[game idea] Dwarven Tunnels

 The Concept: Players plan out tunnels to dig up materials, the problem? lack of food.

This idea came to me a while ago, I'd love to make it, but time.. as usual. 

Here's my notes from way back, somewhere between 1994 and 1999.

-- start:

In the beginning, players need to find 'shroom halls' to provide food for your dwarves, next you connect to other players to trade.

Next goblins discover your halls and come in, taking away food sources, other creatures get introduced.

At a critical moment in the game, 'shroom halls' get infected, undead darkness takes over some areas and the Dwarves have to defend themselves, this is when they begin to gain new metal advances to forge weapons to push them back.

* Uses the Kingdom Underground system

* seperate resources into metal / farming.

* Farming resources required for population and technology improvements.

* metal resources required for buildings, armour, weapons, tools, forges.

* tech tree needed for stuff. 

--- that's it, that's the notes.

Now, being interested in deck builders, I'm wondering if it would be possible to create it in such a way.

Start the game with some shroom hall cards, a wood pickaxe, a wood shovel. the wood shovel you can draw a card from the soft soil cards, the pickaxe from the soft rock cards. Are these a deck of shuffled items, or are they sets of cards to be chosen.

To include goblins, you'd need to shuffle them into the decks, somehow spacing them under other cards, to make it interesting, when you draw a goblin, you play it on someone who has the least number of goblins & or monsters.

I'd want tunnels, that when drawn are placed on the table, slowly building up a network, maybe trade would change the whole game, so unsure about it.

You gather food tunnels to support your cards? maybe its your hand limit? or your draw or both, maybe the forges are draw cards, and your food is your hand limit, some food types might give you extra draw/hand limit, when you get a goblin, its place over your food location which limits your hand limit.

Goblin defeat cards are in the stone age cards, but they'd trigger larger monsters, Maybe defeating a monster give you an insta boost, but if you get stuck, other players can defeat your monster.

Seems to be a trend here, wood->stone->bronze->iron->steel->mithril? 

Each deck of age cards gets shuffled, the top card (cards?) revealed, wood is a smaller deck

Tool cards need to be a choice, maybe they're limited, you don't want too many else your deck will get clogged up. 

It might be a bit boring to just have each deck, each deck having some 'problem' that blocks a tunnel with some effect, and once you finish the last deck the game is won? no, I think it needs to be some kind of changer, I think it'd be interesting, plot wise, to say, the dwarves needed to descend quickly, so they don't get 2nd wood items, players are quickly introduced to upgrading, maybe its worth getting several stone picks quickly replacing your wood one, or maybe even, the wood one 'snaps' when you upgrade it? 

maybe you can place 1 tunnel per turn for free, extra tunnels require discarding pickaxe cards, from here I'd need to test the game idea. more ideas will emerge about when to have things upgrade, how to thin the deck, aka deck building, The obvious one is taking build cards from your hand and placing them in your grid, which is why I think restricting it to 1 per turn, or maybe you always draw 1 and play 1 to make your deck size stay the same,

That's the basics.  

[Game Idea] R=cks that Fall

 I was watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LkYEfn3Cwo and was thinking about the last few moments when the satellite was told to just 'crash land' on the comet.

A Game about controlled abstinence?

Imagine this 'robot' is on the surface of a comet. the comet releases gasses from time to time, its made up of varied rock, and has some level of gravity. Imagine if when the comet passes the sun, the solar panels charge up, and begin to work, but the commands from earth are not in range, so the programming of the device, to not lose any opportunity, is to perform tasks it decides are important.

You are the program. 

You have a limited array of choices to begin with. soil drill, sample retriver, sample crusher, sample melter, sample chemical mix, a small 3D printer, and a loader to load in one of the materials. All of which are also in the 3D printers memory banks.

So, to start, you have limited power per 'run' and have to decide, and decide quickly, (because thinking costs power too) to choose what tasks to perform.

The game starts off with a few buttons and maybe sliders. a battery value, (in binary) maybe datetime stamps, also in binary. and you can send data to earth, if you think you are lined up for it.

Your first few 'runs' you'll gather some resources, crush them, melt them or chem mix them and report those value to earth. you won't know if earth got them or not. 

after some time, once one of your material storage areas is full, you'll be instructed that you can create a new storage for the resources. AND the ability to dump the resources when it gets too full. You'll be unaware of your maximum capacity, until its filled, and then you'll unlock instructions where to store the new ones.

The Aim is to explore options. there will be instructions to do things that will be counter productive to the game. the earth team don't want /expect you to do anything else except gather samples, study samples and report back to earth what was found. 

