Game #4

Game #4 has gone through a lot of iterations, so I'll discuss how it has evolved in conception. The core idea was that each player would be in charge of growing a hospital in a city recovering from disaster.

The first idea was for a hospital themed map based building game, in which players would build branches on an overworld map, each with different effects and radius, trying to serve as many people as possible. Ultimately, this is relied on mechanics too complicated to work with, as well as requiring some tools not easily provided or used (such as rulers, counters, etc.)

The second idea took the mechanic of expanding on the hospital but removed the board. Now, you would build rooms (emergency room, operating, etc.) which would give income as well as special effects. This was more feasible, but not very interesting, as player interaction took place only through special abilities on rooms, and there was no direct competition.

The third idea added a lot more interaction. Players would still build rooms, but rooms by themselves would do nothing. Instead, on every player's turn a doctor would come up for auction. Players would bid, with the winner getting a new employee. Different doctors would need different rooms (and building a room takes a turn), and would have different incomes. There were 3 resources: money, public support, and elite support. Public support would be obtained from emergency rooms and such, and would have a bunch of effects you could trade it for (instantly building new things, get cheaper doctors, etc.) Elite support would have different effects. Both elite support and public support would have a hard cap based on number of players and number of turns gone by, so players would also be competing for a limited number of resources. The combination of these mechanics, however, were too confused and redundant, leading to:

Idea four (the current one). Players build rooms, and bid on doctors and such, but! Only 2 resources, public support and money, with no hard caps. Employees, however, also tend to provide special abilities at various costs. A charismatic emergency room doctor might hold a gala which generates a large amount of public support at a cost, but also makes him not work at all for the next turn. Some abilities require you to get rid of the doctor on activation. Some employees (administrators) might provide no income, but have specially powerful activations. The game is won by obtaining enough employees.

Game #3 released

Every man has his trial. Tantalus had his grapes of wrath and water of suck. Churchill had the British people. Compared to those, what are my petty concerns over timing. Still, after a week delay to cram even more awesomeness into every second, Drunken Wizard Brawl has been released!
http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/drunken-wizard-brawl
Fun for the whole family! Assuming the family in question are 2-4 in number and like board games in which players try to burn/freeze/smack each other into oblivion!

Game #3

Inspiration: Magicka.

Idea: Players each control a wizard on a hex based map, and go around casting spells at each other. Last one standing wins.

Twists: Spells are made of 3 components: form, enhancements and modifiers.
Form will give the spell some basic effects and targets. So it will prove range, type (cone, line, wall), and a small buff (sets enemy on fire, freezes, deals bonus damage to cold targets, etc)
Enhancements give a small bonus to the spell. Bonus damage, flame, frost, range, aoe, other debuffs or self buffs. They won't really change how you'll use the spell, but your choice will be important.
Modifiers make the spell work differently. So you teleport to your target, grab them to you, make them discard cards, make effected hexes impassable for a round, or just generally make your choice of form more important.

Additionally, the map has overgrown and water hexes, which are impassable. You can shoot over water hexes, but not overgrown hexes. However, burning overgrown hexes makes them normal until they are frozen, and freezing water hexes does the same, so you can cast offensive spells with knockback to try to manipulate environment. Getting stuck in occupied terrain is bad.

Game # 2 released

BattleTowers!
http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/battletowers

A strategic war game for 2 players.

Game #2

Inspiration: dunno. Sim Tower, those steampunk TD style games?

Idea: Two players building towers next to each other out of cards. Cards are rooms, some of which make resources that let you build other cards, and most of which are weapons or shields. Weapons fire out at the enemy tower and deal damage to rooms. The goal is to destroy either the enemy tower completely, or deal enough damage to the player's main base behind it.

Twists:
Power plants give you power income, and also make activating any adjacent rooms cheaper (so if it costs 2 power to shoot the railgun, and you have a power plant next to it, it will only cost 1 power), usually. There'll be a bunch of kinds of power plants, some of which explode on death, some of which don't give that buff, etc.
Different weapon rooms have very different effects, so an EMP gun would knock an enemy room out of comision, or maybe overload a power plant, a railgun would shoot through rooms, and a Helium Cannon would only be able to shoot enemy rooms above itself.
If you build directly upwards really fast, you will have a better chance of hitting your opponent's main base, but if an entire level of your tower is destroyed your entire tower will take some damage, so it's a risky move.


This would be a pseudo ccg. The game would come with 2 starter decks, possible expansions if it receives any interest.

Game #1 now live: Maze Duels

http://www.thegamecrafter.com/games/maze-duels

Game #1

Inspiration: those multiplayer snake games.

Idea: Multiplayer snake as a card game. Cards would have lines (curved or straight) on them, and you would play them on a fixed surface (a table or something) so that the lines connected. Your goal would be to cut off your opponents, stopping them from playing cards.

Twists:
Splitter cards let you have multiple paths going at once. However, you can only play 3 cards a turn, and must play at least 1 at every open path (if you have >3 paths, just chose 3), so there would be strategic elements of choosing when to do splits.
You could draw new cards either from a pool of 5 visible cards, gaining more control over what you can do next turn but also letting your opponents know what you have, or from the top of the deck, adding more strategy to the game.
The playing space could be different every game, with cups, bowls, or random objects restricting the field of play by adding obstacles.

Coming soon (in a week or so)