Number scrabble

I have a fascination for numbers and I'm not so sure why. I was thinking about su-do-ku and scrabble simultaneously, and that's how I got this idea. I'm not sure if its already out there (won't be surprised if it is!).

So this game is basically played on a scrabble board, with number tiles. These tiles have numbers from 0 - 9 and each player gets 6 tiles (not seven!)

The objective is to make a string of numbers that add of to a prime number. Like in scrabble, you play off the existing words and build more words, here the objective is to build strings of numbers (horizontal and vertical only) that add up to a prime number.

The points that one would get on each turn, would be the prime number they just made on the board.

Why 6? Well, I love the number 6. Its so curvy and it becomes a 9 when you make it upside down !! Its just so exciting ...! No, that's not why I chose 6!

I chose 6 because, I felt that this would be a fast game and 7 would make it too short. While 5 would make the strings too short.


Variations: There can be many variations to this game, instead of prime numbers, we could have numbers that are palindromes, number that end in 2,3,6 only etc.

I see this being a portable game combined with scrabble. This is a game for all those geeky kids who were good at Mathematics but had a poor vocabulary and sucked at traditional scrabble!
(For some reason, this story sounds familiar)

To make the game spicier: We can have the double word and triple word score boxes adding a negative effect on the sum!

Dr. Chef Games website

The two main components that I focus on are the games and videos. I think that it is these two that will draw young people’s attention.

The left hand side, has one game and two listed below. The one above, will be the most popular / recent game published. The two below are part of an archive of other games which can be accessed through the side scroll.

On the right hand side, we have videos, or I would like to think of them as Podcasts (which should be made available for online download and through itunes and stuff).

These are the latest news clippings and we also have a series of recipe shows where Dr. Chef cooks some dish. On this screenshot, we see an image of recipe 56! J

splat!! your out!

I'm not sure from where I drew inspiration for this game, probably from the popular 'statue' game we used to play back in the school days, or maybe even the Indian festival 'Holi'.

The computer version of the game, is basically a single / two player game.

The setup:
You and your opponent are in an enclosed room. You have a 'splatter gun', which basically shoots a big drop of colored liquid (you get to choose your color). Mind you, the speed of the splat is not as fast as a bullet, it will actually be possible for your opponent to dodge the 'splats'. The gun doesn't have a long range either. Which means, you have to get close enough to the opponent to be able to shoot. And also that the gun takes time to reload. You can't just 'keep shooting'!

Apart from being able to move/run about in a 3D enclosure, you can jump off walls and land behind your chasing opponent. Because, in order to shoot, you have to be facing your opponent.

As a player, your only objective is to 'splat' color on your opponent.

The winner:
the player with the maximum number of splats at the end of a time period.

Hmm...now when I think about it, it sounds exactly like any other Unreal type frag match. But, I guess the key element here is the ability to dodge oncoming 'splats' and jump/spring off walls.

War on Terror

When I thought of designing a game based on "war on terror", it reminded me of one of the first games i'd ever played on computer. I think it was called "detectives" and was a DOS based game. So the following idea is pretty much inspired by the same game, with added imagination and concepts from real world events and james bond !

A 3D LARP / Strategy game, this game involves the player to choose an agency and play the role of an agent.

Objective: To uncover terrorist plots and foil them.

Gameplay: The agent is given a mission and a scene or a clue. Based on that, he/she will have to make a decision on what to do next from a set of options that could include the following:

- Go to some place (eg. Go to Footy Sports Bar . Downtown, Chicago )
- Talk to someone (eg. Talk to the curator of the Louvre, Paris )
- Attend an event (eg. Daily Hospital Grand Opening)
...

So the game requires the agent to make decisions and the events that follow depend heavily on these decisions.

He/She is obviously constrained by time (You can't take a year to uncover a plot thats already been executed ?!)

In some scenes, the player will be in FPS mode, where he/she will have to scout around to find clues and defend from enemy attacks. Yes, the player will be given a weapon. To make it really difficult and realistic, the player can carry only a limited amount of weapons and ammunition.