The Reality is, Earth is not getting your signals. Your solar array is misaligned and damaged. Your samples are just dropping to the ground when you finish, because the storage is not full. 

Exploration, means you discover to fill one container with one material til its full to unlock the 3D plans for a 2nd container.

you 'ping' space at each possible interval, to determine where the sun is. and then use what little power you have to turn your solar array in that direction.

This increases the amount of power you'll get, which means turning on earlier in the sequence, and lasting longer while IN sunlight.

creation of more batteries is possible, once its understood that the batteries are maxing out, because one battery is dead. and another is slowly failing. so, using the 'release' valve, the dead batteries can be dropped, and new ones inserted via the 'arm' 

There is also the smaller unit, once enough power is established to ping for the local unit. it can be guided to come back to the main unit by extending its legs and needle in the right pattern, and the signal becomes slightly stronger (and needs less power), until it 'bumps' into the main. and now it can have an arm attached to it, at each of its leg joints, and they in turn can be used to un-attach the original arm and improve it with a better arm, with more joints, giving access to repair the solar panels that were broken. 

Once this happens, the power allows to turn on the internal heaters, to access the other functions of the unit, (the melter was being used to provide enough internal heat to run the functions. note if the heater is not run, some parts might not work..

Its an incremental game, but has a logical flow to it. 

The eventual goal is to re-launch the unit back into space, to return to earth, and submit its findings, BUT the game should allow for varied styles of play. maybe even improving the drills, and reconfiguring the 3D plans to make more effective machinery to unlock other aspects. Maybe even replicating the whole rocket system and converting the comet into a rocket.

No Aliens needed. just what's available in 2023.  

[Game Idea] The Village

 Its Medieval-Fantasy, The World is in ruins once again after the great evil has attacked the world, and the heroes have defeated him, and his minions scramble for the pockets of power, or Escape from the wrath of the heroes. You and you 2 friends, tire of fleeing, you find a small lush valley and decide to settle, come what may.

Build your Village, Deckbuilder, Tableau

Expectation, 1- X players, engine builder, Deck Builder, 

You start by drawing 10 cards, discarding 2 and playing 3 basic cards. Basic cards are things like 'house' 'hunter' 'fisherman' they don't require any other cards on the table. You have a hand of 5 cards.

All cards have a 'cost' even basic cards, Basic cards usually have only 1 cost, the higher the cost, the less basic the cards

The Cards will have their own words of what they do. 90% of them will say "provides [symbol]"

You play the game by tapping a card, which provides a resource, then you use that resource to play a card from your hand.

Cards do not untap normally, instead you need to use your house card

 Basic [Wood], hut - Tap the House to untap 2 other cards (buildings?)
 Int [Wood, Nails, hut] - house - Tap the House to untap 3 other cards (buildings)
Basic [ Wood, Spear ] - Hunter - Tap the Hunter to untap 1 house, or draw basic cards. 

SO, you can see, houses untap buildings to show people have gone to sleep, Food untaps houses, to show people have eaten.

Now we can get into the interesting cards

Each round, everyone draws up to 5 cards (or refreshes and draws a full hand?)

Everyone plays a round of building, taping cards to gain resources to pay for new cards, building an engine of cards and card combos.

At the end of the round, everyone passes 1 card to the player on their left (or discards 1 card if solo)

Then must play a 'nighttime card', if they don't have a nighttime card to play, they pass that player a card. If Solo, play nighttime on self or discard 2 cards.

Nighttime cards are monsters or enemies from the surrounding lands, they come and destroy buildings, if there are no guards to block them. Players will need 1-2 guards early in the game, but later, when basic deck is exhausted, more dangerous monsters will come.

Basic Cards: 
Woodsman - wood
Mine - ore/stone
Wheat Farm - wheat
Town Square (early guards) - defend / draw new cards from basic/intermediate
Outpost - draw intermediate cards
Tower - defend +1 cards to draw phase
Animal Farm - animal hides

Intermediate Cards
Tanner, - 
Blacksmith - Draw int/Adv cards / turn ore into metal
Logging Camp
Carpenter - draw int/adv cards / turn wood into planks


Equipment cards, usually discarded or used for forced pass cards, eventually allows people to draw more cards in the draw phase. 

The End goal? Possibly to build a complete wall around the village, or, to survive until the end of the deck, or maybe points are awarded for certain buildings, and a score of 50 ends the game. (each building having score, if you build lots of smaller buildings, or just a few of the larger ones.