to take a 50% luck shot at an opponent coin within the short/long distance of one of your coins. On a successful shot (flip the set-aside coin) the opponent coin is destroyed and removed from play.
Goal: destroy all your opponent’s coins before he/she does the same to you!
-----
We are thinking of putting the finished game on the back of our business cards, with small diagrams to explain some/most of the rules text. The idea is to to make the cards more interesting and memorable as a networking tool. As such, a simple game is valued over a really deep game, but at the same time we’d like it to be actually fun to play.
Special thanks to @dislekcia for a few suggestions that really helped simplify the game a lot, and well done to @Tuism for narrowly beating us to the punch ;)
Questions:
[list=1]
[*] Are the rules easy to understand?
[*] What do you think of the game? Is it fun? Interesting enough?
[*] Anything you think we should add or remove?
[*] Is the idea of putting this game on our business cards a good idea, or something you think would seem gimmicky or detract?
[/list]
Comments
1. I understood the rules easily enough.
2. Sounds good, has all bases covered :) I personally don't have any love for miniature wargaming (the distance AND dice rolling thing both don't appeal to me) but you may get people assembling armies of Ye Olde One Rands :P
3. I don't like chance that's exclusively chance. Like, building up your chances or being able to manage chance is fun, just relying on chance isn't fun... But that's just me. I dunno how to fix that.
4. I like the idea of it but you know, I also wanna do it :P
The reason I included chance is to try and avoid analysis paralysis in a game that should play out in 10 minutes or less, and give everyone a reasonable chance to win, but perhaps that is the weak point of the design.
One idea I just had (after reading your comment) is: instead of a move or fire action, you can "load" a coin, so that next time you fire, you also get to flip that extra coin(s), and you only need one head to hit (50% -> 75% -> 87.5% ...). I'm not convinced this rule is good as-is (seems a bit complicated to explain in a few words), but it's gotten me thinking about building up your chances...
Does everything fit onto one side of the card? :O Wow :O
Looks like everything's there, but what you need to do is blind test it on other people :P I'm pretty much gonna drop my game cos it's too complicated for a business card... Sigh. Either that or I just haven't gotten this whole communication thing down :P
I've blind-tested the card design on a few people with good results so far. One of my design goals with this game was to make it as simple as possible because I had the end goal of making it fit on a single side in mind. I think that paid off. Even if the game isn't the best game ever, I think it's interesting enough, and I can pretty much just show the card to someone and they generally figure out the rules themselves. I still need to find someone with a little more time so I can see if they really understand the rules by playing a game.
Personally I think your idea is much more interesting, but I don't know how to efficiently explain it to people either.
Ultimately yes, I need to make a call and make it simpler... or leave it alone :P