Episode #17: Five Forever Games

Yeah, so I'm going to do an appetizer here that I'm probably going to revisit a couple times.

And whenever I'm like either struggling to find an appetizer, I haven't played as many like games that I can think of a topic.

And so that's going to be that whenever I come up with some like random board game ideas, but ones I know I'm never going to design myself, I'm going to kind of throw them out into the ether to get your raw thoughts on them.

And then also hopefully maybe someone just like likes one of these ideas and does it better job fleshing it out than i will and uh makes it and then i can play it and then i can basically manifest the games i want to play um so uh so these are like reject ideas is

what no no

no these are these are ideas that i'm just like throwing it out there in case someone else gets inspired and then they can make the game and i'll be able to play it one day okay i thought you were

implying that these were ones you didn't want to like keep close to the chest you're like okay putting them out there in case someone wants to steal the idea or kind of thing but

No, it's yeah, it's like the beginnings of an idea here, I would say.

And so this came from or this came into my head when we briefly discussed Legend of Zelda, Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons.

And for those who don't know, this is a game, a Game Boy Zelda game that was released almost like in the way that you they release Pokemon games or it was like two versions of the same game.

But each one kind of I think one focuses more on like combat or something and the other one focuses more on puzzles.

but they each are the same game.

It's there's similarity, a lot of similarities, but there's some differences.

And, and somehow that spun my brain onto the idea of a board game.

This is the initial idea I came up with was a board game where they release the base game, and they release multiple expansions at the same time, but the expansions aren't compatible with one another, they each expand on a specific area of the game, depending on your play style, and what you enjoy most from it.

So like, As an example, if in a game like Agricola, what you love is the cards, you would get the card expansion versus there might be an expansion that focuses on something else, but they don't work together.

And I was like, yeah, but that's like wild to ever even think it would happen because board games already have a hard time getting sales.

Now they're going to sell products where it's like they're not compatible.

So I was like, Okay, that doesn't work.

And what I landed on was even crazier, a game where they provide you with the base game, and it's a completely functional, hopefully good game as a base game.

But they also give you all the tools to expand that game yourself.

The idea is the players, it starts as just a board game that they get.

And it is also, if you want to engage with this, it is a sort of a slate to be able to design expansions of your own for that game in the areas that you want expanded.

And so it still retains that idea where it's like, there could be multiple expansions, but it's more just like now it's also a creator, like in the same way that like SimCity is a creation tool or the Sims is a creation tool where it's a game and a creation tool in one.

And so it would be like how the thing I can't figure out, and I'm hoping someone else who maybe likes the idea could figure out one day is like, what tools or how are you offering the ability to create an expansion? Like you have to create a system that feels easily expanded upon and is a foundation, but it has to be good enough on its own that it doesn't feel like it needs that.