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.