Geekery Collision / Brainstorming from constraints

Not much of a column this week. Between a fast-approaching finals season and various events at home, I’ve been pretty busy.

One piece of news: two of my favorite things are colliding. Alan Moore is going to appear on The Simpsons. The episode is going to feature competition between Android’s Dungeon and a new, “cool” comic book shop.

As far as game design goes… I’m challenging with a specific format for our upcoming line of games. Constraints can often be helpful to the creative process, since it sets your mind thinking along a narrower track then limitless possibilities. But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for creativity: even some pretty strict constraints still need creative energy to make them into a playable game (and even then, there’s a good chance it won’t be worth publishing.)

The constraints are a 48 card deck, with printing only on one side. The cards are also a specific size. So I brainstormed a bunch of ideas for this game line. Here’s all the different genres/game types that I could create with those constraints:

A tile-laying game, like Carcassonne. (Maybe make it more interesting by having them not line up exactly, creating negative space?)
A push-your-luck game with cards
A dexterity based game. Maybe dig up my old “Chaos Orb” game from years back, where you drop cards onto the table from a foot up.
A “unit based” game where the cards move around the table by flopping around.
A trading game
A role-selection game
An auction game
A trick-taking game
A game where some of the cards form a board, and the rest are in the hand. (This one can be tricky since I can’t use other pieces on the board, and cards don’t usually make good pieces)
A game where the cards are flicked across the table
A set collection game
A race game, where cards move along a path
A game that can be played in line
A trivia game