Prototype Portfolio
The following are card and board games that I've designed and prototyped. They are available for development, collaboration and publishing. Although some are not intended for release but are designed to experiment with an idea or mechanic. All titles are simply place-holders and should not be taken to represent final intention.
Tinkety Tonk:
A hand management and card management game of novels by P.G. Wodehouse.
Cards Without Humanity:
A genuinely unpleasant card game consisting of little more than a series of impossible ethical choices.
A.I.:
A simple boardgame investigating basic artificial intelligence and emergent game play principles.
Speakeasy:
A boardgame of timing multiple competing complex events to game points while targeting your enemies.
Legacy:
A card game representing the struggles of artists during the repressive and fascist regimes of WWII.
Tale of Tales: The Canterbury Tales:
A storytelling boardgame representing the journey and stories of the pilgrims of the Canterbury Tales.
Tale of Tales: Fairytales:
A storytelling boardgame allowing players to tell the tales of the 1001 Nights, Grimm's Fairytales and others.
Tale of Tales is a rules set or system to put a form of communal story telling into a gaming format. Essentially any archetypal set of short stories can be slotted into it, it requires a 3+ players format however. The two story sets I happen to have chosen in initial prototyping are 'The Canterbury Tales' whose shared communal competitive story telling was the inspiration of the original game and Fairy tales which include '1001 Nights', Japanese fairy tales, Grimms fairy tales, Kipling's 'Just So Stories' and Indian fairy tales. A Lovecraft version is also half written.
Kill Jimbo:
A boardgame following a gang of ninjas trying to murder an unsuspecting man in his apartment.
Kill Jimbo was actually inspired by a Fu Manchu story where a victim is lured to a window and garroted out by an assassin on the roof. The game is designed to be highly intuitive and allow both emergent game play and creative solutions. There is more than one way to Kill Jimbo.
Forest Spirit:
Designed in case I can ever afford the license a "My Neighbor Totoro" boardgame.
The Forest Spirit Boardgame is one of a series of planned designs inspired by the Studio Ghibli series of films and attempting to capture their spirit or moral as well as their more surface elements. The moral of this particular game is one of responsibility to nature. The game involves a dexterity element, trees must be physically built and balanced and allows trees to be planted recklessly but rewards players who hold off and plant trees such that they may tend and support them more easily. It also has a cat bus and forest spirits in white, blue and green.
Oligarchy:
A card game representing players attempting to gain power in a series of different governmental systems.
Prisoners:
A 9 card game of inductive reasoning.
Silent Crash:
A pocket sized bidding card game.
Space Colony:
A boardgame of forward planning, experimentation and designed A.I.
Space Colony is based on the fact that should we ever colonise the solar system, much less the universe, it will be achieved by self-replicating robots rather than human colonists. In Space Colony players must design A.I. programs to drive their robots to compete, replicate and mine the far reaches of space. Once a robotic generation is dispatched it cannot be recalled or controlled but runs on its pre-set program, possibly bringing future generations into contest with earlier ones from the same player.
Friendly Ghost:
Following on from Forest Spirit, a game based on 'When Marnie was There' featuring unknown ghost status and controlled communication.
Friendly Ghost is loosely based on the Studio Ghibli film When Marnie Was There. Players move through a mysterious mansion attempting to fulfill the desires of the ghost haunting the mansion to set it at rest. Friendly Ghost is unusual in that firstly, players cannot be entirely sure if they are the ghost or not until fairly late in the game, imagine a co-operative version of the "Betrayal" series of games. Secondly, the ghost must take advantage of a series of different communication methods.
And Then There Was None:
A social deduction game based on the Agatha Christie novel.
And Then There Were None is a social deduction game based on the Agatha Christie novel of the same name. It requires the players to identify the killer, or kill off their fellow players in a specific order and fashion according to the Little Soldiers poem from the novel. This forces information and card trading to identify player identity. An element of bluff and dexterity is required of the killer during play. Finally player elimination is removed my allowing the killer to play when eliminated by faking their death and forcing players to risk failure while attempting victory.
The following card and boardgames have entered basic alpha playtesting:
Temple Crush:
A simple 2+ player game of thrilling temple exploration.
Colour blocking:
An abstract colour matching, tile laying game.
Colour Blocking is a simple abstract game of tile laying and colour matching. It occurred as a response to a more complex and less player interactive pattern spotting game that may still be developed if its mechanics can be solved. Easily explained and accessible to any age group it still demands highly complex visual reasoning.
In De Duction:
An abstract boardgame of inductively reasoned rules.
Burger Joint:
A co-operative, 2 player, asymmetrical, cards and counters game re-creating the high octane world of short order grill cooking.
Burger Joint is a two player game where one player takes the part of a waiter and one a chef in a burger restaurant. Customers arrive and make orders which must be fulfilled before they get annoyed and complain. The waiter player must use memory to take orders and later fulfil them. The chef needs to use hand management and player actions effectively to serve orders in time. The game itself is quick and somewhat chaotic, with customers constantly turning up and running out of patience as food cooks and eventually burns, even setting the kitchen on fire if left unattended too long. If enough orders are fulfilled before too many complaints are made players win.
Generic Assassination game:
A competitive 2-4 player boardgame designed to emulate the computer game Assassins Creed, designed when I thought the licensing would be available. Still easily usable to represent any situation where targets must be eliminated in an active living city.
The Generic Assassins game uses multiple players hidden movement as all players take the part of Assassins. The city is alive and active with citizens, targets and guards. Players may attack targets from hiding, killing and melting away or by running across rooftop and striking with violent combat.
Perfect Round:
A card game for 2 teams of 2 players (4 players total) based on controlled communication, memory and deduction.
Perfect Round was based on the partner bidding element of Bridge, which I don't play, but I love the idea of its silent communication. Four players split into teams of two and sit opposite each other, they may not communicate verbally but have a series of statement cards which must be passed to their partners. Each round players pass either a black or white card around the table, players score points by naming the colour of cards each player has been handed, using memory and deduction. Each right answer gains points, each wrong loses them. Other cards alter the game play in various fashions during play.
Turing:
A card game for 2 or more players representing a reverse Turing Test. A quick pocket version of Mysterium or Dixit.
Turing takes advantage of the abstract communication methods inherent in games such as Dixit or Mysterium. Players of those games may have wondered if their friends' attempts at communication were literally worse than useless, with Turing they can finally answer that question. An actual Turing test involves a computer attempting to convince a human that it is a human, here a human is trying to convince someone that they are in fact human. And probably failing.
Moonflight:
A deck builder/unbuilder for 2-5 players based on extended engine usage and oppositional play.
Temple Crush:
A simple 2+ player game of thrilling temple exploration.
Temple Crush simulates players attempting to rob precious artifacts from a deadly temple where the walls close in to crush the player's adventurers. Players may work together to steal a specific set amount of treasure or compete to steal the most. Each turn they move through the temple and attempt to hold back the mechanisms that activate its deadly traps.