Ridiculous Vending
This is my half-assed entry for Experimental Gameplay Project March 2012. The theme is Economy. It’s an analog game! I’ll make a digital game soon…
Rules:
- Each player (vendor) is given a set of n blank cards. N being the number of players or 5 at a minimum.
- Each player draws a single item and duplicates it on all of their cards. Example items: A spaceship, Obama, a Macbook Pro, Excalibur, an empty tin can.
- Each player writes the value of their item on the card. Example values: 1, 1 million, 1/3, 1283, $1.99, pie.
- Each player keeps 5 cards in hand and discards the rest. (This is done so that players can evenly distribute their cards when they get eliminated)
- The player with the highest valued item begins the first turn (barter).
- Turn: The current player must barter with another player. The number of cards exchanged must be equal on both sides. Example barter: “I’ll trade 1 spaceship, 2 Obamas, and a Macbook Pro for 3 empty tin cans!”. The players exchange cards. The other player must now respond with the new total value of his goods within a time limit [5 seconds]. If the other player succeeds, the game continues. If the other player fails, the player is eliminated and must evenly distribute their cards among the remaining players.
- If a round completes, the time limit decreases by [1 second]. The time limit resets to the default value once a player is eliminated.
- The game continues until 2 players are left. In order for the final player to win, one player must fail a barter and the other player must succeed during the next barter.
Optional Rules:
Players must role-play as a vendor. Example vendors: the merchant from Resident Evil 4, Crazy Dave from Plants vs Zombies, an ambiguous Middle Eastern vendor.
WARNING:
This game has not been play-tested.
Copyright issues:
The title may have been inspired by Ridiculous Fishing.
How this came about:
I actually wanted to make a game in Unity but my windows partition had insufficient space, so I started thinking about analog games and new media. The main idea was written during public transport. I worked it out a little more on a composition book. That’s it.