Board Game: D-D-D-Duel

Most of the group meet up today to brainstorm the board game the group will make for the final assignment in the “Advanced Game Design” course.

One in the group suggested that we create an game, that does not feel like a traditional board game with dice throwing and statistic planning. The same person also suggested that we create a game that uses the players reactions skill.The others in the group liked the idea, and started to research in similar games where reaction plays a big role as a mechanic.

Games such as “Jungle Speed” and “Factory fun” both uses reaction speed in order to grab objects that allows them to win the game. The group thought that grabbing an object as an response to a trigger (countdown, signal, matching symbols and etc) would be the best way to implement reaction to the game.

The group thought in which scenario grabbing a object in haste would suit, and after a short time it was decided that the theme would be dueling in the wild west, because grabbing for a pistol in a duel could be something that could be related to the game.
The group thought of a single deck of cards would be the trigger in order to make people react to grab the objects.

The objects that the players would reach after are two toy pistols in order to create the feeling of the wild west.

The group thought that less components would not confuse people and allow the player to start playing faster, instead of having to set up a lot of components.

So whats the big idea?

The idea of the game is that each player in turn flips the top cards in a deck that are place in the middle of all players with their NON DOMINANT hand, while having their DOMINANT hand placed on the edge of the table.

If a “Duel” card is flipped, two or more players will rush to grab one of the two pistols placed on beside the deck  and shoot each other, depending on what the duel card says.

For Example: One card can say: You and the player two steps to the right DUEL. While another might say: The players on your sides DUEL.

The first player who gets shot loses the duel, and the victorious player gets the card that were flipped.

Now this is only the start of the concept and nothing is set in stone yet. However I believe there is a lot of possibilities of this system, especially with the deck itself.