Difficult Ideas

Some game ideas are 'easy'. Once you've thought of a concept, the rest just sort of flows. There are still decisions to be made, of course, and various bits and pieces of flavourings to add, but you feel like the core idea kind of takes care of itself, and the rest is fine tuning.

Scalade was one of those. It may not be perfect, and there are probably improvements that can be made, but I'm pretty happy with the game that I ended up with, and felt that:

• It didn't deviate much from the initial concept I started with
• I didn't have to fight hard to get to the final game. There was still a bit of a journey to bring the pieces together, but it all felt fairly natural, and didn't really require getting deep into the weeds.

This idea is not one of those. It's an idea that I think will really take a good bit of effort to make work. Even now it seems like there will be lots of careful balance to do, and thinking through lots of scenarios. If the whole thing doesn't fall apart before then, of course.

I'm not sure why I'm shining a light on this particular idea, as opposed to the many others I have sitting around with similarly scant detail. It's fresh - I just came up with it this afternoon, which helps. But of course that may mean there are deeply fatal flaws, or perhaps it has already been done so well in some game there is nothing to add. Nevertheless I feel, in the moment at least, that there is something interesting here, so let's go with the momentum.

I don't doubt that once the initial enthusiasm passes this may just go to the graveyard of rotting ideas, but who knows.

Working title: Under the Bus

The inspiration for this is from alliance-type card games. When you play to a score, you sometimes get these situations where you need certain people to be declarer. Say you are playing a game of Skat purely for position, rather than points. If you are currently in second, it is no use if the player in third wins the bid - this will not help you get to first. You can declare of course, but if you are to defend you really want it to be against the leader (assuming you can take them down).

So here's the pitch.

There is a 'reverse auction'. Each bid is nominating another player to be declarer. The bids start difficult, and get easier and easier. So e.g. you may start nominating another player to take 7 tricks. But they may bid then to nominate you (or another player) to take 6 tricks. The idea is that you either push someone into a tough contract, or they push you into an easier one.

There are some questions immediately (beyond the details of player number, or if it's point trick or plain trick, etc. etc.). What are sufficient levels of easy/hard contract? What's to stop the player you nominate passing the contract to someone else so you don't really gain anything? It might be fun to have feats as well, like ultimo-type things, but how the hell would that work? What's to stop you just setting up a player with a good hand with a high-value contract? (maybe there is some kind of high/low ordering like in Bid Whist).

This is the level I have for now. It's not even a sketch yet. And it probably won't survive as an idea without a fairly high level of modification, if it all.

But sometimes it is fun to have a 'difficult' idea to wrestle with.