Our group for the board game design came up with a really fun idea. Our race to the end game (tentative title: 'You First!') is unique in that the objective is to race and be last. The idea is that 4 students are being sent to the office but only the first three to get there will get in trouble. The last one will sneak away while the principal is distracted. This means that you really don't want to get there first!
Each player takes their turn by rolling a die and moving however many spaces is rolled. There are normal tiles and special tiles along the path. The special tiles have different effects depending on which colour the player lands on. When landing on yellow the player must move two spaces back (this is good!) and if that puts the player on another special tile its effect will be activated as well. A green tile will make the player's next roll lowered by one; this can be good or bad depending on their next roll.
Pink tiles are the real game changers and make You First! intense. When landing on a pink tile, the player switches their piece with the player who is nearest to the principal's office. This can change the game dramatically if the two are far apart. If the player closest to the end lands on a pink tile, he switches with the closest player behind him. The way the board is set up, it requires a fair amount of luck to get past the final two yellow tiles.
In the match our group played, we all ended up switching back and forth with each other on the last row of tiles and it was really nerve-wracking. Eventually someone made it to the end (and lost) but for a while it was a real nail-biter. I really liked how the game could change in an instant and the end was designed to create suspense. While there is no direct element of strategy involved, the game can still inspire a lot of competition between players, especially near the end. We are considering changing the pink tile to allow the player to switch with anyone of their choice. Alternately another special tile type could be added to accommodate this feature.
The territorial dominance game we created is called Hexatron. It is played on the hexagonal tile paper and whoever scores the highest wins. The back story is that each player controls their energy being and the objective is to go around to the all hexagon nodes and collect 'energy' from them. Once a node has been travelled on, players can no longer move on it. Each node will give a point and special nodes will add extra points or even double the player's points.
Each player rolls a die on their turn and is able to move up to three spaces depending on their roll. This adds an element of chance as well as strategy to the game. The strategy comes from deciding where to move as well as when to move certain places. For example a player could start moving to another player's starting corner early in an attempt to cut them off and restrict their movement. This could severely reduce the other player's chances to get a decent score. The match ends when all the spaces are taken or no players can make another move.
I'll add pictures of the polished and prototype game boards asap, and go over them in a bit more detail.
