Game Design - Coloropoly

I got a hinkering for sharing some stuff I've been working on but I know if I share anything about my current project, I will lose all motivation to complete it. So instead, I will share an old project. Although, blogging is one of the first signs of dwindling motivation isn't it. Dang! :)

Coloropoly is a variation of Monopoly that I designed a long while back. My goal was to design a version of Monopoly that very young children could play with relative ease. It turned out to be a pretty good design. There isn't a whole lot of strategy involved except remembering who has which tiles.

Basic Rules:

• Move around the board using 2d6 dice and collect color tiles.
• If you capture all tiles for a given color then you effectively lock the color set and nobody can take them from you.
• If you land on a color and the color is no longer available in the bank of colors, you can ask any other player to give up a tile of the same color. If you ask a player who doesn't have that color, oops, you don't get any tile and your turn is over.
• If you collect three color sets before all other players, you win the game.
• If you collect all shape tiles you win the game. Like colors, if you land on a shape that is no longer in the Bank of Colors, you can ask any one player for that specific shape. If they have it, they must give it to you. If not, your out of luck and your turn ends.
• The ? mark spots let you draw a card which does things like "move forward 3", "take any other players cards", "swap one tile with any other player", and etc.

I even made a rulebook and "hand-crafted" game pieces made from wood and craft paper.

I turned the game into a multi-player online game as part of an online game design competition and it turned out pretty good for my first "video game". Here's a screenshot showing how the interface turned out. I came in 2nd to a well polished Chinese Checkers clone. I didn't take first because the game is designed for very young children and bored the tears out of a bunch of male adults who complained about the lack of strategy.

Meh, understandable and I agree with them. With a little more thought, it would be easy to add some new variation and strategy. One easy way is to change rule #3 so the player must give you at least one tile and it must be the landed on color if they have it, and they must give it to you face down so other players don't know which tile you were given. Allow bluffs here for added fun.

The game is no longer posted online for play but I may update it for fun because it would be so easy to update now that I've learned a great deal about the BYOND platform.There's also an online board game site that lets you build and package your own boardgames. I may get this one made yet. Anyway, if I ever get back into it (low probability), I will polish up the graphics (now that I know how), add AI (now that I know how), host it for better chances of attracting players, and add additional options/variations to make the game play more fun.

Alright, the sharing thing is out of my system for now. Thanks for reading! :)