In some cases, when the plot is uncovered, the player will then have to engage in battle to say stop a bomb from exploding or prevent the assassination of a VIP.


Suggestion from class: this game has a potential of taking the form of an iCi.

Yummy

With miracle foods

Players: 4-6

Ages: 16 onwards

Game:

Consists of two major types of cards. The first type of cards are the miracle food cards, which can be one of the six miracle foods namely red wine, chocolate, fish, fruits and vegetables, garlic and nuts. Each card represents only 1 oz. of the particular miracle food. This means, two chocolate cards mean two ounces of chocolate. The other type of cards are the basic ingredients cards which include oil, spices, whole grain, salt & pepper, milk, spices etc. These are more general cards and don’t include quantity in them. Meaning, one oil card, is enough to make any dish that involves oil irrespective of the amount of oil needed.

Gameplay:

One player deals 7 cards (a mixture of all the above cards) and places the remaining stack in the center with the first card facing upwards. If you haven’t guessed it already, yUMMY is a rummy style card game where the player has to keep swapping cards with those in his/her hand and those in the center stacks, to get a recipe of a dish which he/she thinks will work. (It may or may not have to be from the book).

How to Play:

Once the seven cards are dealt, the person to the left of the dealers starts playing and the round goes in clockwise direction. At each turn, the player will take a card from either of the two piles in front of him, the once facing down or the one facing up, and put down a card from his own set in the pile facing up. The main objective is to build a recipe that he/she thinks will work. The round is over when one of them lays down a recipe that is accepted by all the other players. Points can be awarded based on the amount of miracle food used or the amount of risk to CVD that could be reduced by consuming that amount of miracle food as used in that recipe.

Possible rules and objectives:

- The recipe must be from a book.

- The person who wins/ claims that the recipe works, must make the dish. This requires the participants to gather as many ingredients as possible.

- The game can go on for a fixed number of rounds, and in the end all the winning recipes are made and tried out.

- The overall winner gets a bottle of red wine! And the runner up gets a big bar of dark chocolate!!

Refinements and possible extensions:

- Fixing the number of cards of each type, based on their frequency of occurrences in recipes.

- Selling sets of all ingredients + playing cards in grocery stores.

Group: Lance, Daniel and Vignesh

wildCard Civilization

Inspired by the Darwin's theory of Evolution, the "survival of the fittest" and the well known Rise of Nations (by Microsoft), this card game takes the player through a story of growing civilizations, competing with one another for food, shelter and glory!!

The game can be played by upto 6 players, where each player starts with a default set of cards and in addition will be given a number of random cards from the common set. This game is meant for anyone who understands how to play!

Objective: As a player, you are responsible for your civilization and it is your responsibility to strengthen your civilization. You can wage wars with you neighboring civilization to win over them and expand your ruling territory.

How to Play:

This game first requires a person to monitor the game, hold inventory and people cards. This person can be viewed as a gamekeeper, or a banker. For no particular reason, I chose to call this person, the Nature. The function of Nature, is to hold the different Inventory cards and people cards (which is explained below) and trade them for their corresponding needs with the players, as and when they want.

Default cards:-
Each player, gets a set of default cards, which will include
1 attack card (used when keeper wishes to attack a neighboring civilization)
2 Soldiers with swords
3 each of Blacksmith, Woodcutter, Miner
4 farmers

Common:-
The common set of cards, is equally divided among the players (The rest can be given to NATURE)
The common set of cards, consists of the following types:
Food, Farms,
Wood, Forrest,
Metal, Quarry,
Gold, Goldmine.


Inventory:-
The inventory (possessed by the NATURE) consists of three types of cards:
The first one being the same as the cards from the common set.
And the second type being people which include Farmers, Woodcutters, Blacksmiths, Miners and finally strong and loyal Soldiers.
The third type of cards include weapons Bow&Arrow, Catapult (more will come later)


So when its the turn of a player, he/she can do the following trades with the NATURE (BUT ONLY ONE TRADE PER TURN)

1 gold = 2 metal
1 gold = 3 wood
1 gold = 4 food
(so you can figure out how much metal makes how much wood / food etc...)

1 farmer = 2 food
1 woodcutter = 2 food + 1 metal (he needs an axe, come on!!)
1 blacksmith = 2 food + 1 gold
(note: Blacksmiths will make the price of weapons cheaper)
1 miner = 2 food + 1 metal + 1 wood
(note: miner can be used both for Quarry and Goldmines)
1 soldier = 3 food + 1 metal + 1 wood + 1 gold

Weapons:
1 Bow+Arrow = 1 wood + 1 metal + 1 gold + 1 soldier (meaning that the soldier is converted to the archer the nature just gave you!!)
1 catapult = 2 wood + 1 metal + 1 gold + 2 soldiers (the two soldiers are now in command of the catapult!)

Before the TRADE with NATURE, the NATURE gives the player the following cards:

1 food card for each farm or farmer (whichever is lesser)
1 wood card for each woodcutter or forrest*2 (whichever is lesser)
1 metal card for each miner or quarry*3 (whichever is lesser)
1 gold card for each miner(not working at the quarry) or goldmine*5 (whichever is lesser)

NOTE: At this point, it must be noted that the idea behind the above step, is to increase the resources of each civilization as it grows.

IF THE PLAYER CHOOSES, the player can ATTACK THE NEIGHBOR !!

trumpet plays in the background are two armies prepare for war !! But who will win? Lets find out..

Each player is requested to total their points using the following key:

1 catapult = 5 pts
1 archer = 2 pts
1 soldier = 1 pts

In the end, the PLAYER with more points wins the Battle and is now in control of both the civilizations (meaning that he gets the other players cards as well)

But here's the catch!! If they are equal .... then they both lose their army alone. They are back to square one with no army and have to rebuild from the resources they have. And and, each player has only one ATTACK card.. so in the even of a no-result war... the player who waged the war, loses the attack card to NATURE and hence can only sit and accumulate resources, since someone is going to attack him!!

mathCards

When it comes to games, especially like card games or board games, one of things that I'm really interested in is creating games for children that are educational. "mathCards", is one such game I've been thinking and re-thinking about, which will help children not only learn math, but become extremely quick at it. And they do this while enjoying the game.

What I have in mind, is have a set of generic cards, which look like the ones below. Each mathCard has a big central number, and four number around it. If you notice, all the four numbers add up to the central number.

Using a set of such cards (total number TBD), with the central number ranging from 1-9 (thats right, no zeros!!), I plan to design multiple games around it.

And, just for the heck of it, I'm going to name the central numbers as the "value" of the card.

Now these are the couple of games I have in mind:

1. mathCards - Windows (EASY)

Objective & Rules: This rummy style game, will basically start off with 4 cards being dealt to each player. And the rest of the pack is kept in the center, with only the top card facing up. In order to win the hand, each player must arrange the four cards like shown below, in such a way that the four numbers that meet in the center, must add up to [X - TBD].

1 + 3 + 2 + 0 = 6

-On a players turn, he/she can exchange one of his/her cards for either card on top of the two piles (facing down and facing up).
-If more than one players finish on a round, then the winner of the hand is the one with greater sum of the "values" of the four cards in hand.

2. mathCards - iEquate (MEDIUM)

Objective & Rules: This also a rummy based game, and like the previous will start off with 4 (or more, upto 6) cards being dealt to each player. And the rest of the pack is kept in the center, with only the top card facing up. In order to win the hand, each player, must create an equation with his/her cards, and the following mathematical operators { +, - , * , / } and a mandatory '='. Like shown below

3 * 4 = 6 * 2

-On a players turn, he/she can exchange one of his/her cards for either card on top of the two piles (facing down and facing up).
-If more than one players finish on a round, then the winner of the hand is decided on who has a higher value on either side of the "=" operator.